Lower Mainland

The Lower Mainland, also less formally known as Metro Vancouver, is a ceremonial county and former county proper of the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC), home to the third-most populous metropolitan area in Canada. It is the largest of BC's seven county areas by population, itself consisting of seven counties proper, with Vancouver being the most populous city and urban core of the metropolitan area; however, while all seven counties contain at least part of Vancouver's metropolitan area, rural, mountainous, and otherwise forested/undeveloped areas within any of the seven counties are considered part of the Lower Mainland if they fall within one of the seven counties' boundaries, even if they fall outside the limits of the de facto metropolitan area. Sometimes the term "Metro Vancouver" is used to refer to only the urban and suburban regions of the Lower Mainland, excluding for the most part the ceremonial county's many rural areas. The seven counties of the Lower Mainland are coterminous with the Lower Mainland Police Area, which is under the jurisdiction of the Lower Mainland Constabulary (LMC). The seven counties together forming the Lower Mainland have a population of over 9 million, making it the most populous metropolitan area in BC and the third-most populous in Canada, after those of Toronto and Montreal.

Counties
The Lower Mainland is home to the following seven administrative counties:

History
At the delineation of BC's counties just prior to the province's admission to Canada in 1871, more or less the exact borders of what is now the Lower Mainland County Area constituted a single county, which was called Fraser County and in 1922 renamed to Lower Mainland County. From its founding as Fraser County, the county seat was in Gastown, renamed Vancouver in 1886, which remained the county seat until 1955 when it was moved to Burnaby, at the time the county's second-most populous municipality.

By 1960, Lower Mainland County had reached a population of nearly two million, making it the most populous county in Canada at the time, surpassed in population only by Toronto and Montreal, which are unitary authorities independent of any county. In 1965, the Lower Mainland County Council sent out a referendum to all households in the county on whether it should be divided into multiple counties; the referendum passed with 56% of respondents in favour, 23% against, and 21% neither for nor against. The following year, on 30 April 1966, Lower Mainland County was split into the seven counties it constitutes to this day. The same year, the Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia (the monarchist equivalent to today's Deputy President of British Columbia) officially named the Lower Mainland a ceremonial county of British Columbia.