Today, we're unlocking the vibrant and complex city of Vancouver with our guest, Will Woods, founder of Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours. We dive into the city's unique blend of stunning natural landscapes and a rich, sometimes dark history shaped by migration and hidden stories. From the breathtaking views of Stanley Park to the fascinating tales of prohibition and crime that lurk beneath the city's surface, Will shares why exploring Vancouver on foot is the best way to truly understand its essence. If you’re after more than just the picturesque postcard views and want to uncover the deeper narratives that define this incredible destination, you’re in the right place. Join us as we navigate the hidden corners and celebrated highlights of this dynamic city!

Takeaways:

1. Vancouver is a city that uniquely blends urban life with nature, offering mountains and forests just a short drive from downtown.
2. The Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours are about uncovering hidden stories of the city, focusing on history that isn't commonly celebrated.
3. Stanley Park is a must-visit, featuring stunning views, indigenous totem poles, and a seawall perfect for a leisurely walk.
4. September is a wonderful time to visit Vancouver, with pleasant weather and fewer tourists compared to the summer months.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. forbiddenvancouver.ca

Welcome to Destination Unlocked with me, Daniel Edward.

Destination Unlocked is the Chatty Travel Podcast where a local expert helps

you unlock their corner of the world.

Today we're unlocking Vancouver, a city shaped by mountains, water, migration,

and some surprisingly dark history.

My guest today is Will Woods.

He's the founder of Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours, and we're talking

about how Vancouver really came to be the stories hidden behind the

skyline and why walking this city is the best way to understand it.

If you want Vancouver beyond the postcard, stay with us.

So Will, where are you unlocking for us today?

I am unlocking Vancouver in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.

You've been in Vancouver for a while

I have, yeah, almost 20 years now.

My wife is American and we were living in London.

She just finished a master's there and had a student visa and we

thought, why don't we try living somewhere else for a couple of years?

And then moved back to London to settle down.

She didn't really wanna move back to the States.

I'd lived in Australia for a year.

With the work I was doing at the time, I had to be somewhere like

a sizable city that was English speaking to be able to work.

And so I guess we settled on Canada and then, without either of us ever

having been there, And we moved out here in November 1st, 2006.

And then after a couple of months we thought, oh, this is great.

We'll we'll stay here then.

Here we go.

Wow.

So it didn't take long for you to be won over.

And now what you do with Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours is you're

sharing this adopted home with so many people who love to come and visit it.

Why don't we start with the main highlights, if somebody's visiting

Vancouver, what do they have to see?

As long as they're somewhat mobile.

I would say that it'd be a real shame to come here and not get

out into the wilderness, really.

I don't mean like going backpacking, you know, off for

days into the middle of nowhere.

But Vancouver exists at the foot of some pretty big mountains and

if you're really keen you can get right up into those mountains.

You can also walk in like the foothills of those mountains or we

have this huge park downtown called Stanley Park, which is a large forest.

And I think to get out into that Pacific Northwest rainforest

and walk around within literally 20 minutes drive of downtown is

really unique feature of Vancouver.

Not many places have that.

I think every tourist visit Stanley Park, it's really a must do place to visit.

There's lots of, see there, there's an amazing aquarium, there's an incredible

display of indigenous totem poles.

There's the sea wall that goes all the way around the outside with

the amazing views of the Burrard Inlet and downtown Vancouver.

And I do recommend walking the sea wall for anyone who comes to visit Vancouver.

It's an amazing couple of hours, but you can also get inside Stanley

Park on these trails, and you won't see people apart from the odd

local, even though it's really not very far from the seawall itself.

If I was coming here for the first time, I'd want to get out

there and experience some of that nature in the forest for sure.

And that is so unusual for a big city because there are what,

just shy of 3 million people who live in Vancouver and to be able to go 20 minutes

and see no one, it's like night and day.

The other really nice thing I find about Vancouver is that people

have come there from everywhere.

It's a place where the world comes together.

That's true.

And it's funny you say that because, coming from London, that

wasn't a culture shock for me.

'cause London's so similar, right?

I haven't visited everywhere on earth, but I'm imagining there aren't

many places as diverse as Vancouver.

The Chinatown stands out for me.

Totally, yeah.

There's a huge Asian population here, not just Chinese.

There's also Japanese, there's a lot of Filipinos here, people

from Thailand, Vietnamese.

There's a really big Asian influence.

I think that's probably the cuisine that Vancouver's most famous

for in North America anyway.

It's amazing to have that.

I see.

