Downtown Vancouver Compass Directions: A Proposal
Published at 08:51 on 11 April 2026
If you live in Vancouver, you know why this is needed without any explanation: the streets in Downtown are canted at approximately a 45˚ angle from the cardinal compass points, as a result of the desire to better align them with the shoreline of Vancouver Harbour.
This of course makes giving directions awkward: “Head north on Granville Street.” But Granville Street doesn’t run either north or south. What does that mean? This proposal offers a concise solutions.
Define “north” to mean “towards Vancouver Harbour” and “west” to mean “towards Stanley Park” and it all sorts out. Plus, this makes sense. Vancouver Harbour is in the same direction as the North Shore, which has “north” as part of its name. Correspondingly, the neighbourhood that borders Stanley Park is known as the West End.
Pedants upset by the fact that these terms do not align with their traditional meaning can be placated by referring to them as “grid north,” “grid west,” etc.
This is something I have always done in my own mind, in fact. But I keep running into pedants who bring up that 45˚ cant. Now I have some rhetorical ammunition at the ready.