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Visit Granville Island
Granville Island is a favourite among locals and visitors and a microcosm of Vancouver's lifestyle and characters. Located just outside of downtown, the island is a must-see for visitors, giving them a taste of the city's culinary scene, arts community and history.
www.granvilleisland.com

• Take a colourful mini ferry over to the island from downtown and enjoy a hearty breakfast in the Public Market.
• Explore the Public Market and Railspur Alley to meet local vendors, producers and artisans. The island is dedicated to supporting Vancouver's independent artists. As a result, you will find several studios for glassblowers, potters, shoemakers and jewellers here.
• Rent a kayak and get a whole new perspective on the city as you paddle along False Creek - you'll come to understand why Douglas Coupland calls Vancouver the "City of Glass".
• The island is also the perfect place to take kids. The world's only Kids Market is full of the unique stores that children love: a candy store, toy shops, clothes, magic supplies and even a kite store.

• As the Canadian gateway to Asia Pacific, Vancouver is home to North America's third-largest Chinatown (after San Francisco and New York).
• Soak up the sights and sounds of this cultural hub with a stroll through the tea shops, food markets and other curious shops.
• Sample a traditional dim sum lunch at Floata Seafood Restaurant - the largest Chinese restaurant in Canada (1,000 seats).

• Stanley Park is a temperate rainforest and home to massive old-growth trees. Every day the trees pump out enough oxygen for 11,700 people while providing a home for more than 200 kinds of birds and dozens of species of mammals. Take a walk on one of the forest paths.
• Originally conceived as a precaution to erosion in the early 1920s the Seawall took nearly six decades to complete and rings the peninsula of Stanley Park. Visitors and residents alike make this outdoor recreational facility the most popular activity in Vancouver for walking, running, biking and rollerblading, etc. Rent a bike and ride (or walk) around the park's perimeter. Although part of the Seawall is currently closed due to damage from last year's storm, it is expected to fully re-open again before the end of 2007.
• Take your pick from the many attractions in the park: a world-class aquarium, giant saltwater pool, petting zoo, rose and rhododendron gardens, miniature railway, pitch-and-putt golf course, and an open-air summer theatre.
• Stop at the Stanley Park totem poles. The Vancouver region is the ancestral home to many aboriginal communities and totems are unique to the natives of the Northwest coast of North America.

• Your choices this evening range from multi-course Chinese feasts to European-influenced tasting plates and perhaps the best sushi available outside Japan.
• Many celebrity chefs call Vancouver home - Rob Feenie (Lumiere), David Hawksworth (West), Hidekazu Tojo (Tojo's) and Rob Clark (C Restaurant) - so if you're looking for a first-rate meal and superb west coast cuisine, these come highly recommended.
• Try some wild BC salmon - the salmon is synonymous with British Columbia and a true local favourite (try it smoked, grilled on a cedar plank, as salmon jerky or salmon candy).
• Don't forget to sample BC wine while you're here. B.C.'s Okanagan Valley, Fraser Valley and "Wine Islands" supply the city with an amazing collection of German white varietals and delicious pinot noirs (to name just a few).

• Vancouver has a plethora of festivals and events happening throughout the year. Top picks include the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Vancouver International Fringe Festival, Celebration of Light fireworks competition, Dine Out Vancouver and the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival.
• Don't miss Vancouver's theatre scene while you're here. Theatre is one of Vancouver's main cultural draws. The city has more than 30 professional groups, several major theatre festivals and more than 21 performance venues. Vancouver is well-known for its contemporary, "indie" and edgy fare.
• The choice of live music in Vancouver can give the most seasoned club-hopper blisters any night of the week. From lounging around or singin' the blues to dancing the night away, you can do it all at some of Western Canada's hottest clubs and pubs.

• Helijet helicopters offer scheduled one-way flights from Vancouver to beautiful Victoria for as low as $75 CAD for a stand-by fare ($70 USD). Flying time is about 30 minutes. If you've never flown in a helicopter, do it in Vancouver with Helijet and you'll get the executive treatment from start to finish.
  www.helijet.com

• West Coast Air and Harbour Air offer scheduled float plane service to destinations around southern BC as well as "flight seeing" trips to see mountain lakes, glaciers, forests, whales and more. One-way flights on West Coast Air from Vancouver to Nanaimo cost $67 CAD (May 22 to September 23, $62 USD). One way flights from Vancouver to Victoria on Harbour Air cost $120 CAD ($113 USD) with over 10 flights per day.
  www.westcoastair.com
  www.harbour-air.com

Creating quite a buzz, the yet-to-be-named restaurant will feature an open kitchen and a bar set against the backdrop of a "green" wall of live foliage. Other focal points include Ottoman lounge chairs near a fireplace, an interactive kitchen counter/bar and various dining options - including a communal table and intimate dining booths. The restaurant will also house an exclusive glass-enclosed private dining room with sketched images of coastal mountain scenes.

