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Vancouver’s varied vantage points
Canadian city shares many ties with London along with its colourful maritime history
Denzil Stuart - Friday 5 September 2008
WHILE Vancouver in British Columbia may not be readily identified with marine insurance, it has a colourful maritime history linked to Britain.
Delegates to the 2008 annual conference of the International Union of Marine Insurance will appreciate that when they meet in the city later this month.
The IUMI talkfest, from September 14-17, is taking place for only the second time in Canada and is particularly timely in cementing transatlantic links.
London and Vancouver will both host the Olympic Games in the next four years (the Winter Olympics 2010 in the case of Vancouver).
Both are developing so-called eco-towns, and both have experienced horizontal growth (along the river) rather than vertical (north to south).
An exhibition, Vancouverism, has been drawing the crowds to London’s Canada House as part of the London Festival of Architecture.
The ‘Trafalgar Square Demonstration Construction’ has transformed the corner of Canada House that faces the square and the National Gallery, wrapping the structure with an undulating 200 ft long, 27 ft high wooden wall.
Vancouver has been described as an ideology promoting an urbanism of density and public amenity. ‘Vancouverism’, say the architects, is fast replacing ‘Manhattanism’ as the template for shaping a humane, mixed-use city, a model being adopted across the world in a new era of scarce energy and diminished natural resources.
Wind the calendar back 250 years or so and we come to the birth in 1757 of George Vancouver, an English explorer and navigator, whose most famous undertaking was his exploration of the North Pacific coast of North America, the precursor to Vancouver’s position as the lifestyle-spanning capital of Canada’s Pacific Rim.
In June last year, the City of Vancouver organised a celebration at the Maritime Museum to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth. A statue of the great explorer can be found outside City Hall.
The anniversary was also celebrated in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, at one time ranked as the third most important port in England, trading goods all over the world. Vancouver’s father was deputy customs collector in the port. Vancouver was born there of Dutch ancestry and at the age of 13 began his naval career as an able seaman under James Cook on the Resolution. He was a midshipman on Cook’s famous third voyage and was promoted to lieutenant in 1780.
After adventures and explorations in the West Indies and elsewhere, in 1791, by then a commander, he set out for the northwest coast of America with a double mission — to take back the territory from the Spanish at Nootka Sound and to explore and survey the North Pacific coast, which he did for three years from 1792.
In the course of his journeys he circumnavigated the island subsequently named after him.
He determined that the Northwest Passage did not exist in the latitudes that had long been suggested. His charts of the northwest coast were so accurate that they served as the key reference for coastal navigation for generations.
Robin Fisher, the academic vice-president of Mount Royal College in Calgary and author of two books on Vancouver, wrote: “He put the northwest coast on the map. He drew up a chart of the coast that was accurate to the nth degree, to the point it was still being used into the 20th century as a navigational aid.”
Inexplicably, Vancouver failed to discover two of the largest and most important rivers on the Pacific coast, the Fraser and the Columbia.
He returned to England in September 1795; his final years found him penniless and ridiculed by London society which progressively turned against him.
Vancouver died on May 10, 1798, at the early age of 40 in failing health. He finally settled in Richmond and is buried in the churchyard at St Peter’s, Petersham. His grave is cared for, appropriately, by local sea scouts.
As for today’s Vancouver, the IUMI conference will be attended by around 470 delegates — mostly underwriters — but including guest speakers, affiliates and observers in addition to their partners.
First-time visitors to this spectacular part of North America and vibrant city will be spoilt for choice when deciding where to go and what to see.
Delegates will be housed in the Westin Bayshore Hotel situated in Coal Harbour. The hotel is the city’s only downtown resort and conference centre, offering panoramic views of the fabulous coastline, mountains and Stanley Park.
Regularly judged as the city in which most urbanites would like to live, laid back is perhaps the best way to describe this cosmopolitan jewel of the Pacific.
Vancouver claims to have the mildest climate in Canada, and the term ‘weather permitting’ is rarely heard. After summer enjoyed in the great outdoors, autumn kicks off the entertainment season, and the city has cultural events aplenty to satisfy all tastes.
The Vancouver Museum, the Maritime Museum and HR MacMillan Space Centre are all worth a visit.
Fjords and resort villages, alpine lakes and glaciers, and Victoria across the strait which has the oldest Chinatown in Canada, are all possible visits on day or overnight excursions.
Many of these attractions can be accessed by numerous water taxis that criss-cross the habour and some of them by the fleet of seaplanes that buzz gently overhead.
More adventurous is a visit to Grouse Mountain, across the harbour, or the forested Capilano River park.
Take the Skyride cablecar to the top of the mountain for spectacular views, or try the vertiginous Capilano Suspension Bridge that sways terrifyingly over tree-covered slopes and the river 70 m below.
In the city itself, there’s everything you could want for shopping, eating and drinking, and making merry.
Lloyd’s List will be reporting from Vancouver during IUMI 2008, with regular updates on the website at www.lloydslist.com/iumi from September 12. www.iumi2008.com
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