| Vancouver |
A high resolution panorama of Vancouver with the mountains behind, looking roughly north from the vicinity of Broadway and Oak Street. The bridge on the left of the image is the Granville Street Bridge.
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| Motto: “By Sea, Land, and Air We Prosper” |
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| Location of Vancouver within the Greater Vancouver Regional District in British Columbia, Canada
Coordinates:  49°15′N 123°6′W / 49.25°N 123.1°W / 49.25; -123.1 |
| Country |
 Canada |
| Province |
 British Columbia |
| Region |
Lower Mainland |
| Regional District |
Metro Vancouver |
| Incorporated |
1886 |
| Government |
| - Mayor |
Gregor Robertson (Vision Vancouver) |
| - City Council |
List of Councilors[show]
Suzanne Anton (NPA)
David Cadman (COPE)
George Chow (Vision)
Heather Deal (Vision)
Kerry Jang (Vision)
Raymond Louie (Vision)
Geoff Meggs (Vision)
Andrea Reimer (Vision)
Tim Stevenson (Vision)
Ellen Woodsworth (COPE)
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| Area |
| - City |
114.67 km2 (44.3 sq mi) |
| – Metro |
2,878.52 km2 (1,111.4 sq mi) |
| Elevation |
2 m (7 ft) |
| Population (2006 Census)[1] |
| - City |
578,041(Ranked 8th) |
| - Density |
5,335/km2 (13,817.6/sq mi) |
| - Metro |
2,116,581 (Ranked 3rd) |
| – Demonym |
Vancouverite |
| Time zone |
PST (UTC−8) |
| - Summer (DST) |
PDT (UTC−7) |
| Postal code span |
V5K to V6Z |
| Area code(s) |
604, 778 |
| NTS Map |
092G03 |
| GNBC Code |
JBRIK |
| Website |
City of Vancouver |
Vancouver (pronounced /vænˈkuːvər/) is a coastal city located in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is named for British Captain George Vancouver, who explored the area in the 1790s. The name Vancouver itself originates from the Dutch “van Coevorden,” denoting somebody from Coevorden, a city in the Netherlands.[2]
The largest metropolitan area in Western Canada, Vancouver ranks third largest in the country and the city proper ranks eighth.[3][4] According to the 2006 census Vancouver had a population of just over 578,000[1] and its Census Metropolitan Area exceeded 2.1 million people.[1] Its residents are ethnically and linguistically diverse; 52% do not speak English as their first language.[5][6]
Logging sawmills established in 1867 in the area known as Gastown became the nucleus around which the townsite grew, and Vancouver was incorporated as a city in 1886. By 1887, the transcontinental railway was extended to the city to take advantage of its large natural seaport, which soon became a vital link in a trade route between the Orient, Eastern Canada, and London.[7][8] The Port Metro Vancouver is now the busiest and largest in Canada, as well as the fourth largest port (by tonnage) in North America.[9] While forestry remains its largest industry, Vancouver is well known as an urban centre surrounded by nature, making tourism its second largest industry.[10] It also is the third largest film production centre in North America after Los Angeles and New York City, earning it the nickname Hollywood North.[11][12]
Vancouver has ranked highly in worldwide “livable city” rankings for more than a decade according to business magazine assessments.[13][14] It has hosted many international conferences and events, including the 1976 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements and the 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication. The 2010 Winter Olympics and 2010 Winter Paralympics are being held in Vancouver and nearby Whistler, a resort community 125 km (78 miles) north of the city starting February 12, 2010.[15]
History
Main article: History of Vancouver
See also: Timeline of Vancouver history
Indigenous peoples and European exploration
Archaeological records indicate the presence of Aboriginal people in the Vancouver area from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.[16][17] The city is located in the traditional territories of Skwxwú7mesh, Xwméthkwyiem, and Tseil-waututh peoples of the Coast Salish group.[18] They had villages in various parts of present-day Vancouver, such as Stanley Park, False Creek, Kitsilano, Point Grey and near the mouth of the Fraser River.[17]
A portrait of the first Vancouver City Council meeting after the 1886 fire. The tent shown was on the east side of the 100 block Carrall.[19]
The first European to explore the coastline of present-day Point Grey and parts of Burrard Inlet was José María Narváez of Spain, in 1791, although Samuel Bawlf contends that Francis Drake may have visited the area in 1579.[20] George Vancouver explored the inner harbour of Burrard Inlet in 1792 and gave various places British names.[21]
The explorer and North West Company trader Simon Fraser and his crew were the first known Europeans to set foot on the site of the present-day city. In 1808, they travelled from the east down the Fraser River, perhaps as far as Point Grey, near the University of British Columbia.[22]
