Vancouver has an endless supply of things to see and do. It doesn't matter what time of day it is or what time of year it is. It doesn't matter whether you want to be indoors or outdoors. Spending a lot of money or none at all. Seeing the sites or seeing a show. Whether it's bird watching or people watching, Vancouver is the place to do it all.

City Highlights You could easily spend your entire vacation inside the city limits and never run out of things to do. Just make sure you bring comfortable shoes and get plenty of sleep because this city has a lot to offer.
Take a stroll through Vancouver's beautiful Stanley Park, the largest city park in Canada. Hundreds of acres of lush green forest, pristine lakes and grassy meadows. Described by one local writer as a "thousand-acre therapeutic couch", it began as a military reserve established in the mid-1800s to guard the entrance to Vancouver harbour. At nine o'clock every evening, if you stop and listen, you may be able to hear the Nine O' Clock Gun being fired in Stanley Park. This gun, a loud old English sea cannon was placed in the park just over 100 years ago. Originally, it was fired off to remind local fisherman of fishing time limits. Now, it's used as a time signal and has become a Vancouver tradition.

Walk across the beautiful Lions Gate Bridge and stop midway for a bird's-eye view of Burrard Inlet and the North Shore mountains. The bridge was built and paid for by the Guinness Brewing Company in order to give people access to the North Shore and property owned by the Guiness family. The BC government now owns the bridge. For the Expo '86 World's Fair that was held in Vancouver, the Guinness family donated money to decoratively light the bridge in the evenings. The lights still adorn the bridge today and have become a romantic fixture of the Vancouver skyline.



High above the Lion's Gate Bridge, to the north, are two distinct mountain peaks, resembling a camel's back, overlooking Vancouver's harbour. These are The Lions, named as a remembrance of statues of two lions in London's Trafalgar Square.



Vancouver has the largest and busiest port in Canada and on North America's West Coast. Take a ride across Burrard Inlet on the SeaBus, and view the cargo ships up close.



A hundred years ago it was so quiet on Burrard Inlet you could holler across to call a ferry to come over and get you. Back then, the "ferry" was actually a rowboat.



Queen Elizabeth Park is Canada's first civic arboretum-a botanical garden devoted to trees.



The Marine Building is an art deco masterpiece located on the corner of Hastings and Burrard streets. It was the tallest building in the British Commonwealth a decade after it opened in 1930. Inside and out, delicate carvings and sculptures emphasize a marine and transportation theme in terra cotta, brass, stone and marble. If you are interested in renting office space, you can still get something small for less than $300 per month.



Check out the world's thinnest office building on the corner of Pender and Carrall streets in Chinatown. Built in 1913 and currently occupied by a regular operating business, the Sam Kee Building is only 1.8 metres (six feet) wide. Needless to say, they can't have too many employees working at the same time!



Vancouver is the most accessible city in the world according to the publisher of We're Accessible, a newsletter for travellers with disabilities. The city boasts over 14,000 sidewalk wheelchair ramps and extensive public transit (bus, Skytrain, SeaBus) designed to accommodate persons with disabilities.



Visit in the fall and you could join an army of volunteers who count Brackendale's bald eagle population each year. That's right, bald eagles. More bald eagles live in British Columbia than anywhere else in the world-over 3700 on last count. The Gastown area of Vancouver was named for a talkative Yorkshire-born saloon owner, John Deighton, nicknamed Gassy Jack. Gassy Jack showed up with a barrel of whisky on the south shore of Burrard Inlet, and told the mill workers there they could have all the whisky they could drink if they helped him build his saloon-which they did. It only took 24 hours.



You can hear the Gastown Steam Clock whistle every hour on the hour. It is the only one of its kind in the world.



The Vancouver International Wine Festival is one of the largest and most popular wine events in North America. Try one from British Columbia. BC wines are becoming renowned the world over--winning major awards at some of the most prestigious international wine competitions.



Granville Island is the place to spend a leisurely afternoon. Part farmers market, part artist studio and part magnet for the creative and flamboyant-it's one of the busiest spots in Vancouver.



Whistler Resort is a ski lover's paradise. The number one ski resort in North America is just a 2.5-hour drive from Vancouver. If you prefer to try another hill, the Vancouver area has more than 16 downhill ski resorts within a five-hour drive of the city limits. Some as close as 15 minutes-right over on the North Shore. Expo '86 changed Vancouver forever. Organisers estimated 12 to 15 million visitors would come to our fair city. They got 21.3 million. And they keep coming back year after year.


Bureau Report