Things to do
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Capilano Suspension Bridge
Spanning a canyon in North Vancouver, a footbridge of some one hundred and forty metres that sways underfoot, seventy metres above the Capilano river. A hemp and cedar crossing went up here in 1889; the present steel-cabled version dates from the nineteen fifties. Walkways now run through the treetops and along a granite cliff face. Coach parties arrive mid-morning, and a free shuttle serves downtown hotels in season.
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Gastown
Named for a saloon keeper called Gassy Jack, the district holds the city's earliest brick and cast-iron warehouses, put up after the fire of 1886 and given over now to design shops and restaurants. A steam clock on Water Street whistles each quarter hour and draws a permanent knot of cameras. The lanes behind are quieter. Hastings Street to the east is the sharp edge of the city's drug crisis.
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Granville Island
Sawmills and a cement works filled this sandbar under the Granville Street Bridge until the nineteen seventies, when the sheds were handed over to a public market, theatres and craft studios. The cement plant still runs beside them. A small passenger ferry crosses from the foot of Hornby Street in minutes. The market is packed by late morning at weekends, and parking on the island defeats most drivers.
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Grouse Mountain
Above North Vancouver a gondola climbs to a ski area at around twelve hundred metres, with the city, the delta and the Gulf Islands laid out below. Lifts run year round: skiing and skating in winter, a lumberjack show and two orphaned grizzlies in summer. Fit walkers ignore the gondola and take the Grouse Grind, a staircase of a trail that is uphill only and closed by snow for half the year.
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Kitsilano Beach
Across English Bay from downtown, a sand beach backed by lawns, volleyball courts and a heated saltwater pool that opens roughly from May to September and is long enough for proper lengths. Water off the sand stays cold all summer. Kits, as the district is known, lines up cafes and swimwear shops along Fourth Avenue behind. Sunset over the North Shore mountains fills the log-strewn foreshore.
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Lynn Canyon Park
A free suspension bridge crosses Lynn Creek here, fifty metres above the water in second-growth forest in North Vancouver, and has done since 1912. Trails drop to green swimming holes and climb to Twin Falls; an ecology centre by the car park explains the watershed. Rock beside the pools is slick and the current stronger than it looks, and swimmers have drowned. Buses reach the gate from Lonsdale Quay.
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Museum of Anthropology at UBC
Arthur Erickson's concrete post-and-beam hall on the Point Grey cliffs, built in the nineteen seventies to stand Northwest Coast house posts and totem poles at full height against a glass wall and the sea. Bill Reid's carving of the raven releasing the first men sits in a side rotunda. A seismic rebuild shut the place for over a year. The campus is a long bus ride from downtown.
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Queen Elizabeth Park
Two quarries on the top of Little Mountain, worked for road stone and then planted as sunken gardens, on the highest ground inside the city. The lawns look north over downtown to the peaks behind it, which is why wedding parties queue for the spot. A triodetic dome at the summit, the Bloedel Conservatory, keeps free-flying tropical birds. Roses and an arboretum fill the slopes; the walk up is steep.
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Science World
The silver geodesic dome at the head of False Creek went up as a world fair pavilion in 1986 and became a science centre once the fair closed. Galleries of hands-on exhibits are pitched mainly at children, with an outdoor water and wind park and a domed cinema. The seawall passes the door and the SkyTrain stops beside it. Weekday afternoons in term time are the calmest hours to visit with children.
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Stanley Park
A forested peninsula of some four hundred hectares, reached on foot from the end of Georgia Street, made a park in 1888 and never logged since. The seawall path rings it, a flat circuit of about nine kilometres with walkers going one way and cyclists the other. Cedar and hemlock fill the interior; totem poles and welcome figures face the harbour at Brockton Point.
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Vancouver Aquarium
Inside Stanley Park, a rescue and research aquarium open since the mid-nineteen fifties, holding sea otters, jellies, a sloth, and tanks of Pacific and Amazon species. Whales and dolphins are no longer displayed, a change fought over for years and settled by a federal law. The rescue centre treats stranded seal pups through spring. Two hours covers the galleries, which are dim and easy with a pushchair.
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VanDusen Botanical Garden
Twenty-two hectares of collection garden on the site of a golf course, opened in the mid-nineteen seventies and planted by region: a rhododendron walk, a Mediterranean slope, a Korean pavilion, a lake with herons. A cedar hedge maze near the entrance is the one thing children head for. Magnolias and rhododendrons peak in spring. Strings of lights fill the paths through December evenings.