Local arrangements

About Vancouver

Vancouver is located on the Pacific coast of Canada, just north of the Canada-US border. The city is Canada's third largest, with nearly 2 million people in the greater Vancouver region. The conference will be held on the campus of the University of British Columbia, with approximately 35,000 undergraduate students. Vancouver is very cosmopolitan and offers an outstanding variety of activities, entertainment, and culinary options. The city is surrounded by water in most directions, and mountains to the north and east, which help to define the character of Vancouver.

Climate in Vancouver

Vancouver is very similar to Seattle, with cool, wet winters and drier, warm summers. June is transitional to the dry season, but rain can come any time of year, just with lower probability in the summer. Be prepared for a variety of weather. Average June high temperatures are about 20°C (70F) and evening lows about 13°C (55F). Temperatures can also be as high as 30° during the day in some years. Remember that we're north of 49° latitude and the sun doesn't go down until 21:30 (9:30pm) that time of year, so you can enjoy long days of sunshine.

Conference venue

The conference will be held on the University of British Columbia campus (www.ubc.ca). We will use different buildings for various events. The plenary lectures will held at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts (note the british spelling of centre), a state of the art concert hall. The concurrent sessions will all be held at the Woodward Instructional Resources Centre, where there are large lecture theatres with all the AV facilities needed already in place (computer projectors are in place in every room). We have the Student Activities Centre booked for the duration of the meeting, and that will be where we will hold the business lunch, mixers, poster sessions, auction, and the exhibitors. This building opens on to a large field which we will have fenced off and available for your use. Our banquet will be a salmon barbeque at the famous Museum of Anthropology (www.moa.ubc.ca - featuring extensive collections of aboriginal American artefacts and modern artistic creations) overlooking English Bay and the Strait of Georgia towards Vancouver Island, and will feature a live fiddle band.

The UBC campus is located on the tip of a peninsula known as Point Grey, and is surrounded on 3 sides by water. The water is easily accessible two ways, one of those directions is a "clothing optional" beach and the other takes you to a continuous string of beaches and beachside trail leading 10 km towards the downtown. The campus is also bordered to the east by a 500+ ha forest with hundreds of km of trails available for running, walking, and cycling. UBC is also a fine place to watch birds, including nesting bald eagles.