Lake Bonavista

Overview

Lake Bonavista sits in Calgary’s southeast, bounded by Anderson Road SE along the north, Macleod Trail along the west, Canyon Meadows Drive SE along the south, and the community of Bonavista Downs along the east. Three of those four edges are roads. The fourth is a neighbouring community, and the line between them is an irregular rear-lot-line boundary rather than a through street, which is what the City of Calgary’s own community district boundary dataset shows when you plot it. Hold on to the name Bonavista Downs, because it comes back further down for a reason that costs money.

The City’s dataset records the community’s development era as the 1960s and 1970s, and the sales data agrees with it. The homes that changed hands here over the twelve months to August 2026 carried a median build year of 1973.

Water is what makes the community different, and the detail matters more than the headline. Lake Bonavista contains two man-made lakes, Lake Bonavista and Lake Bonaventure. They answer to different organisations, with different memberships and different fees. The main lake covers 52 acres alongside a 25-acre park, and access to it runs through the Lake Bonavista Homeowners Association Ltd. Its annual fee for 2026-2027 is $409.50 including GST, due June 30, 2026, and it is mandatory for properties carrying the association’s encumbrance on land title, whether the owner ever walks down to the water or not. The section below sets out who pays it, who does not, and what it buys.

The market is narrow in product and wide in price. Over the twelve months to August 2026 the community recorded 149 residential sales at a blended median of $848,300, running from $212,000 at the floor to $3,400,000 at the top. A quarter of sales closed under $495,000 and a quarter closed over $1,125,029. And every one of those 149 sales was one of two things: a detached home, 99 of them, or an apartment, 50 of them. Nothing else traded.

David’s take

The vibe

The community is built around the water, so it is worth being specific about what the fee actually buys. The Lake Bonavista Homeowners Association Ltd., at 757 Lake Bonavista Drive SE, controls physical access to the 52-acre lake and its 25-acre park. Membership covers swimming and the beaches, boating, fishing, tennis and pickleball, skating surfaces, a cross-country ski track, a toboggan hill and scuba diving. Note that the list covers both seasons, so what the fee buys is in use in February as well as in July.

Who pays, and who does not

Membership is mandatory for properties carrying the association’s encumbrance on land title. The 2026-2027 fee is $409.50 including GST, due June 30, 2026, and the association states that every home pays the same amount regardless of use. A new owner also pays a one-time administration fee of $97.50 plus GST before membership cards are issued.

The exclusions are the part to check before you write an offer. The association states that Bonavista Downs properties, condominiums, secondary suites and carriage houses, and commercial properties are not eligible for membership. Two of those matter to ordinary buyers. Bonavista Downs is the separate community along Lake Bonavista’s east boundary, and being next door does not confer lake access. Condominiums are excluded outright, which means the apartment segment covered further down does not come with lake privileges through this association. Verify the encumbrance against the specific title, not against the community name on the listing.

There is also a second organisation to keep straight. The Lake Bonavista Community Association operates from 1401 Acadia Drive SE and sells a voluntary household membership at $40 a year, or $30 for seniors. It is a separate organisation from the homeowners association, which says as much on its own site and directs readers to the community association separately. The $40 figure and the $409.50 figure describe two different bodies and two different things.

The two lakes

Lake Bonavista contains a second lake, Lake Bonaventure, and it is not covered by the homeowners association fee. Lake Bonaventure is governed by its own Lake Bonaventure Residents Association, a separate organisation with its own governance and its own annual maintenance fee. A full-text check of the homeowners association’s own About, FAQ, Welcome and Memberships pages returns no mention of Bonaventure anywhere, which is consistent with two non-overlapping jurisdictions rather than one membership covering both bodies of water.

What this guide cannot tell you is what Bonaventure costs. The residents association does not publish a current fee figure anywhere on its public pages, and an approximation or a stale number lifted off a listing is worse than saying so. If a home you are considering fronts or backs Lake Bonaventure, treat the annual fee as an open question to be answered in writing during your condition period.

Housing stock

Two product types trade here and that is the whole list.

Detached homes are the market at 99 sales, 66.4% of the total, with a median of $1,022,000 over the twelve months to August 2026. Apartments account for the other 50 sales at a median of $339,500, with condo fees running to a median of about $779 a month across those sales. Because condominiums are excluded from homeowners association membership, an apartment purchase here does not carry lake access through the association, which is a distinction worth making before an apartment buyer prices the lake into what they are paying for.

Nothing else trades here at all. No row or townhouse sale and no semi-detached sale appears in the trailing twelve months, and a check against the full MLS history for this subdivision found none on record at any point. That is stated deliberately rather than left as a gap in a table. What is not stated is why, because no primary source consulted for this guide names a covenant, a zoning rule or a development history that accounts for it.

