Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is a great place to visit, not once but twice and many more anytime of the year – winter, spring, summer, or fall. With its snow-capped mountain peaks towering the northern horizon and the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean together with the green wilderness looming on the city’s doorstep, the breath-taking city is also ranked in the top ten (10) most beautiful cities of the world along with Paris, New York, London, Venice, Barcelona, San Francisco, Rome, and Sydney. The city is also consistently named as one of the typo five (5) world-wide cities for livability and for quality of life. Vancouver has been ranked in 2019 as having the 3rd highest quality of living of any city on the planet. It ranks 4th as the most expensive real estate market globally and as most expensive city to live in Canada.
However, strange as it seems, everyone, not only in Canada but world-wide, wants to have a part of Vancouver just like anyone in Winnipeg or at any region of the country who is a bit fed up with the cold (the city is one of Canada’s warmest cities in the winter but also one of the wettest and on average snow falls in Vancouver nine days a year and doesn’t stay on the ground for long), or wealthy migrants/investors from Shanghai and Hong Kong or movie-makers from the United States particularly from Los Angeles.
With the highest population density in Canada, the Greater Vancouver area has approximately two and a half million people, ethnically and linguistically diverse, with about 631,000 in the main metropolis.
The city takes its name from Capt. George Vancouver, a British officer of the Royal Navy, who explored North America’s Pacific regions. The name Vancouver originates from the Dutch word “van coevorden” denoting somebody from the town of Coevorden, Netherlands where the explorer’s ancestors came from.
Vancouver was originally named Gastown which started as the original settlement growing around the site of a makeshift tavern (salon) owned by proprietor Jack Deighton becoming the first and oldest neighbourhood of Vancouver, now a national historic place of interest in downtown Vancouver. A statute of John Deighton now stands at the city’s Gastown area at the intersection of Carrall and Water Streets. The original site of the tavern is marked by the Gastown steam clock, also known as Gastown’s Whistling Clock, made by Canadian clockmaker Raymond Saunders., Built in 1977 the clock while relying on steam to wind its mechanisms and also having an electric motor, whistles and shoots steams at the top every hour and announces quarter hours with the chimes of the Westminster Quarter that is also used by London’s Big Ben.
We’ll see you later at the top sights of Vancouver including Stanley Park, Capilano Suspension Bridge, Prospect Point. Granville Island, Grouse Mountain and Queen Elizabeth Park Gardens.
