The West End is located in the most densely populated, intensively active portion of the Lower Mainland. It shares the peninsula with the Downtown, Central Business District and Stanley Park. Until the turn of the century, the West End was only sparsely settled, due to its distance from the old Granville Townsite (Gastown).

The West End is home to a mixed population, old and young, of Canadians, immigrants and international transient residents. Close to 45,000 people of all ages, incomes, ethnicities, and sexual orientations live in the West End. The West End is also home to Western Canada’s largest LGBTQ community. Vancouver's gay village, called Davie Village, is centred primarily on Davie Street between Burrard and Bute. 

Did you know?

• A popular annual event, the Gay Pride Parade, follows a route through the West End and finishes at Sunset Beach.
• A marble drinking fountain with the name "Fortes" sits at the edge of Alexandra Park at English Bay. The fountain honours Joe Fortes, an early pioneer and the city's first lifeguard. From the 1890s, until his death in 1922, Fortes was famous for being at English Bay Beach and teaching generations of Vancouver children to swim.
• The first settler, John Morton, was a potter by trade and was lured to the area from New Westminster by the local deposits of coal and clay. In the summer of 1859, a survey ship had found coal on the shore of Burrard Inlet near the foot of Bute Street. Although coal was never actively mined in the area, its discovery led Morton and two partners to lay claim to the land with the intention of establishing a brick making operation.
• When St. Paul's Hospital was first established by the Catholic Church in 1894, it was located at the end of the Burrard Street trail "way out in the bush." A pathway extended southward to English Bay and a rutted wagon trail connected to Yaletown.

source: vancouver.ca