What to Do in Mission on the Labour Day Long Weekend

Mission does not usually have a Labour Day festival. In most years the district's own events calendar stays quiet for the long weekend, which is not a complaint; it is the selling point. The Twilight Concert series wrapped up September 2, its last Wednesday of the season, and what is left is the version of this town I actually like best: river, mountain, a monastery on the hillside, and three days with nothing scheduled on them.

What follows is how I would spend those days, including the one loud exception to all that quiet.

Saturday night belongs to the raceway

If noise is what you want, Mission Raceway Park hosts Tunerbash on Saturday, September 5 — drag racing, drifting and a tuner car show rolled into one event, with a street-legal drag night running the Friday before as a warm-up. The date is confirmed by the track; gates times and admission were still listed as coming soon when I looked, so check tunerbash.ca before you point the car at the park. It pulls a crowd from across the Lower Mainland, and if you live anywhere near the track you already know exactly which direction the sound travels.

The abbey keeps its hours

Westminster Abbey above Hatzic is the opposite of the raceway in every measurable way, and its visiting schedule is the rare thing I can state with confidence because the abbey publishes it plainly: the church is open Monday through Saturday from five thirty until noon and again from one thirty until six, and on the holiday Monday that Monday-through-Saturday schedule applies as normal. Gardens and paths are open in the afternoons, half past one until four thirty. There is no charge. Silence inside the church is the house rule, and the view off that bench land down over the Fraser valley is the best free sight in this district.

Go in the afternoon, walk the paths first while they are warm, then sit in the church for whatever length of time your brain has been waiting for all summer.

Fraser River Heritage Park, doing what it does

The park on the river flats needs no festival to justify itself. Open dawn to dusk, big sky, grass that runs out to the water, and enough room that even on a long weekend you can find your own acre of it. This is the field where the Folk Music Festival happens in July, and walking it in early September has a specific pleasure: the event infrastructure is gone, the river is low and calm, and the place belongs to picnics again.

Rolley Lake if you want water

Fifteen minutes north, Rolley Lake Provincial Park has the sandy beach, a roped swimming area, a lake where motors are not allowed, and stocked trout for anyone fishing with a licence. It will be busy by mid-morning on the Saturday, less so Sunday, quieter again Monday. The campfire ban that has stood across this region since July still applies, so nobody should be planning marshmallows over open flame.

Eating around the quiet

A town with an empty events calendar still eats well. First Avenue through old Mission City covers the casual end, and the restaurants this directory's food guide walks through are open through the weekend, holiday hours aside. My long weekend pattern is deliberately boring: coffee and something on Old Towne's strip each morning, groceries from the local stands along the rural roads, and one dinner out on the Saturday before everyone else in the Fraser Valley has the same idea at seven.

The Monday fine print

Labour Day Monday is a statutory holiday: assume city facilities are closed or reduced, and phone anything with a schedule before driving to it.

The Leisure Centre's holiday hours were not posted when I checked, so treat Monday swimming as unconfirmed. The Kinsmen Park splash pad's season end date was similarly unpublished; it may be running, but verify rather than promise it to a five-year-old. And the West Coast Express is a commuter train, which makes a holiday Monday exactly the wrong day to need it.

That is the weekend: one loud Saturday night, one silent hilltop, a river park, a lake, and a Monday that asks nothing of anybody. Around here, that counts as a full program.