Statsraad Lehmkuhl visits Vancouver, October 17–21, 2025
What is now a large city of 2.6 million inhabitants - including its suburbs, began as a sawmill on Canada’s northwest coast as resent as 1867.
But people have lived in the Vancouver area for 8,000 to 10,000 years.
The first Europeans arrived in this part of Canada only towards the end of the 18th century. In 1858, gold was discovered in a tributary of the Fraser River. More than 25,000 adventurous gold seekers came here, many of them from California, but most left again when there was no more gold to wash from the river gravel.
The Canadian Pacific Railway
The city centre itself lies on a peninsula between Burrard Inlet to the north and the mouth of the Fraser River to the south, a natural place for a sawmill. When the Canadian Pacific Railway was extended to the peninsula in 1886, the city grew rapidly.
It got the name Vancouver in 1886 too, after the Briton George Vancouver, who mapped the area in 1792.
Important port
To the west lies Vancouver Island, which protects the city from the Pacific Ocean and makes it an excellent harbour. Today, Vancouver is Canada’s most important port and one of the country’s largest industrial centers.
The forest industry remains a key sector, along with mining, technology, culture, and tourism.
Vibrant
Less than half of Vancouver’s inhabitants have English or French as their mother tongue, which makes the city both unique and vibrant. People of British, German, and Chinese descent are the largest groups, but there are also many with roots in India and other Asian and European cultures.
Temperate rainforest
Vancouver’s climate is shaped by its coastal location, with relatively cool summers and mild winters, though it is cold enough for snow to fall between November and March.
Average maximum temperatures range from 6.6°C in December to 22.4°C in July. The city receives about 1,160 millimetres of precipitation per year, mostly between October and January.
All that rainfall and the mild winters create areas of temperate rainforest here, with conifer trees draped in moss and lichen.
Normal maximum temperature in October: 13.5 °C
Normal rainfall in October: 124 mm