Early growth
The Fraser Gold Rush of 1858 brought over 25,000 men, mainly from California, up the Fraser River, via New Westminster (founded Feb 14 1859) on the Fraser River which was the access to the BC interior, bypassing what would become Vancouver.[23][24][25] Vancouver is among British Columbia’s youngest cities;[26] the first European settlement in what is now Vancouver was not until 1862 at McLeery’s Farm on the Fraser River, just east of the ancient village of Musqueam in what is now Marpole. A sawmill established at Moodyville (now the City of North Vancouver) in 1863, began the city’s long relationship with logging. It was quickly followed by mills owned by Captain Edward Stamp on the south shore of the inlet. Stamp, who had begun lumbering in the Port Alberni area, first attempted to run a mill at Brockton Point, but difficult currents and reefs forced the relocation of the operation to a point near the foot of Gore Street. This mill, known as the Hastings Mill, became the nucleus around which Vancouver formed. The mill’s central role in the city waned after the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in the 1880s. It nevertheless remained important to the local economy until it closed in the 1920s.[27]
The settlement which came to be called Gastown grew up quickly around the original makeshift tavern established by “Gassy” Jack Deighton in 1867 on the edge of the Hastings Mill property.[26][28] In 1870, the colonial government surveyed the settlement and laid out a townsite, renamed “Granville” in honour of the then-British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Granville. This site, with its natural harbour, was eventually selected as the terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway to the disappointment of Port Moody, New Westminster and Victoria, all of which had vied to be the railhead. A railway was among the inducements for British Columbia to join the Confederation in 1871, but the Pacific Scandal and arguments over the use of Chinese labour delayed construction until the 1880s.[29]
Panorama of Vancouver, 1898.
Incorporation
The City of Vancouver was incorporated on 6 April 1886, the same year that the first transcontinental train arrived. CPR president William Van Horne arrived in Port Moody to establish the CPR terminus recommended by Henry John Cambie, and gave the city its name in honour of George Vancouver.[26] The Great Vancouver Fire on 13 June 1886, razed the entire city. The Vancouver Fire Department was established that year and the city quickly rebuilt.[27] Vancouver’s population grew from a settlement of 1,000 people in 1881 to over 20,000 by the turn of the century and 100,000 by 1911.[30]
Vancouver merchants outfitted prospectors bound for the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898.[23] One of those merchants, Charles Woodward, had opened the first Woodward’s store at what is now Georgia and Main Streets in 1892 and, along with Spencer’s and the Hudson’s Bay department stores, formed the core of the city’s retail sector for decades.[31]
The economy of early Vancouver was dominated by large companies such as the CPR, which provided capital for the rapid development of the new city. While some manufacturing did develop, natural resources became the basis for Vancouver’s economy. The resource sector was initially based on logging and later on exports moving through the seaport, where commercial traffic constituted the largest economic sector in Vancouver by the 1930s.[32]
20th century
The dominance of the economy by big business was accompanied by an often militant labour movement. The first major sympathy strike was in 1903 when railway employees struck against the CPR for union recognition. Labour leader Frank Rogers was killed by CPR police while picketing at the docks, becoming the movement’s first martyr in British Columbia.[33] The rise of industrial tensions throughout the province led to Canada’s first general strike in 1918, at the Cumberland coal mines on Vancouver Island.[34] Following a lull in the 1920s, the strike wave peaked in 1935 when unemployed men flooded the city to protest conditions in the relief camps run by the military in remote areas throughout the province.[35][36] After two tense months of daily and disruptive protesting, the relief camp strikers decided to take their grievances to the federal government and embarked on the On-to-Ottawa Trek,[36] but their protest was put down by force. The workers were arrested near Mission and interned in work camps for the duration of the Depression.[37]
