Vancouver

The Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, all Coast Salish, have lived here for thousands of years, with villages in what are now Stanley Park, False Creek, Kitsilano, Point Grey and near the mouth of the Fraser River. The first European settlement within today's city was a farm on the Fraser in 1862. In 1867 Edward Stamp's Hastings Mill began cutting timber on Burrard Inlet, and the settlement that grew around the tavern of "Gassy Jack" beside it became known as Gastown.

In 1884 the site, with its natural harbour, was chosen as the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The city was incorporated in April 1886 and named after George Vancouver; that June the Great Vancouver Fire razed it, and it was quickly rebuilt. From about 1,000 people in 1881 it grew to more than 100,000 by 1911, living first on logging and then on the port, which was its largest economic sector by the 1930s. During the Second World War the city's Japanese Canadians were interned or deported.

Expo 86 drew more than 20 million visitors and left Canada Place and the SkyTrain behind it; the Expo lands on False Creek and old industrial Yaletown filled with apartment towers. Immigration from Hong Kong and later mainland China reshaped the city, and in 2010 Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics with Whistler. Since 2002 the city has followed a harm-reduction approach to drug use, including Insite, at the time North America's only legal supervised injection site. In 2026 BC Place hosted seven matches of the FIFA World Cup.

Vancouver is one of the most diverse cities in Canada. In the 2021 census 42 per cent of residents were born abroad, mainland China, the Philippines and Hong Kong being the main countries of origin, and only about half grew up speaking English; Cantonese is the next most common mother tongue. Chinese-language daily newspapers serve the city, and Vancouver's Hong Kong community has produced several Cantopop stars. The Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh had villages across what is now the city, and Squamish-language road signs along the Sea-to-Sky Highway carry the Squamish name for Vancouver.

The city is a major film and television centre, nicknamed "Hollywood North", and its cultural year is built around festivals: jazz in summer, the Pride parade, the largest in Western Canada, the Fringe on Granville Island and the Vancouver International Film Festival each autumn. Granville Island and the theatres of the downtown core are the centres of live performance.

Sport and the outdoors shape local identity. The Canucks play ice hockey at Rogers Arena, the BC Lions and the Whitecaps football at BC Place, and on a fine day much of the city is out on the seawall, on the beaches or on the North Shore trails. Vancouverites tend to be casual, environmentally minded and polite, and the protection of parks, rapid transit rather than freeways and harm reduction have broad support across the political spectrum.

About 662,000 people lived in the city at the 2021 census, and about 2.6 million in Greater Vancouver, Canada's third-largest metropolitan area. The city is the most densely populated in the country, packed into a small area of towers downtown and in the West End, with older houses and low-rise streets across the East and West sides.

The Port of Vancouver is Canada's largest and busiest, and the city has added film and television, software, video games, animation and tourism to its older timber and shipping trades. Housing is the defining issue: Vancouver is one of the most expensive cities in Canada and in the world for housing. Homelessness reached its highest recorded level in a 2019 count, and the Downtown Eastside, a few blocks from Gastown, remains the centre of the city's poverty and drug crisis.

The rhythm of the day is relaxed. Car ownership and commuting distances have fallen since the 1990s as more people take the SkyTrain, buses or bicycles, and evenings and weekends are spent on the seawall, at the beaches or up the local mountains. Ken Sim was elected mayor in the 2022 municipal election.

Vancouver's food rests on the Pacific and on Asia. Salmon and crab are British Columbia's signature seafood, and the large Cantonese-speaking community, in the city and in neighbouring Richmond, supports Cantonese cooking such as dim sum. Sushi is everywhere, and the BC roll, an inside-out roll with barbecued salmon, is a local speciality. The Vancouver-based Japanese chef Hidekazu Tojo created it in 1974, using salmon skin in place of the traditional eel, which was hard to obtain on the West Coast.

The city's own street food is the Japadog, a hot dog dressed with Japanese-style toppings such as okonomiyaki, yakisoba or teriyaki, sold from street stands and restaurants. Granville Island's public market sells fish, produce and baked goods, and Commercial Drive mixes European-style cafés with ethnic and vegetarian restaurants. Kitsilano's West 4th Avenue and West Broadway are known for their shops, restaurants and organic food markets.

Drink is local too: brewing is part of Mount Pleasant's mix, and wine lists draw on the Okanagan valley, some four to five hours' drive inland.