Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Vancouver Webcam, British Columbia Live Feed and Weather

The Port of Vancouver was the name of the largest port in Canada, the largest in the Pacific Northwest, and the largest port on the West Coast of North America by metric tons of total cargo, with 76.5 million metric tons.

This live feed is at the Port of Vancouver:

Vancouver webcam feed

In terms of container traffic measured in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), the port ranked in 2006 as the largest port in Canada, the largest in the Pacific Northwest, the fourth-largest port on the West Coast of North America, and fifth-largest in North America overall.

The Port of Vancouver trades $43 billion in goods with more than 90 trading economies annually. The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is the corporation responsible for management of the port, which, in addition to the city of Vancouver, includes all of Burrard Inlet and Roberts Bank Superport in Delta. With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, Vancouver’s seaport was able to compete with the major international ports for global trade because it was positioned as an alternative route to Europe. During the 1920s, the provincial government successfully fought to eliminate freight rates that discriminated against goods transported by rail through the mountains, giving the young lawyer of the case, future Vancouver Mayor and Canadian senator, Gerry McGeer, a reputation as “the man who flattened the Rockies.” Consequently, Prairie wheat came west through Vancouver rather than being shipped out through eastern ports. The federal government established the Harbour Commission (forerunner to the Port Authority) in the early 1920s to oversee port development.