Category: British Columbia

British Columbia /ˌbrɪtɪʃ kəˈlʌmbiə/ (B.C. or BC) (French: la Colombie-Britannique, C.-B.) is the westernmost of Canada’s provinces. Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858 and, in 1871, it became the sixth province of Canada. Its Latin motto is Splendor sine occasu (“Splendour without Diminishment”).
As well as being the westernmost province of Western Canada, British Columbia is also a component of the Pacific Northwest, along with the US states of Oregon and Washington. The province has strong cultural and personal ties to the Canadian Prairies and Ontario as well as to the West Coast of the United States and to Alaska and the Yukon.
The capital of British Columbia is Victoria, the 15th largest metropolitan region in Canada, named for Canada’s Queen at Confederation. The largest city is Vancouver, the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada, the largest in Western Canada, and the second largest in the Pacific Northwest. In 2009, British Columbia had an estimated population…