Vancouver

The first Europeans to chart Burrard Inlet arrived in 1792 when Captain George Vancouver, sailing under the British Crown, anchored his sloop HMS Discovery in the sheltered harbour and noted the remarkable natural beauty of the forested mountains rising directly from the sea. He could not have imagined that within a century the site of his anchorage would become one of the fastest-growing cities on the Pacific Rim, its timber wealth fuelling a boom that transformed a sawmill settlement into a transcontinental railway terminus by 1887. The city named in his honour has since grown into Canada's third-largest metropolis and one of the world's most liveable urban environments.

Vancouver's defining characteristic is the improbable proximity of its built environment to untamed wilderness. From the glass towers of Coal Harbour, the North Shore mountains — including the ski runs of Grouse Mountain, with Whistler visible on the clearest days — frame the skyline in a permanent reminder that the city is pressed between Pacific and peak. Stanley Park, a 404-hectare temperate rainforest peninsula encircling the downtown core, contains old-growth Douglas firs, a seawall path stretching 22 kilometres around the waterfront, and totem poles carved by Coast Salish and Kwakwaka'wakw artists. The neighbourhoods of Gastown, with its 1875-era steam clock and Victorian brick warehouses now housing design studios, and the fragrant lanes of Chinatown — the third-largest in North America — give the city its layered urban texture.

Pacific Rim cuisine defines Vancouver's restaurant scene with a sophistication that has made the city a serious culinary destination. British Columbia Dungeness crab, wild sockeye salmon from the Fraser River, and spot prawns hauled fresh from local waters anchor menus that blend Japanese, Cantonese, Korean, and Pacific Northwest traditions with inspired fluency. The Granville Island Public Market, beneath a working railway bridge on False Creek, is the city's most beloved food hall: artisan cheeses, smoked wild salmon, hand-rolled sushi, and Vietnamese bánh mì all occupy neighbouring stalls. Yaletown's converted warehouse restaurants and the Richmond Night Market — the largest night market in North America — extend the culinary conversation well past midnight.

Whistler, two hours north via the dramatic Sea-to-Sky Highway, offers world-class skiing in winter and mountain biking and hiking in summer. The ferry crossing to Victoria on Vancouver Island — 90 minutes across the Georgia Strait — delivers passengers to a city of Edwardian architecture, the Royal BC Museum, and the famous Butchart Gardens, 22 hectares of sunken and Italian garden terraced into a former limestone quarry. Closer in, the Capilano Suspension Bridge spans a forested canyon 70 metres above a rushing glacial river, while the Okanagan Valley wine country to the east and Wells Gray Provincial Park to the north reward those with additional days to spare.

Vancouver is the premier embarkation port for Alaska Inside Passage cruises, with Azamara, Celebrity Cruises, Crystal Cruises, Cunard, Disney Cruise Line, Explora Journeys, Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, Holland America Line, HX Expeditions, Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises, Princess Cruises, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Scenic River Cruises, Seabourn, Silversea, Tauck, Viking, and Windstar Cruises all homeporting or calling here. Alaska cruise season runs from late April through September, when the Inside Passage is at its most spectacular — glaciers calving into turquoise fjords, humpback whales breaching, and bald eagles tracing slow spirals above old-growth forest.