Work on the 6,750-square-foot restaurant/bar area and 5,000-square-foot upper lobby is scheduled for completion in November. The lower lobby will be renovated between January and March 2008. The hotel remains open for business during the renovations.
www.fourseasons.com

• The Vancouver Art Gallery is building a solid reputation for its world-class contemporary art and design shows. The "Massive Change" show that the gallery commissioned and organized with designer Bruce Mau (2004) has since been presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. In 2008, the gallery will present Krazy, an exhibition that explores the world of anime, comics, video games and art.
• Vancouver has also produced a growing number of contemporary artists (especially photographers) gaining world-wide acclaim. Among those Vancouver artists that regularly exhibit outside of Canada are Jeff Wall, a photographer who recently had a solo show at New York's MOMA; Stan Douglas, whose multimedia installations have been shown at the Musée national d'art moderne in Paris; Roy Arden, whose contemporary photographic works will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery (October 20 - January 20, 2008) and have been shown in solo exhibitions throughout Europe; and photographer Scott McFarland who has also recently been included in a MOMA exhibition.
• Many of the art photographers that are referred to as being part of the "Vancouver School" studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (ECIAD), located on Granville Island.
• From a slightly different angle, Vancouver is an important centre for animation and video game production. Vanguard companies such as Electronic Arts and Radical Entertainment are based in the city. Vancouver was also home to the first "Video Game University" and the new Centre for Digital Media, a joint project between the city's universities, ECIAD and gaming companies.

This year's festival includes international authors such as Helen Oyeyemi (Nigeria), Faďza Gučne (France), Nancy Huston (France), Jakob Arjouni (Germany), Ian Holding (Zimbabwe) and Celestine Hitiura Vaite (Australia). Some Canadian authors of note include: Richard Wright, Elizabeth Hay, Michael Winter, Janice Kulyk Keefer, William Gibson, Barbara Hodgson and former Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
www.writersfest.bc.ca

Stanley Park Ghost Train
October 12 - November 3
Vancouver's autumn must-do family event is back this October. Every night, from October 12 to November 3, thousands of people flock to Stanley Park for a spooky train ride deep in the forest. Grab some popcorn and clamber aboard as the train goes "off the rails". This year's theme is not yet announced, but check the website soon for more details.
Phone: 604.257.8531
www.vancouverparks.ca

Parade of the Lost Souls
October 27
The Parade of the Lost Souls is the Commercial Drive neighbourhood's annual celebration to honour the dearly departed, wake the living and overcome fears. A colourful torch-lit procession makes its way through neighbourhood streets and alleys. Held at Grandview Park (1200 Commercial Drive), the homes, streets and alleys of Commercial Drive are the stage. The evening's grand finale features performances of fire dancing and fireworks.
www.publicdreams.org

The Ocean Wise program, started by the Vancouver Aquarium along with founding restaurant partner C Restaurant, is a powerful example of how restaurants and conservationists can work together for the benefit of both the diner and the environment. The program issues a list of "best choices" when it comes to seafood, and participating restaurants carry the Ocean Wise symbol alongside their menu items, denoting to diners that the seafood has been sustainably harvested from the oceans. The program has now expanded to other parts of BC and includes more than 65 restaurant participants.

Food miles have become the latest way of measuring a meal's impact on the environment. How far have all of the ingredients in your dinner been trucked, shipped or flown in to make it to your plate? This concept formed part of the basis of a book by Vancouver authors Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon. Called The 100 Mile Diet (or Plenty in the US), the book chronicles the couple's year-long challenge to only eat food grown or raised within a 100-mile radius of their Kitsilano apartment. During their year-long experiment, local restaurant Raincity Grill rose to the occasion and put together a 100-mile menu (still available) featuring the best of local ingredients and 100-mile wine pairings.

Raincity Grill is far from the only Vancouver restaurant to aggressively pursue a seasonal, regional menu. Aurora Bistro, located on funky Main Street, not only showcases the fantastic bounty of the province, but also boasts an all-British Columbian wine list. But while C, Raincity and Aurora all offer a high-end experience, it would be a mistake to think that sustainable cuisine was purely a fine-dining trend. A great example of a restaurant at the other end of the scale is the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company. The restaurant uses 100% organic ingredients, many of which are sourced from local farmers, to create handcrafted, wood-fired pizzas.
www.oceanwisecanada.com
www.crestaurant.com
www.raincitygrill.com
www.aurorabistro.ca
www.rockymountainflatbread.ca

1) So you're a French-Asian specialist. What exactly does that mean?
My training is classical French - I'm from Montreal and I studied in France - then I had a chance to come to Vancouver and work at Lumiere with Rob (Feenie). Rob was doing a lot of Asian dishes at the time and that affected my style. Then I went to Australia where there is a major Asian influence as well. But my favorite cooking style is still traditional French. Although I like to experiment, I try to respect the French base and evolve from there.

2) What will the experience at Voya be?
You can expect a beautiful classic dining room, modern-vintage in style with a private 18-seat dining room and a 70-seat lounge. For the food, we are going to try to work as much as possible with local, seasonal products. I'm planning on changing the menu as much as possible - more than the usual "four times per year".

3) Is there such a thing as a "Vancouver flavour"? How would you describe it?
Yes definitely, we are very lucky here to have a large gathering of people of all ethnicities - Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Chinese, Indian... All of that brings a lot of beautiful products to work with. The Vancouver flavour is very cosmopolitan.

4) What do you like about living in Vancouver?
I love all the outdoor space and the climate. There are no harsh winters here like back east. I love to ride (snowboard) and if I want some snow, I just go up to Cypress Mountain before work (30 minutes from downtown). Actually, I've probably been late to work a few times because of a good dump of snow!