I'm grateful to live somewhere with such a diverse community

if you are visiting, it can be quite

confusing as to know where to stay.

'cause there are lots of regions that you could choose in Vancouver.

Is there one area that you would say that this is the easiest base,

that then you've got good access to all the public transport to get

you anywhere you might want to see, but this is a good place to stay.

I would say the obvious answer is downtown, and

that's where most tourists stay.

I'd be lying if I said that downtown Vancouver was an affordable place, real

estate's very expensive and there's not enough accommodation for tourists.

If you can afford it downtown Vancouver's great because you can access so many

of the city's tourist locations like Stanley Park, for example, like the

Vancouver Art Gallery, like the coal harbor, sea wall, like Gastown, the

obvious neighborhood, like Chinatown, very historic neighborhood with a lot of

really interesting cultural institutions there . Downtown's very walkable.

You haven't gotta get Ubers, you haven't gotta rent a car.

You can walk all over downtown and do so much.

If you're looking for a more affordable place to stay I'd recommend a place called

New Westminster, which is on the Fraser River, this mighty river that goes through

the south end of Vancouver, city of Vancouver and New Westminster's, actually

an older district than Vancouver proper.

And so it's got a lot of historic buildings and history in itself.

It's an urban neighborhood, you know, you're not out in the suburbs.

It's got a city feel to it.

There are hotels and some Airbnbs there for sure.

To stay there are more affordable and it's got amazing transit links; from there,

you can get what's called the SkyTrain.

You can shoot downtown in like 20 minutes.

That would be my recommendation for somewhere more affordable and

where I live, North Vancouver, also a great place to stay for tourists.

There's a district called the Shipyards District, right by the

waterfront in North Vancouver.

Amazing views of downtown, lots to do, great for kids to play there.

Lots of bars and restaurants.

If you come in the winter, you can ski there at Grouse Mountain or

Seymour Mountain or Cyprus Mountain.

And they're really, they're not hard to get to.

You can get there in just a short drive, or you can hike there, in the summer.

And the more adventurous you are, the further you can go.

The North Shore's the place, if you are into mountain biking, skiing, hiking.

There's really no better location.

And there's this lovely little ferry you can take from the North Shore to downtown.

It takes about 12 minutes called the Sea Bus.

Amazing views, sometimes even see Orcas out there and maybe you see seals.

It's a really lovely way to commute to downtown.

And how do you pay for the SkyTrain and the ferry?

Is it all one card?

Can you just use your bank card

Yeah, just tap with a credit card.

Easy.

So that's your easiest way, but is it cheaper to top up a ticket or no

Oh, I maybe saved by 10% by getting a Compass pass.

I don't think it's worth it if you're a tourist.

You save like 25 cents or something if you have your own Compass

I think it's like three to $5 for transit, like a bus journey

or a sea bus or something.

You can get Ubers around as well, which I think are usually

actually pretty reasonable.

How about getting over to Granville Island?

Yeah.

Granville Island's worth a visit.

We have a fringe festival here in September every year.

Vancouver Fringe, I go every year.

It's fantastic.

There's probably 20 venues on Granville Island, which is used

to be an industrial site, and then all heavy industry moved out.

The federal government owns this island.

And they converted many of these old warehouses and works

buildings into art spaces.

It's a great place to spend a day wandering around.

They've got a really great indoor market there as well.

If you're into gourmet food, like gourmet cheeses and meats and baked goods, that

place is absolutely jammed to the rafters.

In September, which is a great time to visit Vancouver.

'cause the tourist crowds tend to have died down a little bit by then but

the weather's usually really nice.

The Fringe Festival, amazing way to spend a week going to different fringe shows.

There's some really fun and diverse and interesting

performances you can check out.

What about the best places for food?

Because Vancouver's a foodie city.

I like Chinatown.

There's a place in Chinatown, east of Main Street, a block called East Georgia, and

it's got probably five or six restaurants.

It is fantastic.

My friend of mine lives on that block and I tell him, you live on the best block

in the entire city for getting food.

They've got ramen noodles, Vietnamese.

There's an Italian restaurant.

There's a great Irish pub there as well.

East Georgia, in Chinatown.

I'd also recommend Commercial Drive, sounds like an industrial state on

the outskirts, but it's like a British High Street, it's probably about two

miles long and dozens of restaurants, and they're all are independently

owned, family run restaurants.

A lot of 'em have been there for years.

And you are guaranteed to find something you like on commercial drive, whatever

cuisine you like, Ethiopian Indian, Japanese, Chinese, lots of Italian

restaurants, some great pizza restaurants.

