Greater Vancouver has about 1.6 million people. But “Greater Vancouver” includes a number of smaller municipalities including Burnaby (home of Metrotown the ultimate shopping center) Richmond (near the airport) and New Westminster and Surrey (on the river to the south of downtown Vancouver).

This picture was taken during our first trip to Vancouver, in early 1985. This harbor is now dominated by the Sails of the Convention Centre, but I put this older picture up to remind us of what we may have lost.

While we are blessed with great natural beauty all around us, our presence serves only to drive it further away. Stanley Park is visible in the picture quite clearly on the mid-left of the picture. It is a large inner city park within the boundaries of the city. It welcomes the sea traveler to the city, forming the southern tip of the harbor entrance.

The North Shore Mountains are covered by clouds in the picture’s background, which is not an infrequent occurrence in the winter. They get lots of rain over there!

And right in Stanley Park, the Vancouver Aquarium is home to many forms of marine life. Although the whale shows have been curtailed because the politically correct have convinced everyone that they are cruel, we’ve included a picture of them anyway! I think we’ve only been back to the aquarium once since they’ve stopped the shows. I think we could have made a marvelous enclosure for them, but instead we sent them away to die.

(This post was actually from an older HTML based website I created back in the early days. Pam and I have had an on-line presence since 1985. We ran a multi-line bbs for years, and have had over fifty different websites!)