VANCOUVER ISLAND

THINGS TO DO IN VANCOUVER-
VANCOUVER ISLAND
Vancouver Island is located off Canada's Pacific coast and is part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. At 12,407 square miles, it is the largest island on the western side of America. As of 2002 Vancouver Island had an estimated population of 750,000. Slightly less than half of these (326,000) live in the city of Victoria. Other major cities on Vancouver Island include Nanaimo, Port Alberni, Parksville, Courtenay and Campbell River.

Vancouver Island has been inhabited by humans for some eight thousand years. By the late 1700's, the primary First Nations on the island were the Nuu-Chah-nulth (Nootka) on the west coast, the Salish on the south and east coasts, and the Kwakiuti in the center and the north of the island. Europeans began to encroach on the island in 1774, when rumours of Russian fur trades caused the Spanish to send ships, but they never actually landed.

Vancouver Island came to the attention of the wider world after the third voyage of Captain James Cook, who landed at Nootka on March 31 1778 and claimed it for the United Kingdom. The island's rich fur trading potential led the British East India Company to set up a single building trading post in the small native village of Yuguot on Nootka Island.

Vancouver Island was further explored by Spain in 1789 by Esteban Jose Martinez, who built Fort San Miguel on one of Vancouver Island's small offshore islets in the South near Yuquot. This was to be the only Spanish settlement in what would later be Canada. The Spanish began seizing British ships and the two nations came close to war, but the issues were resolved peacefully in favour of the British with the Nootka Convention in 1792. Coordinating the handover was Captain George Vancouver from Kings Lynn in England, who had sailed as a midshipman with Cook, and from whom the island gained its name.

Today, Vancouver Island gets most of it's visitors in Victoria which is the city's capital. The Island has more British born residents than anywhere in Canada. A leading US travel magazine has voted it one of the world's top ten cities to visit. The Victoria waterfront area has an unmistakable quaint English feel to it, as Rudyard Kipling remarked "Brighton Pavilion with the Himalayas for a backdrop".

There are many shops and restaurants here along with an inspirational museum and the Butchart Gardens with twenty hectares of elaborate, manicured foliage. The main attraction here though has to be the boats that take tourists out whale watching in the waters around the city.