in 1898. Top left area marked with "Upper False Creek Flats" was the eastern part of False Creek before
land reclamation.
Pre-colonial Human settlement in the
Lower Fraser region began between 8000 and 10 000 years ago, following the retreat of the Sumas Glacier at the end of the
last ice age. The settlement by peoples now known as the
Coast Salish predates the arrival of
salmon in the river 4500–5000 years ago, an occurrence that took place symbiotically with the emergence of
Douglas fir,
western hemlock, and
western red cedar ecosystems between 4000 and 5000 years before the present day. According to
Squamish-
Sto:lo First contact between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of present-day Vancouver occurred in June 1792. It has been estimated that shortly before the time of first contact and these epidemics, the indigenous population of the Lower Fraser was over 100,000. From 1894 to 1905 Alfred Wallace built ships on the north shore of False Creek next to
Granville Street Bridge. In 1913, the Squamish residents of the
Kitsilano Reserve, on the False Creek sandbar, were forced to relocate. According to Maracle, the settlement was burned down following the forced evacuation. Every piece of firefighting equipment and all of Vancouver's firefighters fought the blaze for hours, but the facility was totally destroyed.
Walter Hardwick, a geography professor at
UBC, first elected to City Council in 1968, led the City's redevelopment team and helped secure the participation of the Federal Government, which owned Granville Island. A major public involvement and co-design process followed which established public priorities for an accessible waterfront seawall; mixed-tenure housing including market condominiums, co-op and low-income housing and live-aboard marinas; and a vibrant waterfront market. These plans were formalized in a 1972 Official Development Plan. The form and mix of development were revolutionary for Vancouver at the time. A third of the site was set aside for 40 units/acre housing with the balance converted to park, waterfront and community uses.
Expo 86 and after The North Shore of False Creek (NFC) was further transformed in the 1980s, as it took centre stage during
Expo 86. Following Expo, the Province sold the NFC site to Hong Kong tycoon
Li Ka-shing whose company Concord Pacific successfully marketed Vancouver in Asia, as a place for investment and migration. With the province enabling
strata titles, a high-rise
condominium boom soon followed, with Downtown Vancouver's population soaring from around 6,000 throughout the 1970s and 1980s to over 43,000 in 2006. The 1991 Official Development Plan enabled significant new density commensurate with the provision of significant public amenities including street front shops and services, parks, school sites, community centres, daycares, co-op and low-income housing. Since then, most of the north shore has become a new neighbourhood of dense housing (about 100 units/acre), adding some 50 000 new residents to Vancouver's downtown peninsula. On December 1, 1998, Vancouver City Council adopted a set of Blue ways policies and guidelines stating the vision of a waterfront city where land and water combine to meet the environmental, cultural and economic needs of the City and its people in a sustainable, equitable, high quality manner. Southeast False Creek (SEFC) is the neighbourhood designated by Cambie, Main, West 2nd Avenue, and False Creek. The
2010 Olympic Village, for athlete housing and logistics of the
Winter Olympics, is found in Southeast False Creek. As of 2021, the population exceeded 3,000. ==Sports and recreation==