Vancouver is a very green and multicultural city on the west coast of Canada, about 50 kilometres away from the United States, but about 3,500 kilometres away from Ottawa, the capital of Canada. It is a rainy city. People say that if it rains in Canada, it rains in Vancouver. Vancouver has water on three sides and is near the Rocky Mountains, which are east of Vancouver. Vancouver is in British Columbia (B.C.), which is the third-largest province after Quebec and Ontario. The capital city of British Columbia is not Vancouver but Victoria.

In 2010, the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games took place in Vancouver. Lots of people visited the city for the Games, but Vancouver is still a popular tourist destination. Some places most visitors go to are, for example, Christ Church Cathedral, Chinatown and Stanley Park. This large park north of downtown Vancouver offers a great number of activities for the whole family. Visitors can go jogging or inline skating, they can play tennis, basketball or golf and watch wildlife, for example. You can also have a picnic or a barbecue at the beach and, of course, go swimming. Lots of tourists also visit Kitsilano, or “Kits”, as the neighbourhood is usually called. It is an awesome place if you want to do sports at Kits beach, have dinner at one of the many restaurants or go shopping. At the Museum of Vancouver, which is in Kits too, you can learn more about the history of Vancouver and its indigenous communities. If history is your thing, you should also visit Gastown, the area where Vancouver was founded.

More than 630,000 people live in Vancouver. It is a “city for everyone”. This is one of the reasons why so many people from abroad and many indigenous people live in Vancouver. English isn’t the first language of 52% of the city’s population. However, 65% of the people usually speak English at home. One disadvantage of Vancouver is that living there has become extremely expensive, so a lot of people have recently moved away for economic reasons.