Other social movements, such as the first-wave feminist, moral reform, and temperance movements were also influential in Vancouver’s development. Mary Ellen Smith, a Vancouver suffragist and prohibitionist, became the first woman elected to a provincial legislature in Canada in 1918.[38] Alcohol prohibition began in the First World War and lasted until 1921, when the provincial government established control over alcohol sales, a practice still in place today.[39] Canada’s first drug law came about following an inquiry conducted by the federal Minister of Labour and future Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King. King was sent to investigate damages claims resulting from a riot when the Asiatic Exclusion League led a rampage through Chinatown and Japantown. Two of the claimants were opium manufacturers, and after further investigation, King found that white women were reportedly frequenting opium dens as well as Chinese men. A federal law banning the manufacture, sale, and importation of opium for non-medicinal purposes was soon passed based on these revelations.[40]
Amalgamation with Point Grey and South Vancouver gave the city its final contours not long before it became the third largest metropolis in the country. As of 1 January 1929, the population of the enlarged Vancouver was 228,193 and it filled the entire peninsula between the Burrard Inlet and the Fraser River.[41]
Geography
Further information: Bodies of water in Vancouver and Lower Mainland Ecoregion
Officially designated neighbourhoods of Vancouver (local and urban usage varies)
Located on the Burrard Peninsula, Vancouver lies between Burrard Inlet to the north and the Fraser River to the south. The Strait of Georgia, to the west, is shielded from the Pacific Ocean by Vancouver Island. The city has an area of 114 km2 (44 sq mi), including both flat and hilly ground, and is in the Pacific Time Zone (UTC−8) and the Pacific Maritime Ecozone.[42] Until the city’s naming in 1885, “Vancouver” referred to Vancouver Island, and it remains a common misconception that the city is located on the island. The island and the city are both named after Royal Navy Captain George Vancouver, though the city of Vancouver, Washington, on the north bank of the Columbia River opposite Portland, Oregon, is only indirectly named for Captain Vancouver; that city’s name was adapted from Fort Vancouver, which had been the headquarters of the Columbia District of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the largest settlement in the Pacific Northwest until the Oregon Treaty of 1846.
Stanley Park with the downtown buildings in the background
Vancouver has one of the largest urban parks in North America, Stanley Park, which covers 404.9 hectares (1001 acres).[43] The North Shore Mountains dominate the cityscape, and on a clear day scenic vistas include the snow-capped volcano Mount Baker in the state of Washington to the southeast, Vancouver Island across the Strait of Georgia to the west and southwest, and the Bowen Island to the northwest.[44]
Ecology
Windmill palms are an indicator of the city’s temperate climate in comparison to the rest of Canada. These are shown near English Bay.
The vegetation in the Vancouver area was originally temperate rain forest, consisting of conifers with scattered pockets of maple and alder, and large areas of swampland (even in upland areas, due to poor drainage).[45] The conifers were a typical coastal British Columbia mix of Douglas-fir, Western red cedar and Western Hemlock.[46] The area is thought to have the largest trees of these species on the British Columbia Coast. Only in Seattle’s Elliott Bay did the size of trees rival those of Burrard Inlet and English Bay. The largest trees in Vancouver’s old-growth forest were in the Gastown area, where the first logging occurred, and on the southern slopes of False Creek and English Bay, especially around Jericho Beach. The forest in Stanley Park was logged between the 1860s and 1880s, and evidence of old-fashioned logging techniques such as springboard notches can still be seen there.[47]
Many plants and trees growing throughout Vancouver and the Lower Mainland were imported from other parts of the continent and from points across the Pacific. Various species of palm trees grow in the city, as do large numbers of other exotic trees such as the monkey puzzle tree, the Japanese Maple, and various flowering exotics, such as magnolias, azaleas, and rhododendrons. Some rhododendrons have grown to immense sizes, as have other species imported from harsher climates in Eastern Canada or Europe. The native Douglas Maple can also attain a tremendous size. Many of the city’s streets are lined with flowering varieties of Japanese cherry trees donated from the 1930s onward by the government of Japan. These flower for several weeks in early spring each year. Other streets are lined with flowering chestnut, horse chestnut and other decorative shade trees.[48]
Climate
Main article: Climate of Vancouver
Vancouver’s climate is temperate by Canadian standards and is usually classified as Oceanic or Marine west coast (Köppen climate classification Cfb). The summer months are typically dry, often resulting in moderate drought conditions, usually in July and August. In contrast, the rest of the year is rainy, especially between October and March.
