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Vancouver, Canada
Vancouver is a coastal city and major seaport located in the Lower Mainland of southwestern British Columbia, Canada. It is the largest city in British Columbia and in the Pacific Northwest region. It is bounded by the Strait of Georgia, Burrard Inlet, the Fraser River, the Coast Mountains, and the city of Burnaby. Vancouver is named after Captain George Vancouver, a British explorer who is best known for his exploration of North America.
The population of the city of Vancouver is 611,869 and the population of Metro Vancouver is 2,249,725 (2007 estimate). Vancouver is also part of the slightly larger Lower Mainland metropolitan area which comprises a total population of 2,524,113. This makes it the largest metropolitan area in Western Canada and the third largest in the country. Vancouver is ethnically diverse, with 52% of city residents and 43% of Metro residents having a first language other than English.
 BC Place from False Creek
Vancouver was first settled in the 1860s as a result of immigration caused by the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, particularly from the United States, although many immigrants did not remain after the rush. The city developed rapidly from a small lumber mill town into a metropolitan centre following the arrival of the transcontinental railway in 1887. The Port of Vancouver became internationally significant after the completion of the Panama Canal, which reduced freight rates in the 1920s and made it viable to ship export-bound prairie grain west through Vancouver. It has since become the busiest seaport in Canada, and exports more cargo than any other port in North America.
The economy of Vancouver has traditionally relied on British Columbia's resource sectors: forestry, mining, fishing and agriculture. It has diversified over time, however, and Vancouver today has a vibrant service industry, a growing tourism industry, and it has become the third-largest film production centre in North America after Los Angeles and New York City, earning it the nickname Hollywood North. Vancouver has had an expansion in high-tech industries, most notably video game development.
Vancouver is consistently ranked one of the three most livable cities in the world. According to a 2007 report by Mercer Human Resource Consulting for example, Vancouver tied with Vienna as having the third highest quality of living in the world, after Zürich and Geneva. In 2007, Vancouver was ranked Canada's second most expensive city to live after Toronto and the 89th most expensive globally. However, Vancouver was also ranked as the 10th cleanest city in the world.
The 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in Vancouver and nearby Whistler.
History
 Burrard Bridge
The first European to explore the coastline of present-day Point Grey and part of Burrard Inlet was José María Narváez of Spain, in 1791. Captain George Vancouver explored the inner harbor of Burrard Inlet in 1792 and gave various places British names.
The explorer and North West Company trader Simon Fraser and his crew were the first Europeans known to have set foot on the site of the present-day city. In 1808, they traveled from the east, down the Fraser River perhaps as far as Point Grey, near the University of British Columbia.
The Cariboo Gold Rush of 1861 brought 25,000 men, mainly from California, to the mouth of the Fraser River and what would become Vancouver. The first European settlement was established in 1862. Hastings Mill, a sawmill established by Captain Edward Stamp became the nucleus around which Vancouver was 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.
Vancouver is among British Columbia's youngest cities. The city was incorporated on 6 April 1886, the same year that the first transcontinental train arrived. The name, honoring George Vancouver, was chosen by CPR president William Van Horne. From a settlement of 1,000 people in 1881, Vancouver's population grew to over 20,000 by the turn of the century and 100,000 by 1911.
The economy of early Vancouver was dominated by large companies such as the CPR, which had the capital needed for the rapid development of the new city. Some manufacturing did develop, but the resource sector was the backbone of Vancouver's economy, initially with logging, and later with exports moved through the seaport, where commercial traffic constituted the largest economic sector in Vancouver by the 1930s.
 Stanley Park, with the Coal Harbour
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. Alcohol prohibition began in the First World War and lasted until 1921, when the provincial government established its control over alcohol sales, which still persists today.
Amalgamation with Point Grey and South Vancouver gave the city its final contours not long before taking its place as 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.
Demographics
 Looking east from the Granville Bridge
Vancouver has been called a "city of neighborhoods", each with a distinct character and ethnic mix. People of English, Scottish, and Irish origins were historically the largest ethnic groups in the city, and elements of British society and culture are still highly visible in some areas, particularly South Granville and Kerrisdale. The Chinese are by far the largest visible ethnic group in the city, and Vancouver has one of the most diverse Chinese-speaking communities, with several Chinese dialects being represented, including Cantonese and Mandarin. Bilingual street signs can be seen in various neighborhoods, including Chinatown and the Punjabi Market.
