🇨🇦 Canada · West and the Canadian Rockies
Vancouver is one of those cities that has it all: the sea, the mountains and an ancient forest, all at once and a step from downtown. Looking out on the Pacific at the western end of Canada, surrounded by water and with the snowy peaks of the Coast Mountains as a permanent backdrop, it is a modern, cosmopolitan metropolis where you can ski in the morning and walk on the beach in the afternoon. It is no accident that it appears, year after year, among the most liveable cities on the planet.
Its great jewel is Stanley Park, one of the largest and most beautiful urban parks in the world: a peninsula covered in a forest of giant conifers, edged by the Seawall, a coastal path that invites you to walk or cycle with views of the sea, the boats and the mountains. Add to that the historic charm of Gastown with its steam clock, the artistic and culinary buzz of Granville Island, a strong Asian heritage (one of the biggest Chinatowns in Canada), city beaches and the chance to be on a mountain top within minutes. Vancouver lives facing nature.
This guide covers the essentials of Vancouver with a practical, warm eye: how to enjoy Stanley Park, walk Gastown and Granville Island, go up the mountains around the city, get around on its excellent transport and use it as a base for Whistler, Victoria and wild British Columbia. It is the perfect gateway to western Canada and a destination you fall for because of its mix of city and nature.
The Vancouver region was inhabited for thousands of years by the Coast Salish peoples, especially the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, who lived off the abundance of the sea and the forest. The area in fact sits on the traditional unceded territories of these peoples. The first Europeans arrived in the late 18th century: the British navigator George Vancouver explored the coast in 1792 (and gave his name to the future city), though Spanish and British ships had already sailed these waters. The modern settlement was born around the sawmill and the timber trade in the second half of the 19th century. A legendary character, 'Gassy Jack' Deighton, opened a bar for the sawmill workers in 1867, and around it grew the hamlet of Gastown, the seed of the city. The great push came with the railway: in 1886 the city of Vancouver was officially founded, chosen as the terminus of the Canadian Pacific transcontinental railway, which connected it to the rest of the country and set off its growth. That same year, a great fire destroyed almost all of it, but it was rebuilt quickly. As a Pacific port and the end of the line, Vancouver grew at breakneck speed, drawing immigrants from Europe and, above all, from Asia (China, Japan, India), who gave it its strong multicultural and Asian character. In the 20th century it consolidated its position as a great port and the economic centre of the west. Events like Expo 86 and the 2010 Winter Olympics put it on the world stage. Today it is a prosperous, green and diverse metropolis, famous for its quality of life. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The province of the Canadian Pacific: land of the Haida and Coast Salish coastal peoples, of the Fraser gold rush and the railway, of temperate rainforests, Rocky Mountains and cities such as Vancouver and Victoria.
Read the history of British Columbia →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before Vancouver existed, the region around Burrard Inlet and the mouth of the Fraser River was inhabited for thousands of years by the Indigenous peoples of the Coast Salish. The Musqueam, Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh) and Tsleil-Waututh nations were, and still are, the peoples of these lands, with a rich culture sustained by the extraordinary abundance of their surroundings: the sea and rivers full of salmon, shellfish and whales; the red cedar forests, from which they carved canoes, longhouses and the famous totem poles; and a temperate climate that made life easier than in the interior of the continent.
These peoples developed complex societies, with permanent villages, chiefdoms, trade and a rich ceremonial life, symbolized by the potlatch, a ceremony of redistributing goods and social standing. Their art — the totem poles, the masks, the carvings — is among the most recognizable in the world and is still alive today. The Pacific Northwest coast was one of the few regions in the world where hunter-gatherer peoples reached such a degree of social complexity, thanks to the richness of the environment.
It is important to underline that the city of Vancouver sits on the traditional unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, a fact the city and its institutions acknowledge ever more explicitly. The presence and culture of the First Nations remain a fundamental part of the region's identity, visible in places such as the Stanley Park totem poles or the UBC Museum of Anthropology.
The first Europeans to reach this Pacific coast came in the late 18th century, amid the exploration and the contest for control of the northwest coast of America between powers such as Spain, Great Britain and Russia. Spanish navigators, such as José María Narváez, explored these waters around 1791, and several place names in the region still have Spanish origins today.
But the name that stuck to the future city was that of the British navigator George Vancouver, a Royal Navy officer who had served under Captain James Cook. In 1792, during a long survey expedition of the northwest coast, Vancouver explored and charted Burrard Inlet and its surroundings. Curiously, he ran into the Spanish explorers in these waters, in a cordial meeting, since the two powers were then settling their differences over control of the region. The city that would be born almost a century later would take his surname.
