Burrard Peninsula - Landforms

Landforms

The Burrard Peninsula consists for the most part of a hilly plateau, reaching a maximum height in most places of between 100 and 150 metres (300 and 500 feet) above sea level. The plateau is bisected by a low trench running northwest to southeast, consisting of (running from west to east):

• False Creek, separating the peninsula proper from Downtown Vancouver, which sits on a peninsular offshoot occasionally referred to as "Coal Peninsula";
• the Canadian National Railway (CN) and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railway yards, which sit on reclaimed land at the east end of False Creek;
• the Grandview Cut, a trench that accommodates CNR/BNSF and SkyTrain tracks;
• Still Creek, which drains into Burnaby Lake;
• Burnaby Lake, which drains into the Brunette River; and
• the Brunette River, which is the last tributary of any significant size of the Fraser River, joining the Fraser at New Westminster.

Punctuating the plateau are several prominences of land including Little Mountain (a dormant volcano, approximately 170 metres above sea level) in Vancouver, and Capitol Hill (approximately 220 metres) and Burnaby Mountain (home to the main campus of Simon Fraser University; approximately 380 metres) in Burnaby. The plateau is flanked at its eastern end by the Coquitlam River, which flows south from Coquitlam Lake on the mainland into the Fraser River, its mouth lying upstream from the Brunette River. The land east of the Coquitlam River is largely flat and lying close to sea level, except for the stand-alone rise of Mary Hill in Port Coquitlam (approximately 70 metres).