Gastown

Gastown sits on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) and the səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation), and Parks Canada notes that this shore of Burrard Inlet mattered to all three peoples before Europeans arrived. The neighbourhood itself grew from one saloon. Parks Canada says that in 1867 Captain John “Gassy Jack” Deighton persuaded some mill workers to build him a bar on the south side of the inlet, and the settlement around it took his nickname. A fire in 1886 cleared out its ramshackle first buildings, and the brick and stone that replaced them still line Water and Cordova streets.

The Government of Canada recognized the Gastown Historic District as a National Historic Site on 20 April 2009. Its listing counts 141 buildings, most of them put up between 1886 and 1914, and it protects the open views north up each cross street to the mountains above North Vancouver. The steam clock at Water and Cambie streets dates from 1977, and Destination Vancouver counts it among only a few steam clocks in the world. The bollards and the red-brick paving on Water Street came out of a 1970s beautification push, after a heritage movement had fought off plans for large-scale demolition.

L'Abattoir at 217 Carrall Street and PiDGiN at 350 Carrall both made the 2026 Michelin Guide's recommended list, and Ask for Luigi at 305 Alexander Street sits on it too. Walk east along Powell Street for St. Lawrence at number 269, where the Québécois cooking holds one Michelin star, and The Mackenzie Room at 415 has a recommendation of its own. Clough Club and Pourhouse both poured happy hours during Vancouver Cocktail Week in March 2026, when the Gastown BIA billed the neighbourhood as the week's headquarters.

The Powell Street Festival first ran in 1977, and its society works from the area it calls Paueru Gai. Its own pages say people know that area today as the Downtown Eastside. In 1942 the federal government ordered more than 21,000 people of Japanese origin away from the coast under the War Measures Act and sold the property it had confiscated from them. They regained the right to live anywhere in Canada in 1949, and Canada apologized in the House of Commons with an offer of compensation in September 1988.