Lower Mainland

The Lower Mainland is a name commonly applied to the region surrounding and including Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. As of 2011, 2,590,921 people (59% of British Columbia's total population), lived in the region; sixteen of the province's thirty most populous municipalities are located there.

While the term Lower Mainland has been recorded from the earliest period of non-native settlement in British Columbia, it has never been officially defined in legal terms. The British Columbia Geographical Names Information System (BCGNIS) comments that most residents of Vancouver might consider it to be only areas west of Mission and Abbotsford, while residents in the rest of the province consider it to be the whole region south of Whistler and west of Hope. However, the term has historically been in popular usage for over a century to describe a region that extends from Horseshoe Bay south to the Canada – United States border and east to Hope at the eastern end of the Fraser Valley.

Climate, ecology and geology of the Lower Mainland are consistent enough that it has been classified as a separate ecoregion (the Lower Mainland Ecoregion) within the Ecological framework of Canada, used by both Federal and Provincial Environment Ministries. The region is the traditional territory of the Sto:lo, a Halkomelem-speaking people of the Coast Salish linguistic and cultural grouping. There are two Regional Districts within the region, Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley Regional District.