There's this great pizza restaurant, run by a couple and they separated.

So, I think the man kept running the restaurant and the woman opened a

pizza restaurant across the street.

This is the local legend doing like eternal competition with each

other to make the finest pizza.

It's got, it's really personal.

Oh my gosh.

You are just indulging in bitterness with every bite.

Yeah, true enough.

true

is the taste of sweet revenge.

Yeah, exactly.

Commercial drive, it's about a 10 or 15 minute journey on

the SkyTrain from downtown.

That sounds fantastic.

And again, it's the whole world has come to town on one road.

Yes, a hundred percent.

Something that I got asked about Vancouver and I

thought I'd pass this one onto you.

Does it really rain all the time?

It's raining right now.

Tell you that much.

It's raining here well.

If you come in November and December and January,

it is gonna rain for sure.

The odds of going a week here without rain in those months are very unlikely.

The summertime, dry and sunny.

Between like June and September it basically doesn't rain.

A handful of days.

Hardly at all.

In the winter people come to ski.

So we have a sort of saying here, if it's raining in the city,

it's snowing in the mountains.

So, locals who are into skiing have a little bit of a different relationship

with the rain in the wintertime because they're thinking about fresh powder that's

go ski, heavy rainfall, people are rubbing their hands to get up the mountain.

And you're sort of oddly protected Vancouver.

I think people who haven't been, get a bit confused because there's Vancouver

as a city and then there's Vancouver Island, they're close, but they're

different and, and I think Vancouver Island protects the city a bit.

Yeah, it does.

The real storms come in on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and if

you're into storm watching, you wanna go out there to the Pacific with the

big waves and the storms coming in.

It's really dramatic, the lightning on the horizon and the big storms rolling in.

We don't get that.

We just get rain.

I mentioned earlier, you run Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours.

It's an extremely exciting name.

Where did that idea come from?

I started the company in 2012 and I was looking

for a theme to start with.

I wanted to do it in Gastown, the oldest neighborhood.

So I thought, well, what gives us a reason to walk around Gastown?

What is an era that will be of interest to people?

What is a set of stories that will be intriguing?

I didn't wanna just call it the Gastown Walking Tour.

I wanted to make it themed.

And I soon settled on prohibition history because I felt like everyone knows

about prohibition history In the States.

The 1920s, Al Capone, speakeasy, New York City, Chicago, corruption, bootlegging,

these are all terms that evoke a sense of a place in the sagas of American history.

And we had all the same things here.

We had Bootlegging, mobsters, corruption, illegal drinking

dens, and no one associates that.

With the history of Canada.

Actually prohibition came in first in Canada before the States,

but it was a total catastrophe.

And it was abolished after a few years just as it came in, in the States.

So this huge business started up smuggling liquor into the US called

rum running, and people made a fortune.

The stories of those families and the legacy they left is deep in Vancouver.

Some of our most famous live music venues built on rum running money

As soon as I started reading about this, I thought this is interesting stuff.

And that's my litmus test for designing a tour.

The idea of the Forbidden Vancouver tour, it plays with prohibition,

the forbidden, the demon drink that was banned at that time.

It's a thread that runs through all our work.

It's not a Sightsee tour.

There are some sites, we'll bring you to on the way and talk about,

but it's not like an open bus where you go around and there's a audio

recording saying, well, this was this and that was that, and this was this.

This is like deep storytelling in the place where it happened.

I love those stories that are not well known because perhaps the

city of Vancouver's not wanted to celebrate the people involved in them.

It slipped from public consciousness.

Like talking about corrupt police chiefs, talking about unsolved murders, talking

about on a darker and more serious note, the treatment of indigenous people in

Stanley Park before it became a park.

What happened to those people?

It's a terrible story.

There's no monument of that.

There's no explanation about that in the park when you go as a tourist,

there's some nice totem poles.

There's a lot more to the story of those totem poles than you're

led to believe when you visit.

And so I feel like shining a light on some of those dark corners of history is really

the through line, through all my work.

How do people leave the tour?

Are they sort of in shock and wide-eyed about this totally different city?

I imagine some locals come on these as well and I thought, well, I thought

I knew Vancouver and now hooey.

Yeah, that's a great question.

We, we probably had about 50% locals on our tour.

Very unusual for most tour companies that we gather a really big local following.

People wanna learn about the place they live, that's what we're here to do.

People say to me, I've lived my whole life here.

I've lived here for 70 years.

I had no idea about any of that.

I bet those stories are repeated at dinner

conversations, for weeks afterwards, say, you'll never believe this.

