Vancouver is _the_ city in
Canada.
(It is also a city in the US, both of them named after Captain George Vancouver.) No others can properly be called cities - some are villages, some are slums, a few are mixed-up maple syrup refineries, while most are painted cardboard mock-ups made for the recent film industry boom.
To the phreaks and reformed wareZ d00ds among us, note that Vancouver's area code is 604, a number which was intractably associated with echomail networks TABNet and PsychoNet and ANSi art groups MiSTiGRiS and Integrity back in the BBS days (sigh) (and also more recently, along with "Van-City" jargon representing our fair city to the hip-hop nation.) The frequent fliers among us may also be well-acquainted with our dazzling airport at YVR, often the last or first glimpse of the benefits of Western Civilization for air travellers to and from Asia. For comprehensivity's sake, Society for Creative Anachronism lifestylers know us better as the Barony of Lion's Gate, located inside the Kingdom of An Tir.
UBC is one of the many fine post-secondary institutions in and around Greater Vancouver, a catch-name encompassing the City of Vancouver proper and all 21 of its associated and adjoining suburbs. This neck of the woods is a bit of a literary oasis in the Canadian cultural map - some renowned local novelists past and present include William Gibson, Douglas Coupland, Nick Bantock, Spider Robinson, W. P. Kinsella and Malcolm Lowry. We have also brought more than our fair share of poets-you've-never-heard-of to the national literary stage including bill bissett, Sharon Thesen and 2000 International Slam Poetry Champion Shane Koyczan. We also produce playwrights (regrettably so obscure that even the immaculately informed I can only name Morris Paynch as a start to their ranks...)
According to Douglas Adams' The Meaning of Liff, Vancouver is a noun denoting
The technical name for one of those huge trucks with whirling brushes on the bottom used to clean streets.
And there you have it.
Well, for a much further in-depth look at this locale, check out urban geography of Vancouver, BC.