Harbour city, Nanaimo bars and BC Ferries gateway on Vancouver Island's east shore
Nanaimo is Vancouver Island's second-largest city — a working harbour with a compact Old City Quarter, world-class wreck diving on artificial reefs, and a downtown named for the chocolate-coconut-custard bar supposedly invented here. BC Ferries docks make it a 2-hour connection to the mainland.
Nanaimo was home to the Snuneymuxw First Nation for thousands of years before the Hudson's Bay Company established a coal-mining operation here in 1852. The Nanaimo Bastion — a wooden octagonal fort built in 1853 — is one of the last surviving HBC fortifications in Canada, and coal mining defined the city's economy until the last colliery closed in 1953.