Reeling from that shock and realization that there's this whole

undercover story and I'm sure every city has its undercover stories.

It's being able to draw it out.

You were studying history before, or you were practicing history before?

I don't have any formal training in history.

All my work has been self-taught.

Reading up on Vancouver history, visiting the archives, now I'm like

13 years in, i'm on the board of the Vancouver Historical Society.

I'm a published author on Vancouver History.

I've written for many of our local media outlets on Vancouver history,

I've been on many podcasts and TV talking about Vancouver history.

I've got a lot of friends who are historians in the city who, um.

You know, I talk to you all the time about our take on things

compared to what their take is.

So I feel now very well placed to do this work, but it's been

a journey for me personally.

As a caveat to that, our most popular tour, the Lost Souls of Gastown is

very unique and different compared to the average walking tour.

It's more like a roving one person play.

Ooh.

I have an acting background myself.

We use professional actors and they're in character a hundred percent the whole way

through as someone from the Victorian era.

And so they talk about the most important dramatic events of gas

towns, early years, smallpox outbreaks, the great fire unsolved murders.

The impact of the Klondike gold rush on the city.

But rather than stopping and saying, oh, the great fire swept down here faster than

a sprinting man, their own story is woven into the story of gas town's early years.

And so for that reason, there is creative license there because

it's a fictional character.

Some of the other characters they're mentioning are

fictional and some are real.

But every story is based on documented evidence from the

archives around what happened in Vancouver, in those early years.

And that style of tour actually does give a good touch to

Vancouver's creative scene because there is a big creative scene in Vancouver.

Is a big movie business here.

Yeah.

People call it Hollywood North.

I understand it's the third biggest center outside of LA and New York

City for filming in North America.

You often see endless trucks lined up and cameras and lights and things.

It's very rare I actually walk along and see something being filmed

always seems to be they're setting up or taking the, taking down.

Gastown is one of the places they film the most.

And often you're walking along and suddenly you'll come across, uh,

like a hundred very smartly dressed people, all the extras and you've

gotta stop, the police will stop you.

They film the scene, action and everyone's walking about, and there's cameras

like two minutes and it's like, cut.

And then all the locals can carry on

you can't plan that into the tour.

We'll just pause.

We'll watch this for a couple of minutes and then we'll get moving.

Where can people find out more about your tours

Online ForbiddenVancouver.ca and they can

book them on the website as well.

Very straightforward.

We've got all the tours profiled on there, people to check out.

Saturday nights, we will sell out for sure, but as much as

possible we try and keep a bigger team of guys and just add guides.

Rather than saying we are capping it to 20 people, we'll add a second guide

and then we can bring more people.

If you can be a little bit flexible, you'll have no trouble

booking even the day before.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of Destination

Unlocked, where Will Woods is making Charles Dickens posthumously

wish he'd been born in Vancouver.

If you enjoy tours with a little dramatic flare, all factual mind, these

aren't ghost tours, you'll actually come away with some real undercover

history here, you can check out the full range at forbiddenvancouver.ca.

Time for a quick Vancouver quiz.

Bonus point if you follow the Destination Unlocked podcast

wherever you're currently listening.

Good luck.

First question.

What is the giant green urban park that is bigger than New York Central Park?

Stanley Park.

Indeed it is.

How much bigger is it?

Oh my gosh.

for you?

I'm gonna guess double

10%.

Oh, I over did it.

How many acres?

570.

Thousand one.

So I went over for one and way

I've got a lot more questions.

You if you're interested.

I'm just, the quiz is, it's gone the wrong way this quiz

doing extremely badly at this quiz.

I think I'm right on this one, but only 'cause I've researched it in advance.

What was Vancouver's original name before Incorporation?

The official name was the Grandville Town site

and then unofficially Gas Town

Yeah, I had Granville, but I'll give you two points for that.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you very

much.

I'll keep them.

Can I redeem them

but,

True or false.

You can ski and sail on the same day in Vancouver,

It is true.

It might be a cold day out on the water, but you can do it.

If you love the outdoors and if you love being

active, you have got it all.

You do.

A friend of mine runs a company called Vancouver Water Adventures, and they

have the biggest jet ski fleet in North America or something crazy.

And so you can go in English Bay in the heart of the city, and then you've got

sort of the main body of the city of Vancouver that goes out to UBC at the end.

You can like rent jet skis and go jet skiing , anytime between

sort of June and September.

Being out there is amazing.

Like those things really move.

