Grandview-Woodland, also commonly known as Grandview-Woodlands, is a neighbourhood in Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

, British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 to the east of the downtown area, stretching south from the shores of Burrard Inlet

Burrard Inlet

Burrard Inlet is a relatively shallow-sided coastal fjord in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Formed during the last Ice Age, it separates the City of Vancouver and the rest of the low-lying Burrard Peninsula from the slopes of the North Shore Mountains, home to the communities of West...

 and encompassing portions of the popular Commercial Drive

Commercial Drive (Vancouver)

Commercial Drive is a roadway in the city of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada that goes through the neighbourhood of Grandview-Woodland. However, the neighbourhood is so dominated by the businesses, cultural facilities, and residents along Commercial Drive that the area is far better known as...

 area. It is a mature neighbourhood in Vancouver that is a vibrant mixture of commercial, industrial, single-family and multi-family residential with a rich ethnic history and features.

Geography

A central part of the Vancouver area, Grandview-Woodland runs from the south shore of busy Burrard Inlet south to Broadway

Broadway (Vancouver)

Broadway is a major east-west thoroughfare in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In Vancouver's numbered avenue grid system, it runs in place of a 9th Avenue, between 8th and 10th. The street has four lanes for most of its course...

, one of the city's major east-west roads. The western border of the neighbourhood is Clark Drive, the eastern Nanaimo Street. It is a busy area for transportation, with Hastings Street and First Avenue both cutting through the neighbourhood, while Victoria Drive and Commercial Drive both run north-south through the area.

Much of the neighbourhood is built on the rise that stretches east-west through the eastern portion of Vancouver, making for views across the city proper and the inlet.

History

Local First Nations

First Nations

First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...

 members have been aware of the Grandview-Woodland area for many years, and referred to the area along Burrard Inlet by the word for cedar trees in their language. A small cove created by a stream running into the inlet became a focal point for early development; the first building was a brewery, followed by sawmills using the forests of the area. The land along Burrard Inlet was valued by speculators after the Gold Rush

Gold rush

A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers to an area that has had a dramatic discovery of gold. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States, while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.In the 19th and early...

, and was the location of the Canadian Pacific Railway

Canadian Pacific Railway

The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...

 when it was built in the 1880s. Around that time, the sawmill owners clearcut the entire Grandview-Woodland area, and the construction of the Interurban

Interurban

An interurban, also called a radial railway in parts of Canada, is a type of electric passenger railroad; in short a hybrid between tram and train. Interurbans enjoyed widespread popularity in the first three decades of the twentieth century in North America. Until the early 1920s, most roads were...

 train line to New Westminster, British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

 in 1891 spurred the construction of a new community in the area. One legend indicates that the name Grand View was first expressed on a sign hung by a homeowner next to the Interurban stop near the Commercial Drive-1st Avenue intersection.

In 1906, construction started to boom, with homes being built through the neighbourhood, and the railway influencing industrial development along the waterfront. Park Drive became a major commercial route that eventually became Commercial Drive, and people of many ethnic backgrounds made the neighbourhood their home over the years.

Demographics

As of 2006, Grandview-Woodland has 28,205 people, a 3% decrease from 2001. 16.1% of the population is under the age of 19; 38.4% is between 20 and 39; 35.1% is between 40 and 64; and 10.4% is 65 or older. 62.0% of Grandview-Woodland residents speak English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 as a first language, and 14.4% speak a Chinese language

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

. French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 (2.3%), Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 (2.3%), Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 (2.3%), and Tagalog

Tagalog language

Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest. It is the first language of the Philippine region IV and of Metro Manila...

 (2.1%) are also common first languages. The median household income is $35,342, and 35.2% of its population lives in low-income households. Its unemployment rate is 7.8%.

Features

Commercial Drive

Commercial Drive (Vancouver)

Commercial Drive is a roadway in the city of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada that goes through the neighbourhood of Grandview-Woodland. However, the neighbourhood is so dominated by the businesses, cultural facilities, and residents along Commercial Drive that the area is far better known as...

 is perhaps the single most popular part of Grandview-Woodland. A street packed with small shops, it has been a key part of the commercial landscape in Vancouver for nearly a century for its ethnic diversity and the uniqueness of shops that populate it. Known locally as "The Drive", visitors find everything from trendy coffee shops to hangouts for many ethnicities (celebrations during the FIFA World Cup

FIFA World Cup

The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body...

 can bring out soccer fans of many nationalities, for example) to sex toys to hemp shops. Little Italy focuses on the Drive, though many of its residents have moved to other neighbourhoods over the years.

External Links

• http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/community_profiles/grandview_woodland/
• http://www.discovervancouver.com/GVB/grandview.asp
• http://www.thedrive.ca/