In Photos: Mini Trip to Canada

Vancouver is a city surrounded by nature. You can ski in the morning and paddleboard in the afternoon, or shop for vintage and visit craft breweries and distillery tasting rooms on funky Main Street. Eat Japanese Izakaya and sing late-night karaoke in upstairs rooms of Korean restaurants in the West End.

Take a walk with a First Nations guide through Stanley Park and learn more about indigenous culture. And enjoy that glorious Vancouver lifestyle of feasting on ocean-fresh seafood overlooking those snow-topped mountains.

This totem pole in Stanley Park, Vancouver, is just the start; there’s a whole world to discover when it comes to Canada’s First Nations, each with its own language, traditions, art and history. Launch your kayak from downtown Vancouver, paddle past soaring skyscrapers and mossy green mountains as you hear ancient legends from your First Nations guide.

Sip artisan soda made from traditional First Nations ingredients in a funky Gastown teahouse with Coast Salish peoples’ wool weaving on the wall. Understand First Nations culture is contemporary, not historical.

What’s a little mist when you’re high above the treetops on Vancouver’s Grouse Mountain, deep in the temperate rainforest yet only 30 minutes from downtown? Take the scenic route, soaring to 854 metres on the Grouse Mountain Skyride, keeping watch for bears below; or join the locals on the Grouse Grind, a punishing 1.8 mile (2.9km) hike to the peak’s plateau.

Alpine flowers brush your boots as you trek through the summer meadows, eagles wheeling overhead. In winter, you can snowshoe the twinkling Light Walk around the frozen Blue Grouse Lake.