You fly, you know, flying past Valley Park, my jet ski at

And the fact that you're protected from the main

ocean means you can go even faster.

Next Question, which Suspension Bridge is the city's most famous thrill spot?

There's two suspension bridges on the North Shore.

There's the Capilano Suspension Bridge which is the longer

bridge and it's the more dramatic setting, the canyon's deeper there.

And then there's the Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge,

which is near where I live.

And the main difference is that Lynn Canyon's free.

Also some other things at the Capilano suspension bridge . You can

walk the bigger suspension bridge.

You can go on the cliff walk, a lot of really interesting information about

the forest, about indigenous people.

The Squamish nation, that's who land its on.

If your sole interest is to walk over a suspension bridge,

then the Lynn Valley Suspension Bridge saves you a lot of money.

And also if you're really into like hiking or just going on a walk in the forest,

Lynn Valley's got limitless trails.

It's really impressive.

The canyon's got huge cliffs raging, depending on the time of year.

If you're there in the spring, it's like raging River as the snow melts.

It is nice to know that there is an option to

do it on a lower budget because city breaks can get expensive.

Final question in our quiz, and you've already got more

points than there are questions.

What seafood delicacy is considered the local favorite?

There's a couple of things that come to mind.

There's the BC Roll, which is a kind of sushi, but then also salmon.

You know, there's a number of different salmon dishes

often served on a cedar plank.

It's quite common.

And you're talking about salmon runs even today at massive

salmon runs that come through.

And before the advent of industry in this part of the world, you can

imagine the scale of the salmon runs that must have come through here.

Millions and millions and millions of salmon.

That was of course central to people's lives here.

A huge part of their diet and also a deep part of the mythology and

culture and history of the people here.

The, the salmon is a sacred creature to the Cosalish people.

And that's not coincidental.

So One of the things I try and do on tour is to introduce some

of these indigenous place names.

So Barard Inlet, for example, is called sle.

And SLE too.

The people of in that Vancouver used to be called Gastown.

Officially, it was called Grantville, the Granville Town site that was come.

Kale, meaning place of the Big Leaf maple tree.

That's the Cosalish name for this.

And these days when you drive down from Whistler down to Vancouver,

Whistler is about two hours away.

You could ski for a week and not do the same, run twice.

Absolutely enormous.

The drive there, it is on a road called the Sea to Sky Highway.

They put on the drive now, the settler place name, and also

all the indigenous place names.

So you can learn as you go.

Like,.

So I think it's a really great, Addition or evolution in, in

how we think about the city.

And understanding what those place names mean is also a key

part of it because the indigenous place names were usually educational.

They had a message in them for passing on information.

It wasn't just a nice name, it was a clear description of what this place

either threatened or offered or what you could do there, what you could see.

It was a key way of sharing information about a place.

Yeah.

I like your point Now, I hadn't actually thought about it that way, but that

makes a lot of sense with the place names, that I'm familiar with and

many of them fit that description.

So come Kamala Place of the Big Leaf maple Tree, Hoi Hoi.

Was the largest village site in what is today's Stanley

Park place of making masks.

It was a spiritually significant site that was used for like cultural

celebrations, which often involve masks.

So yeah, there's a few examples of that that come to mind.

Well, you, you got, at least five, outta five there.

I think probably more.

It's a huge thing in North America generally, what is the correct

rate for tipping in Vancouver for meals, for tours, for taxis, for

people looking at you and smiling?

Yeah.

It can be intimidating to go somewhere and feel this pressure around tipping, but

not sure exactly what you should be doing.

In restaurants, you definitely should be tipping in restaurants and bars.

I know in Britain, if you go to a pub, you don't tip, you should definitely

tip here and people will not be happy with you if you're not tipping.

And did they suggest the amount to you?

Yeah, usually get a little machine, it comes up with the options

and it's like 15, 18, 20, uh, 18, 20, 25.

I'd say anything between 15 and 20% for food and, and like

going to a bar or something.

20 is like, oh yeah, this is really great service , 15, like, hmm, that was fine.

And anywhere in the middle for a normal meal would be what I'd say.

I dunno if this is happening in the uk, but in a lot of stores, you

also asked that when you do your checkout, ask if you wanna leave a tip.

So it's like if I go to my local, they're called liquor

stores here, like an off license.

And it's like, here's my four beers, do I wanna leave a 20% tip?

And I have to be honest, my answer is usually no

I've never seen that before.

Wow.

yeah, that's very common here.

But I would say not to feel any pressure as a visitor to tip people in stores,

but you won't get it in the supermarket.

