Piper's Lagoon Park is the best, most dramatic and exotic oceanside park in Nanaimo (excepting Newcastle Island - but that's not a fair contest, as Newcastle is a whole island).

Imagine a lagoon the size of a couple of football fields, with a narrow, straight dyke cutting it off from the surf, which has created a marvellous pebbly beach with a great deal of mermaid's tears (a beautiful product of beach glass). Then it gets rocky; there is some neat but short rock-climbing for those who desire it, and one larger hill covered in Arbutus and Garry Oak, eagles and scared rabbits, driftwood and views of the Strait.

http://www.nanaimoinformation.com/
pipers-lagoon.php

www.nanaimo.ca
Source of the above map