East from Downtown

When you leave Vancouver [1] and head due east, you travel through the most built-up and heavily populated area of British Columbia, skirting modern commercial centers, residential suburbs, and zones of heavy industry. Greater Vancouver extends almost 100 kilometers (62 miles) along the Fraser Valley [2], through mostly residential areas.

The main route east is the TransCanada Highway, which parallels the Fraser River to the south, passing through Burnaby [3], Langley, and Abbotsford. The original path taken by this highway crosses the Fraser River at New Westminster [4], the capital of British Columbia for a short period in the 1860s.