A food court in a mall, you might get asked there.

Do you wanna leave a tip?

Personally, I think if I'm in a restaurant and I'm getting served, I'll leave a tip.

If it's in a food court, I think, well, I'm not leaving a 20% tip,

but I will leave a 5% tip and food courts are quite, quite common here.

A very cost effective way to get lunch.

No one's using cash anymore, right?

So the little thing comes up, do I wanna leave 15, 20, or 25?

I'm like, no tip, not, not, I'm not gonna pay any of those options.

Some food court places will say like five, 10 or 15.

I'm like, yeah, five or 10.

That's just a bit extra for the person preparing the food.

You know, those 5% might add up for them.

I don't mind doing that.

Taxis?

I think 10 maybe.

Maybe 15% for a taxi or Uber.

It's not quite as prevalent or extensive as in the states, whereas like, you know,

there's real tipping culture down there.

But it's, it's a gentle version of that.

It's not that different.

You know, you are expected to tip if someone's serving in tour guides,

you're expect tip guide, you know.

I think for me that depends on obviously what you thought of the experience.

But you know, everyone's in their own place in terms of their own finances and

what kind of budget they're traveling on.

But you do wanna make sure you tip your bartender or your

server, that's for

Well, you'll, you'll regret it.

not be able to go back.

Do you have a favorite place in Vancouver that you like to go in the evening?

like Gastown.

I go in Gastown a lot.

Great nightlife scene there.

There's this amazing live music venue in Gastown that no tourist ever know about.

It's a local place, a little bit tricky to find.

It's underground.

It's called Guilt and Co. It's a funny name.

It's underneath a bar called Local, so it's in Maple Tree Square.

Look for big line of people seemingly going down into a basement.

There's not a big signup or anything, but Guilt and Co. Absolutely

fantastic live music venue.

Low Ceiling.

It's a old building, goes back to 1990.

It's a really cool space of being great live music there.

They have some really, really good local bands there.

They do a night there once a month called Under a Harlem Moon with a

local artist called crystal de Santos and all those old r and b and, uh,

Motown hits everyone's dancing.

Really, really fun.

Gas town's got three different comedy clubs.

Certainly the Underground Comedy Club, they get, they get some

really good acts in there.

A lot of comics will come on touring, playing like the biggest stadiums, like

well-known comics, they'll do warmup gigs at one of these local comedy clubs.

That can be a really funny, really fun night out during that.

And there's a lot of good bars around there as well

We mentioned day trips out to Whistler, especially

for people who love skiing and also hiking and stuff into the summer.

Going up the, the sea to sky highway.

Is there anywhere else for a good day trip if you're in Vancouver

for a week or more than a week, a good easy day trip outta Vancouver?

Another.

Destination to check?

Canada's a big place and things are spread out, right?

So a day's not very long to get somewhere and back.

You're not really leaving Metro Vancouver.

You can do a day trip to Vancouver Island to go to Victoria.

It's a pretty long day 'cause it's a ferry ride.

Two hours, you've gotta drive an hour to the ferry terminal.

Wait for your ferry, take your ferry.

It's another half an hour drive on the other end, you can do an

organized tour that will get you started really early in the morning.

It'll get you to Victoria, you can look around for a few hours, maybe go to

the Buchart Gardens, which will kind of a botanic garden in, in Victoria.

And then, it'll get you home.

It is a long day . If you could stay the night, it'll be more chill.

But you've got longer than a day.

Even, even Whistler in you, you could do Whistler in a day.

Right.

Like I, when I ski there with my son, because it's

expensive to stay there, right.

We'll we'll leave at like six, be on the ski hill by eight 30,

closes at four, jump in the car, drive home back in time for dinner.

So you can do it.

You can go out there to ski for the day or just visit for the day and look around.

But if you can stay a night or two, it makes it a bit more relaxed and

you can a bit more in, and if you've got a few days, you can really get

out and explore British Columbia, which has just got so much to offer.

It's an amazing place.

One of the places that we love going to, we go every year,

it's called the Okanagan.

It's a region about five hours east of Vancouver, and it's this northern tip of

the Mojave Desert that stretches all the way through the States, through Idaho,

Utah, Arizona, and down into Mexico, all the way down to Central America.

That mountain range, it's a desert and a very northern tip just

pokes into Canada, the only desert in Canada called the Okanagan.

And it's not like Arizona obviously, it's much further north.

It's arid, it's a bit like Spain or California, absolutely

beautiful, massive lakes.

The main lake there, lake Okanagan, it's like five times

bigger than Lochness or something.

