I thought Vancouver is occupied by the Chinese?
flintlocke;
Good morning to you sir, I hope that the night cooled off for you all like it did here and that it's shaping up to be a decent day.
Hopefully I can be forgiven for a wee bit of a geography discussion, but what many Canucks who don't live in what we refer to as "The Lower Mainland" and is sometimes referred to as "Metro Vancouver" is actually all this.
Metro Vancouver is a regional district (MVRD) of 21 municipalities including the major areas of Vancouver, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, New Westminster, Coquitlam, Surrey, White Rock, Maple Ridge, Langley, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Delta and Pitt Meadows.
In addition other municipalities and government bodies that make up Metro Vancouver include Abbotsford, Anmore, Belcarra, Bowen Island, Coquitlam, Delta, Langley, Lions Bay, Maple Ridge, New Westminster, Pitt Meadows, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, the Tsawwassen First Nation and White Rock.
When looking for an ethnic breakdown of all that, I got this.
A breakdown of Metro Vancouver’s visible minority populations in 2021, as identified by Statistics Canada:
Chinese: 512,260 (20%)
South Asian: 369,295 (14%)
Filipino: 142,120 (5.5%)
West Asian: 64,645 (2.5%)
Korean: 63,465 (2.4%)
Latin American: 51,500 (2%)
Black: 41,180 (1.6%)
Japanese: 31,195 (1.2%)
Arab: 22,445 (0.9%)
As I perceive it when travelling in various communities for work, there are certainly concentrations of ethnic communities in different places. For instance when we'd do pickups or deliveries in Richmond, one would be hard pressed to see folks who were not what appeared to be of Chinese extraction to me. Similarly in Surrey, there was a strong South Asian or East Indian community.
As Killer Bee mentioned, when Hong Kong was being taken over by the CCP, a huge influx of folks from there came here, many to Richmond evidentally.
When our daughter did her teaching practicum in one of the many Surrey high schools as it's the biggest school district in BC, she reported there were very few students of European background other than some kids whose parents had left Russia or the Ukraine.
Where she teaches now in Coquitlam there is a broader mix but still many of the kids will be the only ones in the house who speak English. She said that parent teacher interview days are always a challenge.
A little more than a century ago the grandparents on both sides of my family escaped Europe as refugees, so I've got some empathy for people who want to go to a new land and make a better life for themselves and their children.
Most of my working life was beside folks who'd come here from Vietnam and India as well as a smattering from the entire globe truly.
As long as people want to come here and work hard to make this a better place for us all, I'm good.
Please note I'm cognizant that's a tall order and was the topic of discussion with many of my coworkers who felt the same way, that is to say they wanted to move forward and leave "all that stuff" back in the old country as my friend Kuldeep used to say.
Anyways, that's the long version of what Metro Vancouver is and who might be living there.
Thanks for reading and all the best.
Dwayne