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Neighbourhoods

First Vancouver City Council Meeting after the fire - photograph by H. T. Devine
First Vancouver City Council Meeting after the fire - photograph by H. T. Devine (VPL # 508)

Related Guides

Large cities like Vancouver can be seen as a collection of smaller communities. This section will help you find out more about the neighbourhoods that make up Vancouver.

Useful Websites

Information from the City of Vancouver to help you learn more about its neighbourhoods.

Then and now images from across the city.

City planning projects in neighbourhoods throughout Vancouver.

Links to residents’ associations across the City of Vancouver.

Interactive map of plaques commemorating authors in the neighbourhoods they lived and worked in.

Provides historical information on places throughout Vancouver's neighbourhoods.

Search by neighbourhood and explore the stories that make up Vancouver through VPL’s interactive map of audio recordings, video and images.

Walking tours through the history of a number of different Vancouver neighbourhoods.

Find books about and set in different Vancouver neighbourhoods.

Digital Library Resources
Culture and History Subject Icon

British Columbia city directories from 1860 to 1955. Directories include detailed historical information about British Columbian communities.

Access:
Everywhere for everyone
Newspapers and Magazines Subject Icon

Digitized newspaper archives covering The Province (1898 - present), The Vancouver Sun (1912 - present) and The Times Colonist (1884 - present).

Issues from most recent 3 months not available in this collection. See Canadian Newsstream for current issues.

Access:
Everywhere for Vancouver residents
Newspapers and Magazines Subject Icon

Search and view community newspapers from around BC published between 1865 and 1994. This collection makes many of BC's earliest newspapers freely available in digital format

Access:
Everywhere for everyone
Culture and History Subject Icon

Finding tool for historical information about BC in books, magazines and newspapers in the Vancouver Public Library collection.

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Everywhere for everyone
Culture and History Subject Icon

A selection of historical images of Vancouver and British Columbia from the 1880s to the 1980s.

Access:
Everywhere for everyone
Culture and History Subject Icon

The Vancouver Public Library created This Vancouver to share the stories of Vancouverites and the history of Vancouver communities through images, audio clips, and videos. 

Access:
Everywhere for everyone

Recommended Titles

Cover Image for The Active Fiction Project

The Active Fiction Project

ebook

2017

This Vancouver Public Space Network project is a choose-your-own-adventure that you can use to explore Vancouver neighbourhoods.

Cover Image for Vancouver: A Visual History

Vancouver: A Visual History

Bruce Macdonald

971.133 M1351v

1992

Lets you track changes in different neighbourhoods in Vancouver's first century.

Cover Image for Vancouver: Stories of A City: A History of Vancouver's Neighbourhoods and the People Who Built Them

Vancouver: Stories of A City: A History of Vancouver's Neighbourhoods and the People Who Built Them

Lisa Smedman

971.133 S63v

2008

Award-winning collection of articles on the history of Vancouver, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Includes historic photographs, maps and illustrations.

Cover Image for A Verse Map of Vancouver

A Verse Map of Vancouver

George McWhirter and Derek Von Essen

c821.8 V5632m

2009

This unique volume uses poetry to draw attention to significant landmarks and people of Vancouver. Vancouver's Poet Laureate, George McWhirter, creates an anthology to incorporate nearly 100 poets in his quest to highlight Vancouver hotspots.

Contact Us

Northwest History Index

This card index in Special Collection provides access to the Northwest History Collection, a heritage collection covering the early history and exploration of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest.

The collection includes:

  • magazine and newspaper articles
  • pamphlets
  • books
  • chapters in books
  • many other resources

As of August 1998, no new material has been added to the Northwest History Index. It is continued by the British Columbia Index.