True, traces of snow dust far-off peaks, and whenever the sun slips beneath the horizon or behind a building, there’s a distinct chill in the air. But once the early morning fog banks over Burrard Inlet have burned off, there’s not a cloud to be seen, the sun is dazzling and the air is clear, clean and invigoratingly crisp.

As the sun climbs higher in the sky, Vancouverites head outdoors in droves to make the most of this unseasonal climatic bonus. The 6 ½-mile path that skirts the seawall surrounding the 1,000-acre Stanley Park, undoubtedly one of the biggest and most beautiful areas of urban greenery on the planet, becomes a procession of cyclists, in-line skaters, joggers, power-walkers and strollers, some turned out only in shorts and T-shirts. Sailing yachts slip from their moorings and head out beneath the Lions Gate Bridge to the cruising grounds of the Georgia Strait, while float planes constantly buzz around the city before splashing down into the harbor right in front of downtown.
Surrounded on almost every side by mountains, forest and water, Vancouver looks both beguiling and magnificent. On days like this, it’s easy to see why the quality of life in this city, Canada’s third-largest, is consistently ranked not only among the best in the continent, but also in the world.

“The entire city is like a park,” said local businesswoman Nancy Stibbard. “We get used to beauty around us. For example, I’m sitting in my office, just a 10-minute drive from downtown, looking at first-growth cedar and fir trees right outside my window.

“Its geographical location makes the city unique, and the spin-off benefits are enormous. Vancouver has a tremendous variety on offer, and the people who live here are very outdoorsy, very conscious of the environment and health. In a single day you can do everything from swimming to tennis to skiing.”

An Asia-based, Toronto-born journalist who recently bought a house in the city, waxed even more lyrical. “I’ve traveled all around the world,” he said, “and Vancouver is the one place that’s depressing to leave.”

And even on the dreariest of days, which many would say Vancouver has more than its fair share of—in fact, it’s the wettest major center in North America—the city has more to recommend it than just a stunning location. It has the mildest climate in Canada, with low-level snow a rarity, average winter temperatures above freezing and mean summer highs in the high 60s. That means that the port of Vancouver, one of the biggest on the west coast of North America, is ice-free year-round.

A magnet for immigrants, Vancouver has become home to a rich cosmopolitan diversity that flourishes in a civic culture of openness and tolerance. With a population of some 2 million people in its greater metropolitan area, the city is roughly equidistant between Europe and East Asia, meaning that offices can do business with both continents during the same day. Just a short drive across the U.S. border lies Seattle, with its information-technology (IT) and aerospace industries, while farther south still, via an excellent highway network, are California’s twin economic powerhouses of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The financial, commercial and industrial heartbeat of British Columbia (BC)—the provincial capital, Victoria, is situated across the Georgia Strait on Vancouver Island—the city of Vancouver presides over a hinterland bigger than any U.S. state except Alaska, rich in resources such as timber, minerals and natural gas. Although agriculture and fisheries remain cornerstones of BC enterprise, Vancouver has reduced its dependency on traditional resource-based sectors—which are notoriously subject to the vagaries of cyclical demand and sluggish prices—through the development of a much more broad-based economy, of which services now account for more than 50 percent.

“Vancouver is a strong point [in BC],” said Michael Track, project manager at the BC Trade and Investment Office. “It’s a more diversified economy, both in terms of what we do here and the markets that we serve.”

Linda A. Thorstad, executive director of the Vancouver Economic Development Commission, agreed. “Vancouver itself has done significantly better than the rest of British Columbia and other areas within Canada, as a result of the fact that it has a very diversified economic base, a very broad cross section of industries and a very multicultural community.”

Thorstad identifies the city’s main competitive advantages thus: “It has a vibrant downtown core, and a vibrant economy, supported by a vibrant international workforce. It’s an innovative city by design—a few years ago the council chose not to run a freeway through the center of the city, but to look at alternative modes of transportation.

“Something about being in the west and at the edge of the country has caused us to be quite innovative about the way that we approach business and how we think about things. We have two universities and a number of colleges and technical institutions that support this culture of innovation.

“We also have a world-class airport, seaport and rail systems—including the longest elevated rail system in the world, 30 miles long—as well as some of the world’s most sophisticated telecommunications.” The only major gateway on Canada’s west coast, Vancouver airport is served by more than 30 airlines and handles more than 700 flights to destinations in the United States, 100 to Asia and 40 to Europe each week.

Business expenses are among the cheapest in Canada, and far lower than in neighboring parts of the United States. Mark that down to the depressed Canadian dollar—now worth less than US65 cents—the low cost of labor, office rentals and power (hydroelectricity is cheap and abundant), and tax rates that are among the least ruinous in North America.

According to a recent KPMG study, skilled workers’ and professionals’ salaries in the technology sector are some 30 percent to 40 percent lower than in the United States, as are the costs of employee benefits. As for the price of electricity, large-scale consumers are likely to pay up to 60 percent less than across the border in Seattle, and a staggering 80 percent less than what they would pay in Southern California.

