“Beautiful British Columbia” certainly lives up to the motto inscribed on the license plates in Canada’s westernmost province. Originally geographically isolated from the rest of Canada, British Columbia became the country’s sixth province in 1871. Since the 1885 completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway connecting western and eastern Canada, people have flocked to British Columbia in droves, both to visit and stay.

The year-long mild weather that most of British Columbia enjoys is what makes this province so attractive to Canadians living elsewhere, who spend most of their winter submerged in snowdrifts while BC plays golf and relaxes outdoors without jackets in temperatures several degrees above freezing. British Columbia’s mild climate also makes it the only Canadian province with a desert, rainforests, and cities warm enough throughout the year for palm trees to grow.

British Columbia is also the only Canadian province where skiers can soar down glaciers in the middle of summer at North America’s only year-round ski resort. Visitors enjoy heliskiing, snowcat skiing, regular skiing, or snowboarding at eastern British Columbia’s Rocky Mountain resorts or the continent’s biggest ski resort, Whistler, less than 2 hours and 30 minutes from Vancouver along the Sea to Sky Highway.

Many of Canada’s most scenic drives are situated in British Columbia, from much of the isolated Alaska Highway in the province’s northwest to Highway 101 along British Columbia’s southern Sunshine Coast, north of Vancouver. The recent twinning of the Sea to Sky Highway from Whistler to Vancouver has made this iconic drive much safer.