Over the following decades, the region remained, above all, the territory of Indigenous peoples and an area of the fur trade. The Hudson's Bay Company and other companies set up trading posts in the area. It was not until the middle of the 19th century, with the Fraser River gold rush (1858) that drew thousands of prospectors, that European settlement of British Columbia really accelerated, laying the ground for the rise of the region's cities.
The seed of modern Vancouver came out of the timber industry. In the middle of the 19th century, the abundance of giant conifer forests around Burrard Inlet attracted the emerging logging industry, which set up sawmills in the area. Those sawmills needed workers, and the workers needed, among other things, somewhere to drink.
In 1867, a colourful character named John Deighton, nicknamed 'Gassy Jack' (roughly 'talkative Jack', for how much he talked), arrived by boat and, with the help of the workers from the nearby sawmill — whom he promised whisky — put up a saloon beside the inlet in a matter of hours. Around that bar a small hamlet of wooden houses grew, soon popularly known as Gastown ('Gassy's town'). That improvised settlement of loggers, sailors and adventurers was the original nucleus of what would become Vancouver.
The little settlement, officially named Granville in 1870, grew modestly around the timber and port trade. It was a rough frontier place, but its position beside a magnificent deep-water natural harbour destined it for something bigger. The fate of Granville/Gastown would change radically once the route of the transcontinental railway that would link Canada from ocean to ocean was decided.
The event that turned modest Granville into a great city was the railway. In the 1880s, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was completing the transcontinental line that would link eastern Canada with the Pacific coast, a colossal undertaking and a key one for the unity of the young country. It was decided to extend the line to Burrard Inlet and put the railway's western terminus there, drawn by its excellent deep-water natural harbour, ideal for trade with Asia.
That choice changed everything. In 1886, the settlement was officially incorporated as a city and, at the suggestion of William Van Horne, a senior CPR executive, it was given the name Vancouver, in honour of the navigator. The city was born with a commercial and port future guaranteed by the railway.
But the start was traumatic: a few weeks after its founding, in June 1886, a great fire (the Great Vancouver Fire) swept through the newborn wooden city in a matter of minutes, destroying almost all of it. The rebuilding, however, was immediate and feverish: with the railway on its way and the future assured, Vancouver rose again quickly, this time with sturdier buildings. When the first transcontinental train reached Vancouver in 1887, the city was already being reborn, ready to become Canada's great Pacific gateway. The growth that followed was breathtaking.
As the railway terminus and a deep-water Pacific port, Vancouver grew extraordinarily fast in the late 19th century and through the 20th, becoming the great city and the main port of western Canada. Timber, prairie grain, minerals and, increasingly, trade with Asia passed across its docks, while the city expanded and modernized.
A defining feature of Vancouver from its origins was Asian immigration. Thousands of Chinese workers arrived during the construction of the railway, doing the hardest and most dangerous work in deeply unjust conditions. Many settled and gave rise to Vancouver's Chinatown, one of the largest in North America. Japanese, Indian (mostly Sikh) and other Asian immigrants also arrived, alongside Europeans.
This history had its dark chapters: the Asian community suffered discriminatory laws, special taxes (such as the head tax on the Chinese), immigration exclusion and episodes of racist violence. During the Second World War, Canadians of Japanese origin were stripped of their property and interned, one of the most shameful pages in the country's history. Despite all this, the Asian presence took hold and, over time, became one of the great pillars of Vancouver's multicultural identity. Today the city has one of the highest proportions of people of Asian origin in all of North America, which shows in its food, its culture and its cosmopolitan character.
The Vancouver of the 21st century is a prosperous, green, diverse metropolis, consistently ranked among the most liveable cities on the planet. Its privileged setting between the sea and the mountains, its temperate climate, its quality of life, its safety and its multicultural character have made it a magnet for immigrants from all over the world (especially from Asia) and a first-rate tourist destination.
Several events put it on the world stage over recent decades: the 1986 World Exposition (Expo 86), which transformed its waterfront and left icons such as Canada Place; and, above all, the 2010 Winter Olympics, shared with nearby Whistler, which showed the world its spectacular natural setting. The city is also an important centre for the film and television industry (nicknamed 'Hollywood North' for the many productions shot there), for technology and for finance.
Not everything is perfect: Vancouver faces serious challenges, such as one of the worst housing crises in North America (it is among the most expensive cities on the continent) and the social problems concentrated in the Downtown Eastside. But its essence is still that of a city that lives facing nature, where the forest, the sea and the mountains are always present. For the traveller, Vancouver offers that uncommon combination of a big cosmopolitan city and adventure on the doorstep: the chance to walk through an ancient forest, ski on a mountain, sail between islands and eat the best Asian food, all in one day. It is the gateway to spectacular western Canada.