The two ends of the range are worth knowing individually. The floor was $212,000, an apartment at 1708-11811 Lake Fraser Drive SE. The top was $3,400,000, at 947 Lake Placid Drive SE, a 1975-built lakefront home on its own 10,817 square foot lot with a private dock, fronting Lake Bonaventure rather than the main lake. It is a genuine single-lot estate sale rather than a land assembly, and it belongs in the range. It fronts the lake the homeowners association fee does not govern access to, which is the whole point of separating the two. If you want help reading where a specific home sits inside these bands, the buyer’s guide is a good starting point.

Type	Typical price range	Notes
Detached	Median ~$1.022M	99 sales, 66.4% of the market, and the segment the top sale of $3,400,000 came from. Add the $409.50 annual lake fee where the title carries the encumbrance.
Apartment / condo	Median ~$339.5K	50 sales, including the community floor of $212,000. Condo fees ran to a median of about $779 a month. Condominiums are not eligible for lake membership.
Row / townhouse and semi-detached	No sales	Zero sales in the past twelve months, and none on record in this subdivision at any point in MLS history. No published reason was found.

Recent sales

Over the twelve months to August 2026, Lake Bonavista recorded 149 residential sales. The blended median sold price was $848,300, homes sold at about 98.6% of list price at the median, and the middle sale took 18 days. Detached homes made up 66.4% of sales, and prices ran from $212,000 to $3,400,000.

Two figures in the stat block at the top of this page are arithmetic means rather than medians, and they are worth reading alongside the medians. The average sale price of $855,564 is the mean across all 149 sales; the median, the middle sale, was $848,300. Those two sit close together, which tells you the $3,400,000 top sale did not distort the community picture much. The average of 27 days on market is also a mean, against a median of 18 days. That gap is the more interesting one: half of everything sold inside about two and a half weeks, and a smaller group of homes that sat considerably longer pulled the average up. If you are selling here, both numbers are true and they describe different outcomes.

The spread is where the rest of the detail lives. A quarter of sales closed below $495,000 and a quarter closed above $1,125,029, which puts the middle half of the market inside a $630,029 band. The band is that wide because it spans the top of the apartment segment and the body of the detached one with no third product type in between to fill it.

Twelve-month aggregates by segment

• Detached. 99 sales, 66.4% of the market. Median about $1,022,000, mean about $1,100,013. The segment that produced the community top of $3,400,000, at 947 Lake Placid Drive SE.
• Apartment / condo. 50 sales. Median about $339,500, mean about $371,556, including the community floor of $212,000 at 1708-11811 Lake Fraser Drive SE. Condo fees at a median of about $779 a month.
• Row / townhouse and semi-detached. No sales in the window, and none on record in this subdivision at any point.

Getting around

Canyon Meadows Station is close enough to Lake Bonavista that part of it is inside the community. The station’s eastbound bus bay, where routes 28, 44 and 83 pick up, falls within the City of Calgary’s own boundary polygon for Lake Bonavista. The CTrain platform itself sits about 65 metres outside that polygon, on the far side of Macleod Trail. That figure is a straight line to the boundary rather than a walk from any front door, but it is why the Lake Fraser Drive SE end of the community is the part that lives closest to the train.

The line is the Red Line, which Calgary Transit operates as route 201 between Somerset-Bridlewood and Tuscany. Anderson Station is the second Red Line stop serving Lake Bonavista, about 480 metres off the community’s north-west corner at Macleod Trail and Anderson Road, measured the same way as the figure above and carrying the same caution: platform to boundary line, not a walk from a house. Calgary Transit’s published schedule allows 23 minutes from the Canyon Meadows platform to 1 Street SW Station downtown and 20 from Anderson, platform to platform, which is before you add walking to the station, waiting for a train, and the walk at the downtown end.

Five bus routes have stops inside the community, and which station a route reaches is worth checking rather than inferring from its name. Routes 28 Deer Run, 44 Deer Ridge and 83 Parkland all serve Canyon Meadows Station. Routes 29 Queensland and 35 Bonavista/Canyon Meadows serve Anderson Station instead, whatever route 35’s name suggests: the Canyon Meadows in that name is the Drive, not the station. Route 35 is also the main internal circulator at 27 stops inside Lake Bonavista, with route 44 next at 25.

Park and ride at Canyon Meadows is a parkade rather than a surface lot, and Calgary Transit lists 193 free stalls in it plus 54 reserved. Anderson lists 1,651 free stalls and 81 reserved. Reserved stalls cost $95 a month plus GST and are held until 10 a.m. on weekdays, after which anyone can use them.

No Green Line station is planned in Lake Bonavista. The City of Calgary’s own station list puts the nearest one at Douglas Glen, on 114 Avenue SE between 27 Street and 29 Street SE, and none of the 29 stations on that list falls inside the community.

