Granville Island

Granville Island is not really an island and was, until the 1970s, a grimy industrial peninsula of sheet metal sheds under a bridge. The conversion kept the sheds, the corrugated cladding and even a working cement plant, and filled the rest with a public market, artist studios, theatres, a brewery and a maritime school, which is why it reads as a working district rather than a shopping development. The market hall is the centre of it: seafood, produce, cheese, bakeries and prepared food counters, busy from morning. Tiny passenger ferries the size of bathtubs run across False Creek every few minutes. The kids market and the water park keep families here for a full afternoon.

History

The Musqueam and Squamish fished here and had a village, and the sandbar in False Creek was mapped by Captain George Henry Richards in 1858-59. In 1915 the Vancouver Harbour Commission had a 14-hectare island built on it from dredged fill, at a cost of $342,000, for industry; first called Industrial Island, it took the name of the bridge overhead, its first tenant, B.C. Equipment, built a corrugated-tin machine shop that now houses part of the Public Market, and by 1923 almost every lot held a similar factory (Wikipedia, Granville Island).

The main sights

• The Public Market - seafood, produce and food counters in the main hall.
• The mini ferries - tiny boats crossing False Creek every few minutes.
• The artist studios - working glass, ceramics and print workshops.
• The cement plant - still operating, painted, in the middle of it all.

When to go

Year-round; the market is open daily and busiest at weekends and around lunch. Mornings are calmest. Summer brings buskers and long queues at the food counters; winter is quieter and the covered market makes it a good rainy-day option in a rainy city.

Before you go

Weekend crowds in the market hall are heavy enough that moving through it takes patience, and seating for food is scarce at peak times. Driving here is a mistake; parking is limited and the single road in backs up. Prices are tourist-facing in places, and some of the craft shops sell imported goods rather than local work.

Nearby

Stanley Park and the seawall are a short ferry and walk; Kitsilano beach is west.