VANCOUVER

Is British Columbia’s largest city with home to an estimated 2 million people (including suburbs) and the largest city of Western Canada. It is named after explorer and former British Royal navy officer George Vancouver (1757-1798). Before 1792, before the Spanish explorers arrived, the First Nations people, whom fished in the surrounding waters, first inhabited Vancouver. During the decade of the 1860s, industrialism was marked by the arrival of lumber mills being built on both sides of Burrard Inlet. Vancouver today, is one of Canada’s most friendly and diverse metropolises in terms of international and national relations with several people of Asian, Japanese, European, Hawaiian and Africa decent live in Vancouver. Vancouver, (along with Whistler, approximately 100 kilometers to the north) hosted the 2010 winter and Para-Olympic games with such winter sports including hockey, and curling excited sports enthusiasts around the world. With 14 gold medals, this event is considered to be the best Canada has ever done on the three previous times it has hosted these games on its home soil (the other two being Calgary in 1988 and Montreal in 1976) where it didn’t even win a single gold medal. The city is landscaped with mountains to the north and east of the city with the ocean to the west. Vancouver is home to 3 prolific sports teams with the Canucks of the National Hockey League (NHL), the British Columbia Lions of the Canadian Football League (CFL), and the Vancouver Giants of the Western Hockey League. The Giants hosted and won the 2007 Memorial Cup, the Lions won the Grey Cup in 2006, while the Canucks have made two trips to the Stanley Cup with one being in 1982 and the other in 1994 but lost on both occasions. The city boasts a major transportation system that links the city with the suburbs and cities of Surrey, Burnaby, New Westminster, Richmond, and Coquitlam as well as the North Shore of Vancouver. Major attractions in Vancouver include Stanley Park, Gastown, Chinatown, BC Place Stadium, and BC Sports Hall of Fame just to name a few. Langara College, University of British Columbia and several other post-secondary institutions are located in and within the city. By the 2020s, Vancouver’s designation as British Columbia’s largest city is expected to be given to that of Surrey because its population is expected to triple by that period.

VANCOUVER’S POPULATION: 578,041, met area: about 2,000,000