British Columbia, Canada — Towns & Travel Guide

What is British Columbia known for?

British Columbia is Canada's westernmost province, pressed between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. Peaks give British Columbia its character. The Coast Mountains rise almost from the shoreline, cut by long fjords, while the drier interior fans out east toward the Alberta border.

Vancouver is the largest city and the busy Pacific port most travellers reach first. Victoria, the capital, sits across the water on Vancouver Island. Skiing at Whistler, wine in the Okanagan Valley, and the old-growth forest and Haida culture of Haida Gwaii pull people the rest of the way.

Where is British Columbia?

British Columbia fills the far west of Canada, the last province before the Pacific Ocean. It is a place of ranges. The Coast Mountains run the length of the shore, rising almost from the water and cut by narrow fjords that twist inland for miles, and the Canadian Rockies wall off the eastern side along the border with Alberta.

Between the two ranges the interior spreads out drier and more open, a country of plateaus, lakes and valleys rather than coast. Hundreds of islands lie off the shore. The largest is Vancouver Island, shielding the mainland behind the Strait of Georgia, and Haida Gwaii sits far to the north near the Alaska panhandle.

The Fraser River gathers most of this land. It rises in the Rocky Mountains, curls through the interior, and cuts a deep canyon before spilling out at the sea beside Vancouver on the Lower Mainland. Yukon and the Northwest Territories lie to the north, and Washington, Idaho and Montana across the southern line into the United States.

Alberta is the neighbour to the east, over the Rockies. It is Canada's third-largest province by area, and after Quebec and Ontario only those two are bigger. Most people live in the far south-western corner, around Vancouver, where the mountains finally reach the ocean.

What is British Columbia like?

British Columbia carries more First Nations than any other province in Canada, and their presence shapes how the place looks and feels. Totem poles say it plainly. Along the coast the Haida, the Squamish and dozens of other nations carved cedar into poles, canoes and masks, and that art still runs through the galleries and cultural centres of the province.

Vancouver's Museum of Anthropology holds one of the great collections of the northern coast, from ranked totem poles to Bill Reid's Raven and the First Men. Out on Haida Gwaii the old village poles are left to weather and return to the forest, as Haida custom asks. Food and the outdoors carry the rest of the character.

Wild Pacific salmon is the staple, smoked in the old coastal way or served raw in the city, and the vineyards of the Okanagan Valley have grown into a serious wine country, Nk'Mip Cellars among them run on Osoyoos land. Life bends toward the mountains and the water. People ski Whistler in winter, and kayak, hike and surf off Vancouver Island the rest of the year.

English is the everyday language across the province, shared with the rest of Canada. The wild edge is never far from the door.

What is the history of British Columbia?

Gold made British Columbia a colony. When word of the Fraser Canyon strike of 1858 reached London, Britain declared the mainland a Crown colony to hold the ground against the thousands of prospectors pouring up the Fraser River. The rush faded and left debt behind it.

In 1871 British Columbia joined the Canadian Confederation as its sixth province, on the promise of a railway that would run across the continent to the Pacific coast. That line, finished in the 1880s, tied the west to the rest of Canada for good.

What is the climate of British Columbia?

British Columbia has two climates split by a wall of rock. The coast is mild and wet. Air off the Pacific Ocean piles rain against the Coast Mountains, feeding the tall old-growth rainforest around Vancouver and the west of Vancouver Island, where grey drizzle stretches across much of the year.

East of the ranges the picture flips: shut off from the sea, the interior valleys of the Okanagan Valley run dry and sunny, hot in summer, and the far south around Osoyoos dries out into the only true desert in Canada. Up in the mountains the snow piles deep, which is why Whistler skis so well.

How do you get to British Columbia?

Most visitors land at Vancouver. Its airport is the main door into British Columbia and the busiest gateway on Canada's Pacific coast, with a fast rail link running downtown in under half an hour. Overland, the Trans-Canada Highway climbs in from Alberta over the Rockies, and border crossings from Washington feed up the coast from the south.

Reaching the islands means going by water. BC Ferries runs the crossings from the mainland out to Victoria, Nanaimo and the smaller coastal communities, and the Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo run counts as part of the highway itself.