The change of season is often an opportunity to change up one’s routine, refresh and revitalize, a visit to Vancouver in September or October when the weather is still nice, just a light jacket required, and the restaurant patio heaters don’t have to be turned too high, and locals have gone back to their routines, can be a part of your refresh and revitalization. Whether you are visiting Vancouver for the first or eighth time, there is always something more to explore.
Catch these two great experiences before they close for the season. Harbour Cruises, offering daily 60-minute harbour tours, sails until September 30. The colours of fall reflected in the greenways and trees in the city parks on the shoreline, along with the longer shadows of the Fall sunlight on the water and the skyline make this experience different everyday. The fully narrated tour provides great information about Vancouver’s harbour, history, and culture. And the city views are outstanding. From the Harbour Cruises dock it’s just a 10-minute walk to the Stanley Park Horse-Drawn Tour launching pad! Another great narrated tour, accompanied by the clip clop of the horse’s hooves, takes you around the world-famous Stanley Park. This 1001-acre urban oasis holds the history for the local first nations, Vancouver’s earliest European settlers and the flora and fauna of Vancouver’s temperate rainforest. Available until November 30.
Downtown Vancouver is always full of opportunity but in the fall the vibe becomes a little cooler… and not just in temperature! Start your exploration at the top with a visit to the Vancouver Lookout! Vancouver’s city planners have ensured we stay “green” by maintaining over 140,000 trees across the city. In the fall many of these plantings awe us with their spectacular colour, enjoy an above the birds view of this riot of colour from the 360-degree observation deck. Once you’ve had your fill from above, head to Dr Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden, just a 15-minute walk from the Lookout! Where you can experience the serenity of this Scholar’s Garden and the breathtaking fall colours of this unique space designed to inspire year-round. Visit on a rainy day and enjoy the calming sounds as the water runs across the tiled roof and troughs, again all designed with serenity and inspiration in mind! The Hall of One Hundred Rivers, at the Garden, will be hosting Beyond Exclusion, Don Kwan’s first solo exhibition in Vancouver. Don uses mixed media, found objects, and sourced personal text and photographs to explore questions of identity, belonging, and place, reflecting on his family history while weaving intriguing stories about the Chinese Canadian diaspora, included with admission.
Consider adding a visit to the Vancouver Art Gallery, in addition to their permanent collections, this Fall’s line up includes Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment, a major exhibition gathering more than 200 works of art by a generation of extraordinary painters, photographers, weavers, bead workers and sculptors. Focusing on the 1920s, 30s and 40s, Uninvited foregrounds the production of women artists from across the country, providing a broad and diverse accounting of female creativity in Canada a century ago. And About Time presents Vancouver artist Jin-me Yoon’s significant artwork of the last decade. Frequently combining photography, video and installation, Yoon’s recent work is distinguished by a poetic, cinematic aesthetic—one that is deeply contemplative and undergirded by an examination of our position in the world as it is reflected in and shaped by ideas of history and memory, land, and ocean. Launching October 15.
A visit to Granville Island Public Market to take in the bounty of the Fall harvest, and enjoy a meal, should accompany a walk to Vanier Park. Home of the Museum of Vancouver and the Vancouver Maritime Museum. MOV offers a comprehensive overview of the history of Vancouver, from our first peoples to today’s ever changing urban evolution and the temporary exhibitions are eclectic. Take in A Seat at the Table, Chinese Immigration and British Columbia. This exhibition explores historical and contemporary stories of Chinese Canadians in BC and their struggles for belonging. It looks to food and restaurant culture as an entry point to feature stories that reveal the great diversity of immigrant experience and of the communities’ immigrants develop. Or if you are here in November the All We Want is More: The Tobias Wong Project is sure to inspire discussion. The exhibitionis an invitation to revisit Wong’s artistic contribution with fresh eyes; recent social, environmental, and technological events have transformed the way we see the world and inevitably the way we see his work. Tobias Wong (1974-2010) was a prolific Vancouver-born and raised artist who took the design world by storm in the early 2000s. Throughout his short but brilliant career Wong’s work resisted easy categorization: his projects operated as conceptual art, performance work and product design. was creative force whose ideas had global reach and continue to inspire. This exhibition will present over 70 works.
Two minutes down the path is the Vancouver Maritime Museum, truly a Vancouver gem, home to the National Historic Site, the St Roch, the first ship to make the first west to east traverse of the Northwest Passage, is also home to a rotating selection of temporary exhibitions focusing on maritime lore or history, but We Were So Far Away: The Inuit Experience of Residential Schools presented by The Legacy of Hope Foundation and Library and Archives Canada available to November 27, is a travelling exhibition that explores the residential school experiences of Inuit peoples. The Inuit experience was unique and in part because of rapid social and political change in the North at the start of the 20th century. Using first-person narratives and archival images to tell stories of the Inuit residential school experience. The exhibition highlights the stories of eight Inuit residential school survivors. Each survivor talks about their experience in their own words.
This Fall explore more with some of Vancouver’s cultural and experiential attractions and museums. Save when you book two or more.