Squamish

The Squamish people have lived in the valley and around Howe Sound for thousands of years, with villages at the river mouth and up the valley. The name of the town comes from their language, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and the Stawamus Chief takes its name from a village at its foot. Captain George Vancouver sailed into Howe Sound in 1792, but settlement came slowly: a few farms at Brackendale and the mouth of the river in the late 19th century, reached only by boat from Vancouver.

Logging and the railway made the town. Boats and barges linked it with Vancouver; the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, later BC Rail, built its line north from Squamish in the 1910s, and the town was its southern terminus for decades until the link to North Vancouver was completed in 1956. A pulp mill opened at Woodfibre across the sound in 1912, a copper mine at Britannia Beach was for a time the largest in the British Empire, and sawmills, logging and the port kept the town working. The road to Vancouver opened in 1958 and was extended to Whistler in the 1960s.

The resource economy ran down in the early 2000s. The Britannia mine had already closed in 1974, the Interfor sawmill closed a few years before the pulp mill, the Woodfibre mill shut in 2006 and the BC Rail passenger service ended in 2002. In their place came the outdoors: climbers had been working the Chief's granite since the first ascent of the Grand Wall in 1961, windsurfers discovered the estuary winds, and the opening of the Sea to Sky Gondola in 2014 and the rebuilding of the highway for the 2010 Winter Olympics turned a logging town between Vancouver and Whistler into a destination and a fast-growing commuter town.

Squamish calls itself the Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada, and the claim is at least half true. The Chief is one of the world's best-known granite climbing areas, with routes of every grade on its walls and on the Smoke Bluffs, and the climbing community that formed around it in the 1960s and 1970s shaped the town's character. Mountain biking followed, with a dense network of trails above the valley; kiteboarders and windsurfers gather at the Spit when the afternoon wind rises; and the rivers draw paddlers and rafters. The mix gives the town a young, fit and informal population.

The logging past survives in Squamish Days, the loggers' sports festival held every August, and in the railway museum's locomotives. Art in the town leans towards the outdoors too — galleries in Brackendale, murals downtown and a growing number of festivals in summer.

The Squamish Nation is the valley's oldest community, with reserves in and around the town and a cultural presence that has grown more visible in recent years, from Squamish-language place names on the highway signs to displays on Squamish history at the gondola summit. Howe Sound itself was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2021 in recognition of its recovery from industrial pollution, and the return of humpback whales, orcas and sea lions to the sound is a point of local pride. Manners are easy-going; what locals expect is that visitors stay on the trails, pick up after themselves and do not feed or crowd the wildlife.

About 24,000 people live in the district, and its population grew by more than a fifth between 2016 and 2021. Many residents commute to Vancouver or Whistler, and the town has become a place where people priced out of the city buy a first house. The economy that once rested on logging, the mill and the port now runs on construction, tourism, outdoor businesses, a university campus and a growing number of people who work remotely; the port still handles some cargo, and a liquefied natural gas plant is being built at the old Woodfibre site across the sound.

Housing costs are a common worry, as across the corridor, with newcomers arriving to escape the higher cost of living in Vancouver and Whistler. Traffic on the Sea to Sky Highway is the other constant topic, especially on winter Sundays when the Whistler skiers drive home.

The rhythm is set by the weather and the light. Summer evenings are long and spent on the trails, the lakes or the patios; winter is dark and wet, and people head to Whistler for snow or to the eagle dykes with a thermos. Youth sports, the climbing and biking communities and the summer festivals are the social fixtures, and most people know the Chief's trails and the Alice Lake loop by heart.

Squamish eats the way an outdoor town does: large breakfasts, strong coffee and beer. The cafés and bakeries along Cleveland Avenue open early for climbers and bikers heading out, and the town's breweries fill in the late afternoon when they come back. Craft beer is the local product above all — the Howe Sound Brewpub on Cleveland Avenue is known for its in-house beers, and other local brewers have followed.

The restaurant scene has grown with the population and now runs from pub food, pizza and burgers to sushi, Thai, Indian and Mexican kitchens, with a handful of more ambitious places using coastal ingredients. Salmon, spot prawns and other seafood from the sound and the coast appear on many menus, as does Fraser Valley produce. Poutine and the Nanaimo bar, both Canadian standards, are everywhere.

Berries matter in summer, when wild berries grow along trails and roadsides, and the salmon runs on the Squamish and Cheakamus rivers, which feed the wintering eagles, are as much a part of the food calendar for the birds as for the people.