Vancouver is situated in British Columbia, Canada; with its location near the mouth of the Fraser River and on the waterways of the Strait of Georgia, Howe Sound, Burrard Inlet, and their tributaries. Vancouver has, for thousands of years, been a place of meeting, trade, and settlement.
The Beginning:
The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast are the original inhabitants of what is now known as Vancouver.
The presence of people in what is now called the Lower Mainland of British Columbia dates from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago when the glaciers of the last ice age began to disappear. The area, known to the First Nations as S'ólh Téméxw, shows archeological evidence of a seasonal encampment ("the Glenrose Cannery site") near the mouth of the Fraser River.
The first Europeans to explore the area were Spanish Captain José María Narváez in 1791, and British naval Captain George Vancouver in 1792. The area was not settled by Europeans until almost a century later, in 1862. The city grew rapidly following completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) transcontinental line from Eastern Canada, allowing for continuous rail service in the late 1880s. Chinese settlers were increasingly a presence in the area following completion of the CPR. Subsequent waves of immigration were initially of Europeans moving west, and later, with the advent of global air travel, from Asia and many other parts of the world.
A party of 40 men led by chief factor James McMillan reached what is now the Langley area December 16, 1824. They approached from the west, entering the Nicomekl River from its mouth on Boundary Bay, paddling through what is now Surrey, then portaging to the Salmon River. They entered the Fraser River about 50 kilometres from its mouth, then carried on north into the interior. But McMillan noted the location and chose a prominent tree, nicknamed the Hudson's Bay Tree, to remind him of it. Two-and-a-half years later, aboard the Cadboro, he was back by the tree with 25 men and instructions to build a fort in the area. It would be called Fort Langley, after Thomas Langley, a Hudson Bay Company director. It was July 27, 1827.
That date is as good as any to mark the beginning of Greater Vancouver.
In 1951 the population stood at 562,000; by 1971 it reached 1,000,000. The Park Royal Shopping Centre, in West Vancouver, became the first in the city in 1950 and Empire Stadium, was built to host the 1954 British Empire Games. Vancouver became the western anchor of the new CBC national television network in 1958 and the western hub of the newly completed Trans-Canada Highway in 1962.
The Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal, was built in 1959 for passenger and vehicle ferry service to southern Vancouver Island and the nearby Roberts Bank Superport coal terminal was finished in the late sixties. A second, Second Narrow's Bridge was built in 1960 and the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, was completed in 1967.
The establishment of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in 1959 and of Simon Fraser University in 1965, enriched city cultural life. Canada's first purpose-built auto racing track, the Westwood Motorsport Park was built in nearby Coquitlam, that same year. The first McDonald's restaurant outside the United States was opened in Richmond in 1967.
Now a days Vancouver is famous for offering every kind of outdoor sport and adventure, from skiing and snow sports in the winter to kayaking and water sports in the summer, and hiking, camping, and biking year-round. Also fishing, scenic golf courses, and mountain hiking.
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