No drive times appear in this guide, because no primary source publishes them. Drive your own commute before you commit to an address, at the time of day you would actually be doing it.

Schools

Lake Bonavista’s public school pathway is contained, and the first two schools in it sit inside the community. A live CBE Find a School query run in August 2026 at three spread genuine Lake Bonavista addresses returned one designation at all three: Andrew Sibbald School for Kindergarten to Grade 5, at 1711 Lake Bonavista Dr SE, then Nickle School at 2500 Lake Bonavista Dr SE, then Dr. E.P. Scarlett High School (10-12) at 220 Canterbury Drive SW, which also runs Early and Late French Immersion at the 10-12 level. Same answer at every address tested, in other words, across a community large enough that a boundary line running through it would have shown up.

Now the trap, and it is the name that sets it. Lake Bonavista School, at 1015 120 Ave SE, sits inside the community and carries the community’s name, and it is not the designated catchment school. Its own CBE page states that it offers a Montessori alternative programme for students in kindergarten to Grade 6. That is a citywide choice programme families apply to, not an address-based designation. A family that assumes their child walks to the school with the community’s name on it has assumed wrong. The address-based elementary designation is Andrew Sibbald.

One more piece of context, because it will surface if you search. Both Andrew Sibbald and Nickle appear on CBE’s current overflow list, but only as receiving schools: Nickle receives overflow from Lakeshore School, and Andrew Sibbald receives secondary overflow for the Mahogany community only. Neither school is itself in an overflow situation, and neither entry has anything to do with a Lake Bonavista address.

On the Catholic side, two of the three tiers are settled and one genuinely is not. CSSD’s Advanced School Finder returns St. Bonaventure School as the regular-programme junior high designation and Our Lady of the Rockies High School at 111 Haddon Road SW as the regular-programme senior high, both single-valued across the Lake Bonavista addresses queried. St. Bonaventure’s address takes a second look, because it is given as 1710 Acadia Drive SE, which sounds like it belongs to a different community. It does not. That stretch of Acadia Drive SE runs through Lake Bonavista, and checking the school’s location against the City of Calgary’s own community boundary dataset places it inside Lake Bonavista. So the designated Catholic junior high sits within the community’s own boundaries, alongside the two designated CBE schools. The street name points somewhere else. The boundary polygon is what counts, and it says Lake Bonavista.

The Catholic elementary tier is a different story and this guide names no school for it. CSSD’s Advanced School Finder returned different regular-programme elementary schools at different Lake Bonavista addresses. A follow-up check found the designation changing between two addresses on the same street, so no street-level rule of thumb holds either. If you are Catholic-system and the elementary designation matters to your decision, run the exact address through CSSD’s own school finder and get the answer for that house rather than for the community.

Two cautions carry over to whatever address you end up looking at. CBE designations are set by your specific address and reviewed annually, and CSSD’s community-tag search returns every school a student is eligible to attend rather than a single designation, which is a different question from the district lookup used above. Confirm the current pathway for any address you are serious about before you buy. For a broader overview of how Calgary school boundaries and programmes work, see the schools resource.

Frequently asked questions

Is Lake Bonavista a good community to buy in?

It suits a specific buyer, and the deciding factor is whether you want what the lake costs as well as what it gives. Over the twelve months to August 2026 the community recorded 149 residential sales at a blended median of $848,300, running from $212,000 to $3,400,000, with half of everything closing between $495,000 and $1,125,029. Homes sold at about 98.6% of list price at the median and the middle sale took 18 days. The public school pathway starts inside the community at Andrew Sibbald School (K-5) and runs to Nickle School (6-9), also inside the community, then to Dr. E.P. Scarlett High School (10-12). The lake itself covers 52 acres alongside a 25-acre park, with swimming and beaches, boating, fishing, tennis and pickleball, skating surfaces, a cross-country ski track, a toboggan hill and scuba diving. The costs are two. First, the Lake Bonavista Homeowners Association fee, $409.50 including GST for 2026-2027, mandatory on any property carrying the association’s encumbrance on title. Second, age: the homes that sold here carried a median build year of 1973, so put an inspection and a maintenance reserve into your numbers from the start. And note the narrow product range. Only detached homes and apartments trade here, so if you are shopping for a townhouse or a half duplex, this is not the community for it.

How much is the Lake Bonavista lake fee, and is it mandatory?

