Lower Mainland


 * French version: Basses-terres.

The Lower Mainland (French: Les Basses-terres; IPA: [le bɑs.tɛːr] ) is a ceremonial county and former county proper (before 1966), now consisting of seven administrative counties, located on the southwest coast of the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) where the Fraser River empties into the Georgia Strait, adjacent to the US border.

Centred on Vancouver, home to over two million people, making it the most populous city in BC and third-most populous in Canada, all seven counties contain a significant part of Vancouver's large metropolitan area, which is usually referred to as Metro Vancouver when distinguishing from the Lower Mainland as a whole, which also includes a handful of rural, mountainous, and otherwise farmed/forested/undeveloped 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 which together form the Lower Mainland are home to over 6.68 million, almost one-third of whom live in Vancouver and over half of whom live in North Fraser County, and over 90% of whom live in what can be described as Metro Vancouver.

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 constituted a single county, which was called Lower Mainland County. From its founding as, the county seat was in Gastown, renamed Vancouver in 1886, which remained the county seat until 1955 when it was moved to New Westminster, 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.