British Columbia

The coast was one of the most densely settled parts of pre-contact North America. Salmon, cedar and the sea supported nations such as the Coast Salish, the Nuu-chah-nulth, the Kwakwaka'wakw, the Haida and the Tsimshian, with permanent plank-house villages, carved poles and the potlatch, a feast at which rank and rights were confirmed through the giving of gifts. The interior plateau was home to peoples including the Secwépemc and the Syilx.

James Cook landed at Nootka Sound in 1778, and a quarrel between Britain and Spain over the sound was settled in the 1790s, the decade in which George Vancouver charted the coast and Alexander Mackenzie reached it overland. The Hudson's Bay Company founded Fort Victoria in 1843; the Fraser River gold rush of 1858 brought thousands of miners and the creation of a mainland colony, united with Vancouver Island in 1866. British Columbia joined Confederation in 1871 on the promise of a railway, and the Canadian Pacific reached the coast in the 1880s, when Vancouver was founded at its terminus.

Apart from the Douglas Treaties on Vancouver Island and Treaty 8 in the northeast, most of the province was never ceded by treaty. The potlatch was banned from 1884 to 1951, and Indigenous children were removed from their families to residential schools such as the one at Kamloops, where in May 2021 the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc announced preliminary ground-penetrating radar findings suggesting possible unmarked graves, which only excavation could confirm. Courts have since recognised Aboriginal title, and the Nisga'a treaty took effect in 2000. Chinese labourers helped build the railway, after which Chinese immigrants faced a head tax, and Japanese Canadians were removed from the coast in 1942. Expo 86 and the 2010 Winter Olympics marked Vancouver's arrival as a Pacific city.

British Columbia sees itself as outward-looking, casual and oriented towards the Pacific. Vancouver and its suburbs have some of the largest Asian communities in North America: Chinese families have been here since the gold rush and Richmond is majority Asian, while Surrey's Punjabi Sikh community holds one of the largest Vaisakhi parades outside India each spring. Victoria keeps a more British tone of gardens, tea rooms and naval history.

Northwest Coast Indigenous art is central to the province's public image: the Haida sculptor Bill Reid's work at the Museum of Anthropology and Vancouver airport, and a revival of carving and potlatch ceremonies in coastal communities. Emily Carr, the painter of forests and abandoned villages, is Victoria's most famous daughter. Many nations use their own names again in public — the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh on whose territory Vancouver stands are named at civic events.

The culture is strongly outdoor: skiing on the local mountains after work, hiking, kayaking, cycling and a relaxed dress code even in offices. The film and television industry has made Vancouver one of North America's largest production centres, and the province has a reputation for environmental activism, from Greenpeace, founded in Vancouver, to the protests over logging in Clayoquot Sound in the 1990s.

About 5.7 million people live in British Columbia, roughly half of them in Metro Vancouver, a region of more than 2.5 million that includes Surrey, Burnaby and Richmond. Greater Victoria has around 400,000 people, and Kelowna is the largest interior city; Kamloops, Nanaimo and Prince George are the other regional centres, while much of the north is thinly settled.

The economy rests on the Port of Vancouver, Canada's largest, on forestry, mining and natural gas in the interior and the north, and increasingly on technology, film, tourism, and property. Housing is the defining issue: prices in Vancouver are among the highest in North America relative to incomes, and many families have moved to the Fraser Valley or the island. The province has been hit hard by toxic drug deaths, and the wildfire seasons of recent years have evacuated whole towns.

Life runs at an easy pace by big-city standards. Commuters use the SkyTrain and the SeaBus, weekends go to the mountains or the ferries, and coffee culture is strong. In smaller communities the rhythm follows the salmon, the harvest, the logging camps or the ski season.

British Columbia's cooking starts with the Pacific. Wild salmon — sockeye, chinook and coho — is eaten grilled, cedar-planked, hot-smoked or as candied salmon, the sweet cured strips sold at markets, and it remains central to First Nations food and ceremony. Spot prawns, Dungeness crab and halibut are staples of coastal menus.

Vancouver's Asian food scene is one of the strongest outside Asia: dim sum and Cantonese seafood in Richmond, the Richmond Night Market in summer, ramen and izakaya in the West End, and Punjabi cooking in Surrey. The BC roll, a sushi roll with barbecued salmon skin, was created in the city. The Nanaimo bar — a no-bake slice of crumb base, custard-flavoured butter icing and chocolate — takes its name from the Vancouver Island town.

The Okanagan grows cherries, peaches, apricots and apples, sold from roadside stands through the summer, and its wineries make Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, Merlot and icewine, with the Similkameen and Vancouver Island producing smaller amounts. Craft breweries and cideries fill every town, and bannock, a simple fried or baked bread, is served at Indigenous food stalls.

Vancouver packs sea and mountains into one view. Stanley Park's seawall circles a forested peninsula beside the downtown towers; Granville Island has a public market and artisans' studios; Gastown and Chinatown are the old quarters; and the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia holds a major collection of Northwest Coast poles. On the North Shore are the Capilano Suspension Bridge and Grouse Mountain. The Sea-to-Sky Highway follows Howe Sound past the granite Stawamus Chief at Squamish to Whistler, where the Peak 2 Peak Gondola links Whistler and Blackcomb mountains.

Across the Strait of Georgia, Victoria has the Inner Harbour, the Parliament Buildings, the Fairmont Empress hotel, the Royal BC Museum and, north of the city, the Butchart Gardens. Vancouver Island's interior holds old-growth Douglas fir at Cathedral Grove, and its west coast has Tofino, whale watching, surfing and the beaches of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve on Clayoquot Sound. The Inside Passage ferry from Port Hardy threads the fjords to Prince Rupert, the jumping-off point for Haida Gwaii and the carved poles of SGang Gwaay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Inland, the Okanagan's wineries line the lakeshore from Kelowna to Penticton and down to Osoyoos, in the dry, sagebrush country near the US border. Further east are the BC Rockies: Yoho, with Emerald Lake and the Burgess Shale fossils, Kootenay, and Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies.