One desk, one town
About Port Coquitlam Local
One editor, one inbox, and every listing says where its details came from.
A business directory for Port Coquitlam, built and kept up by one person who lives in it. Here is who that is, where the details come from, and how to get something fixed if it is wrong.
What makes this one different
Three things I do not bend on
I would rather set out the rules than leave you to work them out from the entries.
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Honest about the source
Listings start from the public OpenStreetMap map data, and each one says so. Map data can be out of date, so a listing never claims more than the map and the business itself can back up.
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Sorted by where it is
Every listing is filed under the neighbourhood it trades in as well as its trade, so you can find what is near you rather than what happens to rank first.
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Tell me when I am wrong
If it is your business and I have a detail wrong, send me a note and it gets changed. Your word beats my notes every time.
Why this exists
Port Coquitlam deserves a business directory that is quick to use and honest about where its details come from. This one sorts every business by trade and by neighbourhood, so you can find what is near you without wading through a page of ads.
The listings start from the public OpenStreetMap map data, the open map that a great many apps are built on. That makes the locations dependable, but hours, phone numbers and websites can go out of date, which is why every listing says where its details came from and how to get them corrected.
I would rather say this plainly than bury it. The whole site is written under a single editorial byline, mine, so every guide and listing note on here comes off one desk with one set of standards behind it.
Who is writing this
I am from Mary Hill. My grandfather came to Port Coquitlam to work the CPR yards, back when the roundhouse was the reason the town existed at all, and he stayed because the railway kept him and the river kept the rest of us. I grew up knowing the difference between the trains you hear and the trains you feel, which in a house near the corridor is a real distinction.
PoCo has spent a century being described as infrastructure. First the railway town, then the place the highway passes through on the way to the valley, then the affordable option beside Coquitlam. Every one of those descriptions is true from the outside and useless from in. The city I know has its own downtown, its own river, a trail that loops the entire municipality, and a main street with more heritage brick than most people ever notice because they do not slow down.
So I have watched this city from two ends of it too: the bench side where the houses are older and everyone knows which crossing the trains use, and the newer blocks down by the river where the towers are going up. Both of them are Port Coquitlam. Neither of them is the whole thing, and most directories only ever find one.
What I do not have patience for is the version of PoCo that exists on the internet. It is either a real estate pitch about commute times, or it is a national directory that scraped a phone book and cannot tell Shaughnessy Street from the Mary Hill Bypass. Both of them are writing about somewhere they have never been.
What is actually on here
The listings are businesses on the public map, sorted by category and neighbourhood. Nobody crosses town on a Tuesday for a haircut, so where a place sits matters nearly as much as what it is.
Around the listings there are guides to the things people genuinely search for locally: where to eat, what is open on a long weekend, which trails and parks are worth the walk, and what to do on a wet weekend. I rank things and say why, because a guide that likes everything is no use to anyone.
Where the listings come from
Built from open map data, written in Port Coquitlam
Built from open map data means something specific here, and it is worth being plain about the limits. Each listing starts from the public OpenStreetMap record for the business: its name, its address and its pin on the map, plus a phone number, website or hours where the map carries them. Anything the map does not carry is left blank rather than guessed at, which is why some listings have no phone number and no hours: an empty field is honest, an invented one is not.
What it does not mean is that anyone has stood outside every door. Hours change, businesses close, and a directory that claims otherwise is not being straight with you. If something here is wrong, the correction form is the fastest way to fix it, and every message is read by a person.
Written for Port Coquitlam is the other half. A guide or category page that would sit just as happily on a site about the next town over is not finished, so the writing here is about this city in particular: its neighbourhoods, its streets and the trades people actually look for.
None of that makes the site infallible. Hours move, kitchens close, and a place that was open in March can be gone by June. It does mean that when something on here is wrong, there is one person to tell and one inbox to tell them in.
How listings work
Free to be listed, easy to correct
Being on here costs nothing, and I would much rather be corrected than be wrong.
No fee, no paid placement
There is no package to buy and nothing to subscribe to. You send the details, I check them, and the page goes up.
Claim your own page
If the business is yours, claim the page and correct it: the hours, the phone number, the fact that you moved across the plaza in March.
Corrections come first
You tell me an entry is wrong and I fix it. There is a contact form for exactly that, and those go to the front of the queue.
Where I stand
Where the listings come from
Listings start from the public OpenStreetMap map data for Port Coquitlam, and each one is filed under the category the business would recognize as its own and the neighbourhood it trades in. Map data can go out of date, so confirm with the business before you set off, and tell me when something has changed.
The chains are left out on purpose. You do not need me to tell you where the big-box stores are. What is harder to find, and what this site is for, is the small independent business: the two-chair barber off the downtown strip, the repair bay on the Mary Hill bench, the counter in Glenwood.
If something here is wrong, or if your business should be on it and is not, tell me. Every message and every submitted listing is read by a person before anything changes.
Run a business here?
Add it to the directory
Listings are free, and every submitted listing is read by a person before it goes live. Send me the details and tell me what makes the place worth the drive.