The Lake Bonavista Homeowners Association Ltd. fee for 2026-2027 is $409.50 including GST, due June 30, 2026. It is mandatory, not optional. The association’s own words: all homes in Lake Bonavista pay the same fee amount, lake fees are an encumbrance reflected on your land title, and they are mandatory whether you use the LBHA premises or not. New owners also pay a one-time administration fee of $97.50 plus GST before membership cards are issued. Be careful about which organisation you are being quoted, because there are two with similar names. The Lake Bonavista Community Association, at 1401 Acadia Drive SE, is a separate body charging a voluntary $40 a year per household, or $30 for seniors. If a figure like $40 comes up when membership is discussed, that is the community association and not the lake fee. Not every address in the community carries the encumbrance either: the homeowners association states that Bonavista Downs properties, condominiums, secondary suites and carriage houses, and commercial properties are not eligible for membership. Confirm the encumbrance on the specific title you are buying, and confirm the current fee with the association directly, since the amount is set annually.

What is the difference between Lake Bonavista and Lake Bonaventure?

They are two man-made lakes inside the same community, run by different organisations, and they carry different fees. Lake Bonavista is the 52-acre lake with the 25-acre park, and it is governed by the Lake Bonavista Homeowners Association Ltd., whose 2026-2027 fee is $409.50 including GST. Lake Bonaventure is a second, smaller lake governed by its own Lake Bonaventure Residents Association, which is a separate organisation with its own governance and its own annual maintenance fee. A search of the homeowners association’s own published pages returns no mention of Bonaventure anywhere, which is consistent with the two being genuinely separate. The Lake Bonaventure Residents Association does not publish a current fee figure on its public site, so this guide does not quote one. If you are looking at a home on or near Lake Bonaventure, ask the seller which association the property belongs to, what the current annual fee is, and get it in writing before you remove conditions. Paying one association’s fee does not buy access to the other’s lake.

How much do homes cost in Lake Bonavista?

Over the twelve months to August 2026, Lake Bonavista recorded 149 residential sales with a blended median sold price of $848,300, running from a floor of $212,000 to a top sale of $3,400,000. That one figure spans a detached market and an apartment market with nothing in between, so the number to work from is the middle half: 25% of sales closed below $495,000 and 25% closed above $1,125,029. By type, detached homes carried a median of $1,022,000 across 99 sales and apartments a median of $339,500 across 50 sales. Detached made up 66.4% of the market. Condo fees ran to a median of about $779 a month across the apartment sales, and note that condominiums are not eligible for lake membership, so an apartment here does not come with lake access through the homeowners association. On a detached purchase, add the $409.50 annual lake fee to your carrying costs where the title carries the encumbrance. For a read on a specific property, a home valuation is the place to start.

Why are there no townhouses or half duplexes in Lake Bonavista?

The first half of that question is settled and the second half is not. Over the twelve months to August 2026, every one of the community’s 149 sales was either a detached home (99) or an apartment (50). No row or townhouse sale and no semi-detached sale appears, and a check against the full MLS history for this subdivision found none on record at any point. So the fact itself is solid: if you want an attached home that is not an apartment, you will not find one trading here. Why that is the case is a different matter, and no primary source consulted for this guide states a covenant, a zoning rule or a development history that explains it. Rather than invent a reason, this guide states the pattern and stops. What it means for you is practical. A buyer whose budget lands in the townhouse band will be choosing between an apartment here and a townhouse in another community, and a seller of either product type here has only two comparable sets to work from.

What schools serve Lake Bonavista?

On the public side the pathway is contained and single-valued, with one trap in it. A live CBE Find a School query in August 2026, run at three spread genuine Lake Bonavista addresses, came back the same at all three: Andrew Sibbald School (K-5) at 1711 Lake Bonavista Dr SE, then Nickle School at 2500 Lake Bonavista Dr SE, then Dr. E.P. Scarlett High School (10-12) at 220 Canterbury Drive SW, which also runs Early and Late French Immersion at the 10-12 level. CBE’s locator returns Nickle’s designation as two programme rows, Regular (6) and Regular (7-9), while the school’s own site describes a combined 6-9 range. The trap is the name: Lake Bonavista School, at 1015 120 Ave SE inside the community, is a CBE Montessori alternative programme for kindergarten to Grade 6 and is not the designated catchment school. It is a citywide choice programme families apply to. On the Catholic side, CSSD’s Advanced School Finder returns St. Bonaventure School as the regular-programme junior high designation and Our Lady of the Rockies High School at 111 Haddon Road SW for senior high, both single-valued. The Catholic elementary designation genuinely varies by address within Lake Bonavista, including between addresses on the same street, so this guide names no single Catholic elementary. CBE designations are set by address and reviewed annually, so confirm the current pathway for any address you are serious about with the CBE Find a School and CSSD school-finder tools before you buy.

Sales data current as of 2026-08-03. Includes 149 residential sales in Lake Bonavista over the twelve months to August 2026. Source: Pillar 9 MLS® System. Copyright 2026 Pillar 9. All Rights Reserved.