Can you imagine how big the monster is?

I know they've got a monster apparently.

They've got a statue of it anyway.

Sort of desert mountains on both sides.

The water's so warm in the lake.

You can swim there in the summer and it's like, uh, you can spend

all day out there in the water.

It's 'cause it's a desert.

It's really warm.

It's sounds like be a bit too hot to be honest in the summer.

They've got beaches along the, on the lakefront there.

And it's not that crowded.

It's not well known.

Locals go there, but you haven't got people flying in there to visit

there from all over the world.

It's a bit more low key, which I, which I really like.

And the drive there is just phenomenal . There's a provincial

park called Manning Park.

You can drive through.

On these like clifftop roads and huge snowcapped mountains, wild rivers,

you often see bears on the drive.

It's really something.

And, you know, we had so many guests on our tours who fly to Calgary,

see the Rockies, which are Rockies are just, I hope you do a show

on the Rockies with someone who's

knows more about them

I will do my best to get someone from the rockies.

I really recommend the Rockies.

Canadian Rockies are unbelievable.

The glaciers, the huge crazy mountains, the forest, all

the wildlife you see there.

Last time we went, we saw, grizzly bears, eagles, giant herds of goats

crossing the streets, so you've gotta stop your car, caribou.

It was really something.

And then you drive through the kute, which is sort of like

a smaller set of mountains.

It's incredibly scenic.

They haven't got the scale of the Rockies.

But just beautiful, beautiful scenery.

And then the Okanagan, which is this like desert region, there's

a big wine growing industry there.

It's full of vineyards.

You can go and visit all these vineyards and do wine tastings and like, you

know, bike rides, you can do between the vineyards, that kind of thing.

And then from there through Manning Park and into Vancouver.

If you have 10 days and you do that, you rent a car and do Calgary to Vancouver,

you'll have a absolutely fantastic time.

You'll never want to leave.

Alright, time for our quick fire round.

So I've got six questions for you.

What is your top thing, one thing to see or do in Vancouver?

For me personally, it would be getting out and doing a walk or hike

in the mountains or in Stanley Park.

That would be my number one.

What would be your tourist trap to avoid?

I don't wanna upset any of my friends in the tourism industry.

Tourist trap to avoid.

Personally, my own perspective, I would avoid going to a shopping mall like Metro

Town, the Pacific Center, Robson Street.

I'm not really interested in walking around of stores.

You do see 'em advertised to tourists, and you do see tourists

that go to shopping malls.

I know some people love shopping.

I don't like doing that.

And it's the same stores you see everywhere, to be honest.

So it's not a, there's nothing special to

there's no reason to do it there.

Yeah.

I don't think so.

So that would be my somewhat carefully chosen

answer to that question.

diplomatic.

What's your favorite time of year to visit Vancouver?

I was thinking about that recently, actually.

September's great because you've, it's not, you can get pretty hot

and when you're a tourist and it's really hot and you're thirst be, you

know, you're walking around all day, it can be quite draining, right?

So September it's a little bit cooler, but it's just lovely weather.

September and it's not quite so crowded.

There's not quite so many tourists here.

So I'd say September's great.

I. Also really nice in May.

We've got a lot of cherry trees here.

Again, a big Asian influence in the city.

There's whole streets line with cherry trees and when those cherry blossom

come out, it is something else.

You know, you walk down three blocks of just bright pink

explosion the whole way down.

Some of the residential streets in Vancouver got some really

nice old heritage houses with the cherry blossoms outside.

It can still be a little bit wet in May, so you might get a little bit of rain, but

the cherry blossoms just after a rainfall.

What a thing to see, I think it's a tossup May versus September for me.

What would be a good book or film to see or

read before you go to Vancouver?

There's no shortage of films that were made here, but

you'd never know it was Vancouver, happy Gilmore that was filmed in,

that's a movie that you've seen.

There's countless movies that have been filmed here.

They won't really tell you about the city though.

Books, I'm friends with a lot of local history writers.

I'm gonna offend someone by not mentioning their book, but the book I would say

that I read recently that I'd absolutely love a book called Blood, sweat and Fear.

It's about the old city coroner.

His name is Inspector Vance.

And his story of his life is absolutely incredible and the window

into what it was like here in the thirties, forties and fifties.

For me, I think it's one of the most interesting times in Vancouver's history

is the interwar period, obviously the prohibition era, and going into the

Great Depression, very interesting time here in Great Depression, hit Vancouver

very hard into the 1940s when there were a lot of crime and corruption

problems in Vancouver in the forties.

