If you live in Cedar, you already know the Sunday rhythm. Coffee at home, drive to Woobank Road, wander the market, take the long way back through Hemer, and land at the Crow & Gate before the kitchen gets slammed. What most people who live here don't realize is that the three anchors of that afternoon are not a coincidence. They grew out of each other.
This post is about that thread, and about what has changed in Cedar's Sunday this season.
The market that literally started at the pub
The Cedar Farmers Market is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2026. Executive director Kate Poirier told NanaimoNewsNOW that the market's early days saw a handful of vendors gather at the Crow and Gate Pub to sell their goods before it grew into what it is now. That is the origin story: the pub was the first stall.
Three decades later the market runs out of the former Woodbank Elementary School fields at 1984 Woobank Road. The 30th anniversary season opened on Sunday, May 10, its traditional Mother's Day start, with around 120 different local vendors staged on the former Woodbank Elementary School fields, and the June 28 market is scheduled to be a formal celebration of the event's 30-year history. If you have been meaning to bring visiting family, that Sunday is the one to circle.
A few practical things worth knowing about this season:
- Hours and window. The summer season runs May 10 through October 25, Sundays 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., with a quieter shopping window from 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. reserved for seniors and immunocompromised shoppers.
- Scale. Poirier told NanaimoNewsNOW they're expecting upwards of 3,500 shoppers over the four hours, many of whom will stay for an extended period of time. Opening weekend last year set the record.
- Dogs on the field. Dogs are now allowed on the market field, but must be kept on a short locked leash. That is a change longtime regulars keep asking about.
- Local-first vendor mix. Vendors come from the mid-Island area, with close to 20 or 25 businesses from the Cedar-Yellow Point area on any given weekend, weighted toward food producers and artisans.
The point of the pre-10 window is worth pausing on. Most farmers' markets in the region treat accessibility as a signage issue. Cedar treats it as a schedule. If you have an older parent in the house or a family member who does not do well in crowds, you know why that matters.
The Sunday-morning stack, in order
Here is the sequence most Cedar households I hear from actually run. It is worth writing down because the timing only works one way.
| Time | Stop | Why now, not later |
|---|---|---|
| 9:30–10:00 a.m. | Market, quiet window | Ready-made food stalls are fully stocked, parking is easy |
| 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. | Market, main hours | Live music starts at 10, food trucks are hot |
| 12:00–1:30 p.m. | Hemer Provincial Park loop | Post-lunch light on Holden Lake, marsh birds active |
| 1:30–3:00 p.m. | Crow & Gate lunch | Ahead of the 3 p.m. drive-in crowd |
Doing it in reverse breaks. The Crow & Gate parking lot fills after the market closes at 2, Hemer's small lot is genuinely small on a sunny afternoon, and the market's best ready-made food is spoken for by noon. Since the pandemic, the market's focus has shifted toward ready-made food, which is why the 10 a.m. arrival is not the same experience it was ten years ago.
Hemer is the part visitors miss
If a friend from off-island asks what to do in Cedar, they hear about the market and the pub. They do not hear about Hemer, and that is the one you should protect.
Hemer Provincial Park is a 93-hectare park preserved through the donation of long-time Cedar residents John and Violet Hemer. The gift was made in 1981, and the park still contains remains of the farmstead, offering a look at the region's farming history. The old rail line that ran along the lake shore is now a walking route: the Pacific Coal Company railway travelled along the shores of the lake, and their abandoned right of way now forms a trail called Heritage Way.
The park is bigger than the loop most people walk. Approximately 11 kilometres of easy walking trails weave through the park along Holden Lake and through the marsh areas, forested primarily with mature coastal Douglas fir, red alder and big-leaf maple. The signature stop is the marsh viewing platform, which sits about 1 km from the parking area, perched over the wetland. Trumpeter swans, eagles, and turkey vultures are the regulars, plus beavers and deer if you are patient. There is a small piece of ecological trivia most people who live in Cedar never learn: Holden Lake is one of only two lakes on Vancouver Island containing the Peamouth Chubb.
Two practical notes. Campfires are not permitted and potable water is not available in the park, so bring your own. And if the main lot at the end of Hemer Road is full, there is a workaround worth knowing: you can park at the Cedar Plaza gravel parking lot on Cedar Road and walk 2.6 km along the Morden Colliery Regional Trail to Hemer Park. That approach doubles as a longer walk on a day when you skip the market.
Why the Crow & Gate still holds
The Crow & Gate at 2313 Yellow Point Road is not merely old. It is a specific piece of provincial history. It was the very first neighbourhood pub in B.C., opening in 1972 before the ink was even dry on new provincial liquor regulations allowing pubs for the first time. The Sussex-born original owner, Jack Nash, went further than anyone needed to: he imported much of the materials that went into building the pub, including the exposed timbers, furnishings, and even the windows, all the way from England.
Two things about the Crow & Gate matter to someone building a Sunday around it.
The first is the property itself. The building sits on a picture-perfect 10-acre property complete with a pond and resident black swans, and the garden is the reason to arrive between the market closing and the mid-afternoon crush. The second is the kitchen's discipline. It has stayed a pub, not a restaurant playing dress-up. The menu still runs to burgers, bangers and mash, pub plates, steak and mushroom and chicken pot pie, clam chowder, and Caesar salad, with the scotch egg intact.
One thing to plan around if you are bringing kids: minors are not allowed at all, even outside. This catches new-to-Cedar families every summer.
The extended loop, for when you have the whole day
If the Sunday is a long one and you want to keep moving after the pub, three additions stretch the afternoon without ever leaving the south end.
Mahle House. Sitting on Hemer Road just before the park turnoff, this is the sit-down dinner counterpart to the Crow & Gate's pub lunch. Locals fold it into the Hemer walk by noting the turn on the way in.
Cable Bay Trail. Parking is at the end of Nicola Road. The trail drops down a wide path to a pretty seashore, sometimes with sea lions, and continues to Joan Point Park, a 23-acre waterfront park with a vantage point over Dodd Narrows. If you time the tide right, the current through the narrows is genuinely dramatic.
Yellow Point Lodge shoreline. Not for staying, for walking past. The road down to the point is one of the prettiest short drives on this side of the highway, and the coastal sandstone that shapes Blue Heron Bay is worth ten minutes on foot.
What this afternoon actually tells you about Cedar
Most rural pockets near a mid-sized city end up as one of two things: a bedroom drive or a weekend destination for outsiders. Cedar is neither. The market, the park, and the pub were built by people who lived here for other people who lived here, and the fact that the market's first vendors set up at the pub is not a marketing story. It is how the community actually organized itself.
That is the piece that changes when you live in Cedar rather than visit. The Sunday loop is not a checklist. It is a set of habits that a specific group of neighbours built over 30 years, and it still works because the same families keep showing up.
If you are thinking about the practical side of Cedar as a place to plant longer, the Charlie Parker Team is happy to walk you through what different pockets of Cedar and Yellow Point actually feel like day to day. Contact Us any time you want to talk it through.