One North Shore number covers both municipalities: lockouts, rekeys and lock changes, door and frame repair, keys cut and programmed at the car, safes, and master key systems for strata and estate properties. Plenty of North Vancouver addresses need two of them in the same visit, which is why one licensed technician turns up carrying the lot.
Licensed technicians, no subcontractors, and a price you hear on the call rather than on the invoice.
A list this long is more than most locksmiths publish, and the reason is that calls almost never arrive correctly named. People ask for a rekey when the cylinder behind it is past taking one, or for a car key when the fob only wants a battery. What the dispatcher is doing while you describe the problem is working out which entry below actually applies, and here that starts with the building rather than the lock: a townhome strata with a gate on the visitor parking is a different arrival from a detached house up on Doran Road, before anyone has looked at the hardware. The second half of the question is what has to be on board before the van leaves, because an estate entry off Hycroft Road or Palmerston Place can turn out to be a multi-point door where the make of the cylinder decides the parts.
The other thing worth knowing about the list is how often one address takes two entries off it. A tenant changeover in an Edgemont Boulevard unit is the front cylinder, the interior connecting locks, and a note to the property manager of exactly how many keys were cut, which is three pieces of work and one attendance. A call at an address off Bridle Path can open out into the house hardware, a gated drive at the top of the property and a vault room nobody has been into for years. Booked as separate appointments, that is three attendances and three lots of access to arrange; booked as one, it is an afternoon.
Most locksmiths on the North Shore pick one of those three and refer the other two out. Keeping all of them in-house mainly saves the caller a decision, because nobody has to work out in advance whether the fault is the lock, the door, the key or the car. The technician who arrives is qualified to look at all four and say which it is. On a territory where a run out to Horseshoe Bay or up to the Mount Seymour lots takes a real bite out of the day, one visit that settles everything is worth more than it would be in a city you can cross in ten minutes.
Every one of them is run in-house, with key cutting and garage doors below. Open the one that matches your door, or call and describe it.
Use this one when it will not keep: a door, a vehicle or a safe that will not open, or a door that will no longer lock after a forced entry. Everything else on this list can be booked for a time that suits you.
Suite doors, townhouse entries and detached-house hardware. The Edgemont side streets around Conifer Drive show the whole range inside a couple of blocks, post-war bungalows sitting next to later infill, and the two of them want different things out of the same van on the same morning.
Storefronts, offices, clinics and strata councils. A good share of it runs outside trading hours rather than in the middle of them, which is settled when the job is quoted rather than sprung on the tenant afterwards.
Dispatched to the car wherever it is standing, the Lynn Valley Centre parkade included, which is where the fob failures tend to land. A flat fob battery or a remote that has lost sync with the vehicle reads exactly like a dead key until somebody checks it at the car.
Replacement keys and fobs cut and programmed at the vehicle for most makes sold in Canada. A few rare or specialised models genuinely do need the dealership, and that gets said at the quoting stage instead of discovered at the kerb.
The 1950s and early-60s cylinders still in service at the north end of Norgate are frequently past the point where fresh pins will hold, and a keyway that age can be out of blanks altogether. Either way the honest answer is a new lock rather than another key.
Wi-Fi and keypad deadbolts, supplied and fitted. Along the Dollarton waterfront the usual reason for one is a rental suite: the owner wants the tenant on a code, so a handover stops being an appointment and becomes a number typed into the keypad.
Hinges that have dropped, latches that miss, closers that have stopped closing. If the key turns cleanly and the door still will not sit properly in its frame, this is the entry to book rather than a new lock.
Safes opened, installed, serviced and set to a new combination. The one that keeps coming back on the West Vancouver side is a pre-1960s house whose in-wall or floor safe came with the property while the combination did not.
Hierarchies are only worth designing on a keyway that is restricted, because the point of the exercise is knowing where every key is. On a townhome strata off Duval Place that means blanks a hardware counter cannot cut, so the number in circulation stays the number the council actually issued.
Handled by the same licensed technicians, on the same number.
Eleven of them are on the North Vancouver side of the map, the rest are in West Vancouver. If you already know which one you are standing in, start there rather than here.