And so this man's career spans that period.

And he incorporates the changes in technology that happened

around investigating crime.

It is like CSI.

But in the 1930s and this guy's going out there trying to solve crimes

and it's very, very interesting.

The author's called Eve Lazarus.

She's a really prolific and very talented local historian.

So that's if you can get a copy, blood, sweat, and fit.

It's about Vancouver, but it's about that era.

So even if you're not from here, you really get a lot out of it.

I could talk a long time about Vancouver history books that I like.

Another one that comes to mind is called Vancouver Noir by

John BelShore and Diane Pervy.

Again about that interwar period and about cultural changes in particular

changes in the media and changes in media technology, like the advent of the

portable camera really changed news media because now you had reporters turning

up a crime scene, taking photographs and putting in, in newspapers that had

never happened before because you need like half an hour to take a photograph.

Now there's a lot of journalistic standards around that, but in those

days with this news technology.

You'd have newspaper reporters showing up at crime scenes before the police.

Sometimes newspapers are big business and they're well funded

and a lot of reporters around.

And so you'd have newspapers, reporters taking photos, very graphic photos of

crime scenes, putting 'em in newspapers.

And it really fed into that film noir aesthetic and the film noir era.

They're very talented historians, John and Diane, and they really tell an interesting

story about that connection between technology, news, media, art, and life.

Very interesting.

I like the sound of both of them.

Okay, what is your top food or drink to try when you visit.

It's probably sushi.

Yeah, sushi or dims sum.

Dims sums are kind of Chinese.

Chinese dumplings.

So I think sushi or or dim sum, um, holds up pretty well Vancouver compared to

any other North American city, I think.

And final question, I want a top authentic souvenir.

Something that I can take home from Vancouver that is not

a fridge mag or a t-shirt.

I think it would have to be a piece of indigenous artwork

and not something, not some mass produced copy made in a different

country, something authentically made by a local indigenous artist.

And how do you know where to find that?

There's art galleries around, they're gonna be a bit

more on the expensive side.

Museum of Vancouver's got a really good gift store, has a lot of really

thoughtful items and a lot of indigenous made or informed gifts as well.

So that's a good place.

That's an interesting place to visit too.

It's near Granville Island, just walking distance from Granville Island.

There's places on Granville Island as well.

Can I give a more political answer

Yeah.

So one of the things that I am, I think about with my work

is that this was a British colony, and that indigenous people suffered

terrible abuses during that time.

And there's still, indigenous people suffering to this day,

across Canada for a number of different reasons in different ways.

The British came here and established a system called the residential school

System, where indigenous children were forcibly taken from their homes and

their families and sent to these remote institutions where they were imprisoned.

And many of them died from abuse.

Many of them suffered terrible abuse.

Starvation is often used as a punishment tactic.

And this went on for like a hundred years.

The last one, didn't close until the nineties

. There was a commission into this about 20 years ago, that really

finally shone a light on what actually went on in these schools.

More like child prisons.

There's a national day of mourning that we have, every year, to honor

and commemorate those young people who suffered as a result of that system.

And we all wear orange t-shirts across the country.

The slogan for this movement is Every Child Matters.

And you can buy a t-shirt here that says Every Child Matters.

And most cases, buying it is gonna make a contribution to a local

indigenous person or group or nonprofit that's helping indigenous youth.

And you can share some history that isn't well known.

Maybe it's different these days, but I went through the British school system.

I did history in school and I never learned anything about the British Empire.

it.

Wasn't mentioned.

I never learned anything about residential schools.

I get British people come on tours and they say, oh, it was terrible what

Canadians did to indigenous children.

That was terrible.

And I remind them that people doing this were often a British

and consider themselves British.

And the idea of a Canadian identity took a long time to develop.

Usually I would say, come on, not a t-shirt,

what's a t-shirt as a souvenir.

but

Yeah.

You mentioned that.

And that's not just a t-shirt, it's a political statement, wearing

that, which I think is powerful.

Will Woods from Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours.

Thank you so much for unlocking Vancouver for us.

Daniel, thank you for having me.

It's been a pleasure.

That's all for this episode of Destination Unlocked.

A big thank you to Will Woods from Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours

from packing Vancouver's lesser known stories from prohibition

and crime to neighborhoods shaped by history rather than hype.

If you enjoy travel that goes deeper than the highlights his

walking tours are brilliant.

And if you've enjoyed this episode, hit follow or subscribe so you can

easily find your way back next time.

I'm Daniel Edward.

Thanks for listening.

Bye-bye.