British Columbia History, Facts, Map, & Flag

The building and maintenance of provincial highways is the responsibility of the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. Numerous traffic lights operate in place of interchanges on both arterials as long-term cost-cutting measures. A couple of busy intercity corridors outside Greater Vancouver feature more heavily signalized limited-mobility arterial highways that are mostly four-lane and often divided by portable median traffic barriers. There are now freeways in Greater Victoria, the Lower Mainland, and Central Interior of the province. British Columbia’s roads systems were notoriously poorly maintained and dangerous until a concentrated program of improvement was initiated in the 1950s and 1960s.

Land

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Economy

Previously, the right-of-centre British Columbia Liberal Party governed the province for 16 years between 2001 and 2017, and won the largest landslide election in British Columbia history in 2001, with 77 of 79 seats. The government of the day appoints ministers for various portfolios, what are officially part of the Executive Council, of whom the province’s premier is chair. British Columbia’s debt-to-GDP ratio is edging up to 15.0 percent in fiscal year 2019–20, and it is expected to reach 16.1 percent by 2021–22. With its film industry known as Hollywood North, the Vancouver region is the third-largest feature film production location in North America, after Los Angeles and New York City.

The B.C. Public Service acknowledges the territories of First Nations around B.C. Preparedness guides and community resources are available to help you prepare for potential emergencies. Includes hunting and fishing licences, BC Parks. Includes the Medical Services Plan (MSP), BC PharmaCare, mental health and substance use supports. Learn about agriculture, seafood, natural resources and land use.

  • The Pre-emption Act did not specify conditions for distributing the land, so large parcels were snapped up by speculators, including 1,518 hectares (3,750 acres) by Moody himself.
  • Major ports are at Vancouver, Roberts Bank (near Tsawwassen), Prince Rupert, and Victoria.
  • Most of the thousands of lakes are small, but they are important for the water they store in an age when hydroelectric power has become a prized resource.
  • The 2010 Winter Olympics downhill events were held in the Whistler Blackcomb area of the province, while the indoor events were conducted in the Vancouver area.
  • The broad Fraser delta, behind Vancouver to the south, is the largest of the limited coastal lowlands.
  • The water of the deep clear Frazer was of a glassy stillness, not a ripple before us, except when a fish rose to the surface or broods of wild ducks fluttered away.

The province reaches its highest elevation in the far northwest at Mount Fairweather (15,300 feet 4,663 metres), located in the St. Elias Mountains (a range of the Coast Mountains) on the Alaskan border. The two major ranges are the Coast Mountains, which lie in the western part of the province, and the Canadian portion of the Rocky Mountains in the eastern part. One of the last regions of the North American continent to be explored and settled, British Columbia emerged in the second half of the 20th century as one of the leading provinces of Canada in population, economic wealth, and overall growth. It stretches some 730 miles (1,180 km) from north to south and 640 miles (1,030 km) from east to west at its widest point.

Examples of BC used in Sentences

His expedition theoretically established British sovereignty inland, and a succession of other fur company explorers charted the maze of rivers and mountain ranges between the Canadian Prairies and the Pacific. The explorations of James Cook in 1778 and George Vancouver in 1792 and 1793 established British jurisdiction over the coastal area north and west of the Columbia River. While it is thought Francis Drake may have explored the British Columbian coast in 1579, it was Juan Pérez who completed the first documented voyage, which took place in 1774. During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30 percent of the Pacific Northwest First Nations. These peoples developed complex cultures dependent on the western red cedar that included wooden houses, seagoing whaling and war canoes and elaborately carved potlatch items and totem poles. The inlets and valleys of the British Columbia coast shelter large, distinctive populations, such as the Haida, Kwakwakaʼwakw and Nuu-chah-nulth, sustained by the region’s abundant salmon and shellfish.

Lesser rivers, such as the Skeena, Nass, Iskut, and Stikine, drain the northwestern region into the Pacific, while the Liard system drains the northeastern section into the Arctic Ocean. The vast territory of British Columbia lies almost entirely within the great mountain system, or cordillera, that stretches along the western edge of the Americas from north of the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, at the southernmost extremity of South America. Vancouver, the province’s largest city, serves as the headquarters of many western-based natural resource companies. Though less than 5 percent of its vast 944,735 square kilometres (364,764 sq mi) land is arable, the province is agriculturally rich (particularly in the Fraser and Okanagan valleys), because of milder weather near the coast and in certain sheltered southern valleys. To the northwest of the province are the peoples of the Na-Dene languages, which include the Athapaskan-speaking peoples and the Tlingit, who live on the islands of southern Alaska and northern British Columbia. Atlin in the province’s far northwest, along with the adjoining Southern Lakes region of Yukon, get midwinter thaws caused by the Chinook effect, which is also common (and much warmer) in more southerly parts of the Interior.