Vancouver has a substantial gay community, and British Columbia was the second Canadian jurisdiction to legalize same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, shortly after Ontario. The downtown area around Davie Street is home to most of the city's gay clubs and bars and is known as Davie Village. Every year Vancouver holds one of the country's largest gay pride parades.
Economy
With its location on the Pacific Rim and at the western terminus of Canada's transcontinental highway and rail routes, Vancouver is one of the nation's largest industrial centers.
The Port of Vancouver, Canada's largest and most diversified does more than C$43 billion in trade with over 90 countries annually. Port activities generate $4 billion in gross domestic product and $8.9 billion in economic output. Vancouver is also the headquarters of forest product and mining companies. In recent years, Vancouver has become an increasingly important centre for software development, biotechnology and a vibrant film industry.
 Vancouver Public Libary Atrium
The city's scenic location makes it a major tourist destination. Visitors come for the city's gardens, Stanley Park, Queen Elizabeth Park, and the mountains, ocean, forest and parklands surrounding the city. The numerous beaches, parks, waterfronts, and mountain backdrop, combined with its cultural and multi-ethnic character, all contribute to its unique appeal and style for tourists. Over a million people annually pass through Vancouver en route to a cruise ship vacation, usually to Alaska.
The city's popularity comes with a price. Vancouver can be an expensive city, with the highest housing prices in Canada. Several 2006 studies rank Vancouver as having the least affordable housing in Canada, ranking 13th least affordable in the world, up from 15th in 2005. The city has adopted various strategies to reduce housing costs, including cooperative housing, legalized secondary suites, increased density and smart growth. The average two-storey home in Vancouver sells for $757,750, compared with $467,742 in Toronto and $322,853 in Calgary, the next most expensive major cities in Canada.
A major and ongoing downtown condominium construction boom began in the late 1990s, financed in large part by a huge flow of capital from Hong Kong immigrants prior to the 1997 hand-over to China. High-rise residential developments from this period now dominate the Yaletown and Coal Harbour districts of the downtown peninsula, and also cluster around some of the SkyTrain stations on the east side of the city.
The city has been selected to co-host the 2010 Winter Olympics, which is influencing economic development. Concern has been expressed that Vancouver's increasing homelessness problem may be exacerbated by the Olympics because owners of single room occupancy hotels, which house many of the city's lowest income residents, have begun converting their properties in order to attract higher income residents and tourists.
Transportation
Air
Vancouver International Airport (IATA: YVR, ICAO: CYVR) is located on Sea Island in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, about 15 kilometres from downtown Vancouver. It is the second busiest airport in Canada by aircraft movements, behind Toronto Pearson International Airport, with non-stop flights daily to Asia, Europe, Oceania, the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and other airports within Canada.
The airport has won several notable international "best airport" awards, and it won the Skytrax "Best North American Airport" award in 2007. YVR also retains the distinction of "Best Canadian Airport" in the regional results. The airport is the second busiest Canadian airport with 17.5 million passengers and 326,026 movements in 2007. It is an Air Canada hub as well as a focus city for WestJet and a hub for Air Transat.
The Vancouver International Airport is one of eight Canadian Airports that have U.S. border preclearance facilities.
 Canada Place with Burrard Inlet
Ocean
The Port of Vancouver is the largest port in Canada, the largest in the Pacific Northwest, and the largest port on the West Coast of North America by metric tons of total cargo with 76.5 million metric tons. In terms of container traffic measured in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), the port ranks as the largest port in Canada, the largest in the Pacific Northwest, the fourth largest port on the West Coast of North America, and fifth largest in North America overall.
The Port of Vancouver trades $43 billion in goods with more than 90 trading economies annually. The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is the corporation responsible for management of the port, which, in addition to the city of Vancouver, includes all of Burrard Inlet and Roberts Bank Superport in Delta.
Road
City councils, as part of a long term plan, prohibited the construction of freeways in the 1980s. The only major freeway within city limits is Highway 1, which passes through the north-eastern corner of the city.
South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority (TransLink), the Metro Vancouver transportation authority, is responsible for roads and public transportation within the region. It provides a bus service, B-Line Rapid Bus Service, a foot passenger and bicycle ferry service, a two-line automated light rail service called SkyTrain, and West Coast Express commuter rail.
For more information on this city in Western Canada visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver
Source: wikipedia.com
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