Thanks to an export focus among local manufacturers, from 50 percent to 90 percent of output goes to markets in the United States, Asia and Europe. Much of this goes directly south to Washington, Oregon and California. “It’s far easier for a company here to export south, in the same time zone, than to send goods to Toronto, which involves a five-hour flight and a three-hour time difference,” said Track.

“The north-south corridor is well-developed, and if I were a manufacturer or a service company who was thinking about exporting for the first time, I’d probably go into the Seattle market. It’s there, it’s close and it’s easy—the ways of doing business are much the same as ours.

“Our technology companies typically export around 80 percent of their output, and the lion’s share of that goes to the United States. We also find, however, that these companies are far more developed in Asian markets than you’d find in any other [Canadian] province.”

That’s all very well when times are good, but with economies in the United States and Asia faltering for the past two years, Vancouver has felt the effects. BC’s unemployment rate currently lingers between 8 percent and 9 percent, higher than across the border, and shows few signs of easing.

“Nobody’s recession-proof,” admitted Thorstad, “certainly when you’re export-oriented, and even when there’s strong internal growth in sectors such as technology, there’s going to be some impact.”

Track, however, argues that the impact of the recession on the man in the street in Vancouver is much less evident than compared to effects of the dotcom meltdown in San Francisco. “The diversity of the economy here is clearly a strength. Here the largest hit has been to the telecommunications sector, but our biotech sector, our software industry and our new media sector—we have the largest games-development center in the world—those companies have continued to thrive and grow.

“While we admit that perhaps we haven’t been hitting all of our targets and potential in the last 10 years,” he said, “things have still been pretty good. A real watershed has been the change of government about 18 months ago, with a very different philosophy, business-focused and business-friendly, and more aligned with attitudes found in most of our trading partners.

“It’s much more concerned with driving taxes down, reducing the levels of regulation on business, becoming far more competitive and driving the development of the technology sector. This government is much more strategic and long-term in its focus than ones we’ve had in the past.”

As a case in point, Track cited Vancouver’s bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics, which requires the commitment of some US$385 million toward the necessary infrastructural developments, in the face of competing claims for funding in areas such as health care, social welfare and education. By looking years in advance, the government is planning improvements that will have long-term benefit.

“These infrastructural requirements [for the Winter Olympics] are long overdue,” explained Thorstad. “They’ll be a catalyst for improvements that would have been required anyway.”

Vancouver’s Olympic hopes, of course, draw on the city’s enviable location, which brings ocean and mountains just minutes away from downtown. The international winter-sports resort of Whistler is just a 75-mile drive from the city, but locals need only travel to the edge of the suburbs to find decent ski slopes.

Those factors alone would be sufficient to account for the city’s much-vaunted quality of life, which has caused glass-walled residential high-rises to sprout out of every available space downtown during the past few years. Increasingly snapped up by out-of-towners, many from south of the border (including several Hollywood stars who became acquainted with Vancouver while filming there—the city has become a favored stand-in for more expensive U.S. locations), such properties are among the priciest in Canada, though still eminently reasonable by California standards.

Not that this acts as a damper on the local property market. “A house that costs US$195,000 in Toronto would cost US$260,000 in Vancouver,” said the Asia-based journalist, but added that lending rates are so low that even with prices near their peak, properties still tend to move fast. “A couple of places that I was interested in buying went in a single weekend,” he said.

Just as crucial, though, to the burgeoning lifestyle index is Vancouver’s exuberant cultural diversity, which now embraces sizable groups of just about every Asian origin. That the city has welcomed them and enabled them to thrive on unfamiliar shores could well be its most enduring achievement.

Unlike many other parts of the world, where immigrants are often regarded as pariahs, most Vancouverites are quick to recognize the benefits. “The influx of people during the ’90s helped the local economy tremendously,” said Nancy Stibberd, in a typically positive response.

As for the moniker “Hongcouver,” which was waggishly bestowed on the city in the last decade, it’s rapidly becoming true: around half of Vancouver’s population can claim Asian descent, with Filipinos, Vietnamese, Koreans, Japanese and Punjabis now added to a Chinese community that is one of the largest and longest-established in North America.

“Immigration has had a profound impact economically, socially and culturally,” said Track. “I live in the suburb of Richmond, which has a very strong attraction to Asian immigrants. In the school system, they say that around 50 percent of the students are studying English as a second language.

“My three kids all went through that system, and it was a tremendous boost for them. We’ve managed that influx rather well, and it fits our aspirations as Canadians and as west-coasters, being multicultural and accommodating. And you’ll find that right across the city.

“Vancouver’s open. It welcomes new entrepreneurs, new entrants, new residents. We feel ourselves in a building mode, and our best days are ahead of us.”