About Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Vancouver is a Canadian city in the province of British Columbia. It is the largest metropolitan centre in western Canada and the third largest in the country. Vancouver is one of the cities of the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) and of the larger geographic region commonly known as the Lower Mainland of B.C. The Port of Vancouver is significant on a world scale, and Vancouver is the third largest film production centre for US-based productions in North America after Hollywood and New York.

Vancouver's population is estimated to be 602,231 (2012) and that of the metropolitan area 2,186,965 (2001 census). Some predict that by 2020, the population of the metropolitan area will be 2.6 million. A resident of Vancouver is called a "Vancouverite." The current mayor of Vancouveris Sam Sullivan. In 2006, Vancouver has been ranked the 56th most expensive city to live among 144 major cities in the world, and the 2nd most expensive in Canada (below Toronto).

Vancouver will be the host city for the 2010 Winter Olympics, the 2007 Memorial Cup and the 2009 World Police and Fire Games. Swangard Stadium, just across the city line in Burnaby, will host some games for the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup.

Vancouver British Columbia History

Archeological records indicate the presence of Aboriginal peoples in the Vancouver area for at least 3,000 years. The traces of several settlements around Vancouver, indicate a food-gathering people with a complex social system.

The arrival of ships captained by Jose Maria Narvaez of Spain in 1791 and George Vancouver of Britain the following year, heralded great change for the lives of the First Nations. The first European settlement was established in 1862 at McLeery's Farm on the Fraser River, just east of the ancient village of Musqueam in what is now Marpole. A sawmill established at Moodyville (now North Vancouver) in 1863, began the city's long relationship with lumbering, and was quickly followed by mills on the south shore of the inlet owned by Captain Edward Stamp. Stamp, who had begun lumbering in the Port Alberni area, first attempted to run a mill at Brokcton Point, but difficult currents and reefs forced the relocation of the operation to a point near the foot of Dunlevy Street, known as Hastings Mill.

The settlement of Gastown grew up quickly around the original makeshift tavern established by “Gassy” Jack Deighton in 1867 on the edge of the Hastings Mill property. In 1870, the colonial government surveyed the settlement and laid out a townsite, renamed “Granville.” This site, with its natural harbour, was eventually selected as the terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway to the chagrin of Port Moody, New Westminster and Victoria, all of which had vied to be the railhead. The building of the railway was among the preconditions for British Columbia joining Confederation in 1871. The City of Vancouver was incorporated on April 6, 1886, the same year that the first transcontinental train arrived.

A fire on Sunday, June 13 of that year destroyed most of the city, which was quickly rebuilt. Due to the advent of the railway, the population increased rapidly from 5,000 in 1887 to 100,000 in 1900. During the first decade of the twentieth century, Vancouver's population tripled and along with it came a construction boom and, as Rudyard Kipling noted on his visit to the new city in 1887, the "curious institution...called 'real estate'" and the speculative buying and selling of property. By 1890 the beginnings of one of the world's first electric street railways were promoting growth along what are now the city's main arterials, powered by ample hydroelectricity generated from nearby rivers and lakes (first at Buntzen Lake, and soon after on the Stave River, and two "interurban" rail lines were built between Vancouver and New Westminster, with one of those lines - all owned and operated by the BC Electric Railway Company, extending through the Fraser Valley to Chilliwack. Another separately-owned interurban line, the Lulu Island Railway, ran via the Arbutus corridor to Richmond from a station near Granville and Drake Streets. The first pavement in British Columbia was the Stanley Park ring road, and was made out of the crushed shells of the large midden at the old native village of Qwhy-qwhy (Lumberman's Arch); it was paved for use by bicycles, which until the introduction of the autmobile later on were a popular form of transportation. Automobiles were scarce until after World War I due to the distance from the industrial centres of eastern North America.

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