Annual precipitation as measured at Vancouver Airport in Richmond averages 1,199 millimetres (47.2 in), though this varies dramatically throughout the metro area due to the topography and is considerably higher in the downtown area. In winter, a majority of days (again at Vancouver Airport) receive measurable precipitation. Summer months are drier and sunnier with moderate temperatures, tempered by sea breezes. The daily maximum averages 22 °C (72 °F) in July and August, with highs occasionally reaching 30 °C (86 °F).[49] The highest temperature ever recorded was 34.4 °C (93.9 °F) on 30 July 2009.[50][51] On average, snow falls on eleven days per year, with three days receiving 6 centimetres (2.4 in) or more. Average yearly snowfall is 48.2 centimetres (19.0 in) but typically does not remain on the ground for long.[52] Winters in Greater Vancouver are the fourth mildest of Canadian cities after nearby Victoria, Nanaimo and Duncan, all on Vancouver Island.[53] Vancouver has daily minimum temperatures below 0 °C (32 °F) for an average of 46 days per year and below −10 °C (14.0 °F) on two days per year. On average, 4.5 days a year have temperatures staying below freezing.
| [hide]Weather data for Vancouver International Airport, Richmond, BC |
| Month |
Jan |
Feb |
Mar |
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
Year |
| Record high °C (°F) |
15.3
(60) |
18.4
(65) |
19.4
(67) |
25
(77) |
30.4
(87) |
30.6
(87) |
34.4
(94) |
33.3
(92) |
29.3
(85) |
23.7
(75) |
18.4
(65) |
14.9
(59) |
34.4
(94) |
| Average high °C (°F) |
6.1
(43) |
8
(46) |
10.1
(50) |
13.1
(56) |
16.5
(62) |
19.2
(67) |
21.7
(71) |
21.9
(71) |
18.7
(66) |
13.5
(56) |
9
(48) |
6.2
(43) |
13.7
(57) |
| Daily mean °C (°F) |
3.3
(38) |
4.8
(41) |
6.6
(44) |
9.2
(49) |
12.5
(55) |
15.2
(59) |
17.5
(64) |
17.6
(64) |
14.6
(58) |
10.1
(50) |
6
(43) |
3.5
(38) |
10.1
(50) |
| Average low °C (°F) |
0.5
(33) |
1.5
(35) |
3.1
(38) |
5.3
(42) |
8.4
(47) |
11.2
(52) |
13.2
(56) |
13.4
(56) |
10.5
(51) |
6.6
(44) |
3.1
(38) |
0.8
(33) |
6.5
(44) |
| Record low °C (°F) |
-17.8
(-0) |
-16.1
(3) |
-9.4
(15) |
-3.3
(26) |
0.6
(33) |
3.9
(39) |
6.7
(44) |
6.1
(43) |
0
(32) |
-5.9
(21) |
-14.3
(6) |
-17.8
(-0) |
-17.8
(-0) |
| Precipitation mm (inches) |
153.6
(6.05) |
123.1
(4.85) |
114.3
(4.5) |
84
(3.31) |
67.9
(2.67) |
54.8
(2.16) |
39.6
(1.56) |
39.1
(1.54) |
53.5
(2.11) |
112.6
(4.43) |
181
(7.13) |
175.7
(6.92) |
1,199
(47.2) |
| Sunshine hours |
60.4 |
84.6 |
134.1 |
182.4 |
230.7 |
229.1 |
294.5 |
267.9 |
199.1 |
124.8 |
64.3 |
56.1 |
1,928 |
| Source: Environment Canada[52] May 2009 |
Cityscape
A view of English Bay from the Burrard Bridge
Urban planning
Main article: Vancouverism
At 5,335 people per km2 (13,817.6 people per mi2) in 2006, Vancouver has a high population density relative to most other North American cities. Urban planning in Vancouver is characterized by high-rise residential and mixed-use development in urban centres, as an alternative to sprawl.[54] This has been credited[by whom?] in contributing to the city’s high rankings in livability.
This approach originated in the late 1950s, when city planners began to encourage the building of high-rise residential towers in Vancouver’s West End,[55] subject to strict requirements for setbacks and open space to protect sight lines and preserve green space. The success of these dense but livable neighbourhoods led to the redevelopment of urban industrial sites, such as North False Creek and Coal Harbour, beginning in the mid-1980s. The result is a compact urban core that has gained international recognition for its “high amenity and ‘livable’ development.”[56] More recently, the city has been debating “ecodensity”—ways in which “density, design, and land use can contribute to environmental sustainability, affordability, and livability.”[57]
Ontario
Metropolitan Toronto
listen)) is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of 588,276.09 square kilometres (227,100 sq mi) and a population of 1,034,974 (according to 2009 estimates), mostly living in the southern half of the province. Of these, 233,923 live in the province’s largest city, Saskatoon, while 194,971 live in the provincial capital, Regina. Other major cities, in order of size, are Prince Albert, Moose Jaw, Yorkton, Swift Current and North Battleford. The province’s name comes from the Saskatchewan River, whose name comes from its Cree designation: kisiskāciwani-sīpiy, meaning “swift flowing river”.[4]
