Порт Ванкувера: Ключевой транспортный узел Канады и Тихоокеанского региона

The Port of Vancouver was a port located in and round Vancouver. It was 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. The port amalgamated with the Fraser River Port Authority and the North Fraser Port Authority in 2008 to form Port Metro Vancouver, which has now adopted the Port of Vancouver name. 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 Port Authority was 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, a total of to coastline. The Port of Vancouver is also the world hub for Canadian shipping company, Asia Pacific Marine Container Lines.

The port generates 30,100 direct jobs through its activities. Employment is generated by five sectors related to the port: maritime cargo, cruise industry, capital investment in port facilities, shipbuilding and repair, and non maritime enterprises. Maritime cargo is the largest of these sectors, generating more than 21,000 direct jobs. The cruise sector is the next largest, generating almost 5,600 direct jobs. Factoring in the multiplier effects (including indirect jobs), the port has a total employment impact of 69,200 jobs across all five sectors. The jobs created by the port pay on average 52% higher than the average wage in British Columbia. The port contributed $1.8 billion in direct GDP and $4.1 billion in direct economic output to the Canadian economy in 2004. When multiplier effects are taken into account, these figures increase to $4.0 billion in GDP and $8.9 billion in economic output. The port's economic impact extends into Western Canada and beyond, with most of the exports shipped through the port produced outside of Greater Vancouver, and many of the imports intended for markets outside of the Lower Mainland. The port is the home port for the Vancouver–Alaska cruise, which occurs annually from May to September, with more than 1 million revenue passengers on about 300 sailings passing through the port's two cruise terminals, Canada Place and Ballantyne. In 2006 the port hosted 28 ships at its two cruise terminals.

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. With its completion in 1923, Ballantyne Pier was the most technologically advanced port in the British Empire. The CPR, lumber exporters, terminal operators, and other companies based on the waterfront banded together after World War I to establish the Shipping Federation of British Columbia as an employers’ association to manage industrial relations on the increasingly busy waterfront. The Federation fought vociferously against unionization, defeating a series of strikes and breaking unions until the determined longshoremen established the current ILWU local after the Second World War. By the 1930s, commercial traffic through the port had become the largest sector in Vancouver's economy.

On January 1, 2008, the Port of Vancouver officially amalgamated with two other local port authorities, the North Fraser Port Authority and the Fraser River Port Authority, into a new organization, called the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority.