The city has 600 thousand. inhabitants and it is the eighth largest city in Canada.
The port is the most important place and the heart of the whole agglomeration.
The town, surrounded on three sides by water, adjacent to the steep slopes of the mountains towering over 1,500 m above sea level,
To a town on April 6 1886. Was supposed serve as the main port on the Pacific coast of Canada, through locating at the western end of the Trans Railways. William Cornelius Van Horn gave the idea of ​​naming the city in honor of George Vancouver, a British explorer and researcher of the surrounding city in the region, which explored in the late eighteenth century.
Port gave not only the beginning of the city, but has always represented his wealth. Initially it exported it mainly Canadian grain (today it is probably the world’s largest grain port Cargo handling), wood, paper, cellulose, potassium salts. In the list of dominant goods at the port of Vancouver is sulfur and coal.
Due to the limited space in Vancouver pressed between the coast, the river and the mountains, planned to use every free space unoccupied by industrial installations. It is becoming increasingly popular model of the building, which occupy the lower floors of shops and offices, and higher living quarters. Such buildings that meet the latest standards, resulting, among others, on Broadway and 4th Avenue.
In Vancouver, there are eight major bridges, not counting the two suspension bridges Capilano and Lynn Canyon.