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A Marvel fan’s guide to Vancouver

Vancouver is perfect for movie-makers and holiday-makers alike — just ask Deadpool…
Ed Grenby - 2 December 2024
Significant chunks of Vancouver get destroyed – this is, after all, a superhero movie – but that doesn’t mean the city isn’t a much-loved part of Marvel’s record-breaking Deadpool & Wolverine.

 

Now on Disney+ after taking more than a billion dollars at the box office, the film uses the Canadian city as a backdrop, but Vancouver is also the home town of one of its stars, Ryan Reynolds. And the script offers knowing nods to his proud Canadian heritage, so that when one adversary describes co-star Hugh Jackman’s character Wolverine as “the only thing worth a s**t to have come out of Canada”, audiences know it’s meant ironically. For Deadpool himself, the motivation to turn from cynic to superhero comes from the warm, quirky world his “civilian” alter ego inhabits in Vancouver – and it’s a world any visitor to the city will recognise. It’s an outrageously friendly place (when my airline misplaces my luggage, perfect strangers offer to help) that’s famous for its quality of life, and it’s noticeably not-American: there are perhaps three gorgeous little independent coffee shops for every Starbucks in town. But Vancouver is eminently suitable for holiday-makers, too. There’s a lovely laid-back lifestyle of terrific food and drink, pleasantly diverting museums, excursions on the ocean and an outdoorsy culture that takes in everything from beach volleyball to skiing.

 

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The latter happens at Grouse Mountain (grousemountain.com), a 15-minute drive from downtown. In winter it’s a Christmassy wonderland of snowshoe trails and warming fondues accompanied by excellent local wines. And in summer, it’s… well, it’s still pretty nippy up there, but its resident grizzly bears come out of hibernation, romping round their refuge to the delight of kids (and me). On the way back into town you’ll pass Capilano Suspension Bridge, which was strung 200ft high across a 500ft-wide river valley in 1889. It has been modernised since, but is still thrillingly wobbly when you cross it. It’s now the centre-piece of a woodland park, with boardwalks pottering around fish-filled ponds, suspended between towering Douglas fir trees and cantilevered over granite cliff edges (capbridge.com).

 

Vancouver is still very much a working port town, though many of its docks are now used more for whale-watching trips than whale-hunting ones. Granville Island is a charming example: once a docks and industrial zone, it’s now a hippy/hipster enclave of arts venues, microbreweries, one-off boutiques and the fantastic Granville Island Public Market, where I scoff zingingly fresh local calamari (granvilleisland.com).

 

I feel a little bad about the squid when I get face-to-tentacle with its cousins at Vancouver Aquarium (vanaqua.org) later that day, but am happily distracted by cavorting otters, raucous sea lions and sweet pig-nosed turtles. And I ease my eco-conscience slightly by cycling there, since the aquarium sits in the middle of Stanley Park, a 400-hectare hunk of beach-fringed, trail-laced rainforest right at the figurative and geographic heart of the city. Vancouver is the most cyclable metropolis I’ve ever experienced, with bike lanes on every street, so I two-wheel it almost everywhere. My harbourside hotel, the Westin Bayshore (westinbayshore.com), lends them out gratis, but you can hire bikes, or borrow them on the city’s public bike share scheme, Mobi, from just $3.

 

Deadpool & Wolverine fans will search in vain for the 24th Street station, where the film climaxes, but Vancouver is a gateway city. On previous visits, I’ve driven out east to the glorious national parks of Banff and Jasper, or flown out west – on the seaplanes that soar off from the harbour, the Indiana Jones theme playing stirringly in my head – towards British Columbia’s nearby Gulf Islands for bear-spotting and storm-watching. This time, though, I take advantage of Vancouver’s position at the start of the famous Inside Passage, joining Princess Cruises (princess.com) for a brilliantly cinematic voyage into Alaska.

 

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You probably won’t want to spend a whole holiday in Vancouver, but it’s a fantastic stopping-point on a trip around the west coast of Canada or the USA. It’s no spoiler to say I’m glad the spandex gang saved it from oblivion.


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