Vancouver and Victoria: The Visitor's Guide

Les Harding is author of The Voyages of Lesser Men: Thumbnail Sketches
in Canadian Exploration.

Norman Adams has lived in Vancouver for almost twenty years. He has been a bookseller, sales manager for a major Canadian publisher, and a publishers’ representative with his own company. He is the author of Vancouver’s Top Ten.

Vancouver and Victoria: The Visitor’s Guide is arranged around 10 complete day tours, 7 for Vancouver, and 3 for Victoria and Vancouver Island. The tours will keep the visitor busy from around eight in the morning to after ten at night. They let you know the minimum amount of time it will take to cover any attraction and how much everything will cost. Each tour describes all the sights in a section of Vancouver or Victoria with advice on the best way to get there. Restaurants are suggested for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and a trendy nightspot for the late owls. I would be too tuckered out to do all 10 tours in a row, but that doesn’t matter. The author encourages you to pick and choose and plan your own itinerary.

The book is illustrated with a number of black-and-white photographs. There is a calendar of special events, a list of restaurants classified by type, hotels by area of the city, and a list of recreational facilities. The necessary phone numbers and whether or not a place accepts credit cards are also included. Prices for restaurants and hotels are classified inexpensive, average, or expensive.

The index is deficient however. It simply lists names and not subjects. If, for instance, you want to find a bookstore, you would have to know the name of the store. For a book geared toward first-time visitors this is awkward. A few maps might have been helpful as well.