The Vancouver Traveler

Start – Canada Place
Finish   – Maple Tree Square
Time – 2 to 4 hours; not including shopping, eatting and sightseeing stops
Best time – Anytime during business hours, but Chinatown in particulary active in the morning. If you arrive between noon and 2pm you can enjoy some delicious dim sum at many of the restaurants.
Worst time – Chinatown is pretty much closed after 6pm. Except on weekends in the summer when a few streets are closed down to accomodate a night market from 6:30 to 11pm.

Chinatown and Gastown are two of Vancouver’s most facinating neighborhoods. Gastown has history and the kind of old-fashioned architecture that no longer exists in downtown or in the West End. Chinatown has street markets and the buzz of modern day Cantoneses commerce.
One small travel advisory, the two neighborhoods border on Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, a skid row area troubled by alcoholism and drug use. While there is actually little danger for outsiders, this tour route has be designed to avoid these areas.

Begin the tour at:

Canada Place – With its five tall Teflon sails and bow jutting out into Burrard Inlet, Canada Place is meant to resemble a giant sailing ship. Inside there is a giant hotel, giant cruise-ship terminal, and giant convention center. Around the perimeter there’s a promenade with plaques at regular intervals explaining the sights or providing historical info. During the summer months this area is jammed with tourists and passengers arriving and departing from Alaskan cruises; the rest of the year you’ll have it pretty much to yourself.

To follow the promenade, start by the fountain flying the flags of Canada’s provinces and territories and head north along the walkway. On the roof at the far end of the pier a pair of leaping bronze lions point up and out toward a pair of mountain peaks on the North Shore called the Lions . Continue around the promenade and you’ll turn and look back towards the city: The line of low-rise older buildings just beyond the railway tracks is Gastown.
To continue the tour, walk back toward shore along the promenade, go down the steps, turn left, and curve along the sidewalk until you pass the Aqua Riva restaurant. Then turn left and go up the steps to an elevated plaza.

You are now at:

Granville Square – Had some forward-looking politicians and developers had their way, all of Gastown and Chinatown would have been replaced by towers like the one you see here at 200 Granville. In 1970, the plans were drawn up and the bulldozers were set to move when a coalition of hippies, heritage lovers, and Chinatown merchants took to the barricades in revolt. This undistinguished building was the only one ever built, and the plan was abandoned soon afterwards.

At the east end of the plaza a doorway leads into:

Waterfront Station - 601 W. Cordova St. was converted into the SeaBus terminal in the 1970s (SkyTrain was added in 1986), the building was originally the CPR’s Vancouver passenger-rail terminal. Look up high on the walls and you’ll see oil paintings depicting scenes you might encounter if you took the train across Canada. On the main floor there’s a Starbucks and some tourist shops. This is also where you can catch the SeaBus over to Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver.

Leave by the front doors, turn left, and proceed to the cobblestoned Water Street, Gastown’s main thoroughfare. The Landing, at 375 Water St., is home to some high-end retail stores and offices.  As you walk along, note the Magasin Building at 322 Water St., each of the columns bears the bronze head of a Gastown notable, among them Ray Saunders, the man who designed the:

Steam Clock – A quirky urban timepiece, the Steam Clock at Water and Cambie streets gives a steamy rendition of the Westminster Chimes every 15 minutes, drawing its power from the city’s underground steam-heat system. A plaque on the base of the clock explains the mechanics of it all.

Continue down Water Street, past Hills Indian Crafts (165 Water St.), where Bill Clinton picked up a little bear statuette as a gift for you-know-who. At Abbot Street, cross over to the south side and continue on Water Street until you come to the Gaoler’s Mews building (12 Water St.). You can check your e-mails and have a coffee at the Internet Café or enjoy excellent beer and good food at the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall St., accessible either via its back solarium — facing onto the mews — or by going out through the far passageway onto Carrall Street. You have to go this way eventually in order to reach:

Maple Tree Square – A historic spot, Maple Tree Square is where Vancouver first began. The statue by the maple tree (not the original tree, but a replacement planted in the same spot) is of Gassy Jack Deighton, a riverboat captain and innkeeper who erected Vancouver’s first significant structure — a saloon — in 1867. Deighton got the nickname Gassy because of his ability to talk at length about whatever topic happened to spring to mind. In 1870, when the town was officially incorporated as Granville, it was home to exactly six businesses: a hotel, two stores, and three saloons. Most folks called it Gastown, after Jack.
Continue south on Carrall Street to W. Cordova, turn right, and walk 1 block to Abbot Street. Turn left and walk 2 blocks down Abbot, crossing W. Hastings Street and stopping at W. Pender Street, where you get a great view of the:

Sun Tower – At 500 Beatty St., it was the tallest building in the British Empire when it was built in 1911 to house the publishing empire of Louis D. Taylor, publisher of Vancouver World. Not only was the building tall, it was also slightly scandalous, thanks to the nine half-nude caryatids that gracefully support the cornice halfway up the building. Three years after the building opened, Louis D. was forced to sell it.

Cross W. Pender Street and continue on Abbot Street until you come to the entrance at 179 Keefer Place of:

…..to be continued

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