Vancouver - Cruise Stories

~Vancouver~

Vancouver is the largest city in British Columbia, Canada.

It is a coastal city and major seaport on the mainland of southwestern British Columbia.

The city is located between Burrard Bay (an arm of the Straits of Georgia) to the north and the Fraser River Delta to the south, opposite Vancouver Island.

The city covers a total area of 115 square kilometers (44 sq mi).

The highest point is 152 meters (501 ft) above sea level and the lowest point is sea level.

The first Europeans to explore the area were the Spanish captain José María Narvaez in 1791 and the British sea captain George Vancouver in 1792.

The city was named after George Vancouver. The surname “Vancouver” itself comes from the Dutch “Van Coevorden”, meaning someone from the town of Coevorden, Netherlands. The explorer’s ancestors came to England “from Coevorden”, hence the name that eventually became “Vacuver”.

This area was not settled by Europeans until 1862.

Thousands of miners, mostly from California, flooded the region in the 1860s, drawn by the gold rush in the Cariboo Mountains of the northeast.

Gastown is the original settlement that became the core of Vancouver’s creation. It is currently a National Historic Site and a neighborhood on the northwest end of the Downtown Eastside, adjacent to downtown Vancouver.

The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum located at 750 Hornby Street in Vancouver. It is a permanent collection of around 11,000 works of art, including more than 200 major works by Emily Carr, the Group of Seven, Jeff Wall, Harry Callahan and Marc Chagall.

The Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, commonly known as the Cathedral of the Holy Rosary, is a late 19th-century French Gothic Revival church that serves as the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver. The construction of the cathedral began in 1899 on the site of the former church of the same name. It was opened on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, 1900, consecrated a day later, and consecrated in 1953.

The Vancouver Aquarium is a public aquarium located in Stanley Park. In addition to being a major tourist attraction, the aquarium is a center for marine research, conservation, and marine animal rehabilitation.

Granville Island is a peninsula and shopping district. The peninsula was once an area of industrial production, but today it is a focal point for Vancouver’s tourism and entertainment. The area has received many accolades in recent years for its buildings and shopping experience.

A steam clock is a clock that is entirely or partially powered by a steam engine. There are only a few functioning steam clocks, most of which were designed and built by Canadian horologist Raymond Saunders for display in urban public spaces.

The first steam clock was built in 1977 at the corner of Cambie and Water Streets in the Gastown neighborhood of Vancouver.

It’s one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities in Canada according to that census; 52% of its inhabitants have a mother tongue other than English. 48.9% have neither English nor French as their mother tongue. Approximately 30% of the city’s residents are of Chinese descent.

Vancouver is consistently named one of the top five cities worldwide for livability and quality of life and has been recognized by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the first city ranked in the top ten most livable cities in the world for five consecutive years.

The city is a center of film and television production. Nicknamed Hollywood North, a distinction it shares with Toronto, the city has been used as a film location for nearly a century.

It’s one of Canada’s warmest cities in winter. The Winter Olympic Games were held in 2010.

Nonetheless, there are tons of exciting things to do in Vancouver.