• The Story of a People's Place
• The Industrial Heyday
• The Dark Ages
• Granville Island's Renaissance:
  A New Beginning
• A Template for Urban Renewal
• Everyday People

A gathering of young toddlers representing many different cultures joyfully scatters the pigeons in the courtyard at the Public Market. Live Spanish guitar drifts over the water while local shoppers look out on the busy Creek. A glass blower lights the furnace in her studio while a master carver chips out a new totem pole, leaving pungent cedar shavings in soft gatherings at his feet. A cement truck painted like a strawberry stops as a group of excited children cross the road with newly created paintings in hand. The smell of fresh bread wafts out of the bakery while across the alley a jeweller carefully places a new piece on display as another day comes to life on the bustling Island.

Everyday People

The spirit of the Island, its personality and character rooted in its ancient past, lives and breathes on. Today it is the everyday people who work and dream on the Island that make it a place that enchants and draws you in, that you can keep discovering and never know completely. Just over a century ago, it was a quiet sandbar. Thirty years ago, Granville Island re-emerged as a place for people. It has become a place for sharing once again, now a world-class destination welcoming people from every nation on Earth. Help celebrate Granville Island by getting to know some of the people who, through dedication and sharing their passion, ensure every day that "Granville Island Works".

Living on my back, people come, telling their stories, singing their songs. They celebrate together, their significant days and their creative ways. I am the spirit of the island they once called Snauq, born of the ocean. Like a sand castle I may be moulded and used, remoulded and used again. Like nature itself, the possibilities abound. I am a mirror in which humanity can see the best of itself reflected, a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. I am a spirit, a vision, a community, an island in the creek that over time, has become Granville Island.

Photos courtesy of Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden Architects

• The remains of an industrial infrastructure: the Public Market as it was (top) in 1974 and (above) today.