Editors’ Picks: Our Favourite Vanmag Stories of 2025

Who has time to read through every single past edition of Vancouver magazine and scroll through a whole year’s worth of web-exclusive content?! You’re busy! It’s the holidays! To ease the burden, our editors are sharing their own favourite stories from the year. It’s hard to play favourites when you love each issue like your own, saddle-stitched child, but duty calls.

The Vanmag Editors Pick Their Favourite Stories of the Year

The Very Best Things to Eat at Granville Island Market and What to Eat on Granville Island, According to Chefs

I’ve spent more time at Granville Island in the past couple of years than ever before, thanks to the presence of a tiny artist in my life. We hit Arts Umbrella for classes and then the Island is our oyster—we might grab a doughnut from Lee’s and watch the ferries if it’s nice out, or wander around the arcade in the Kids Market touching all the buttons (do not tell my three-year-old that you need money to actually play the games), or play with the chimes at the world music store until we get kicked out. It was on one of our Saturdays, listening to the buskers on the back patio, that it really hit me just how special this place is: if you can squint and block out the tourists, you could even convince yourself that it’s perhaps the coolest neighbourhood in the city. Which is why I wound up dragging the rest of the editorial team and some of our foodie friends down there a few months later to eat our way through the Market, with the goal of truly capturing and celebrating what makes Granville Island so unique (and, importantly, delicious). The result is our July issue cover story. It’s divided into two stories online (see above), but was really conceived as one big, beautiful, shot-by-the-great-Evaan-Kheraj feature: a feature I’m not just proud to have made, but delighted to now have as a resource for my own weekly visits.—Stacey McLachlan, editor-in-chief

Let’s Go Out!

This year’s gift guide issue in November is so jam-packed with incredible ideas—and one of the greatest covers in as long as I can remember—I almost went with that series of stories as one of my favourites of the year, but the nightlife spotlight—Let’s Go Out!—is such a great naysay to our No Fun City rep that I couldn’t put it down. Yes, there’s a great section on where to go dancing, whatever your style or vibe, but there’s also karaoke for every night of the week, the best spots to host a group dinner, the best music venues, what to do besides drinking and dancing—it’s got it all. —Anicka Quin, VP of Content

The Waitlist Generation

Being a parent in Vancouver is like participating in the Hunger Games, but minus the physical challenges and add in aggressively shaking your wallet until it’s empty of every dollar. Enter Brittany Hopkins’ feature The Waitlist Generation: Why Vancouver Parents are Competing for Spots in Everything from Day Camps to Swim Lessons. Hopkins sounds off on why signing up children for anything run by the city is an exercise in patience, frustration and heartache, with too few spaces in city-run daycares, community centres and local pools to accommodate the demands of the families that live in our communities. Looking at the real-life challenges facing Vancouver parents, combined with a breakdown of the real-life government policies that are failing them, this is a piece that deeply resonated with me as a parent fighting for her life to get her kids into swim class already. —Darcy Matheson, editor in chief, BCBusiness

Know-It-All: What Happens to Stuff That Gets Surrendered at the Airport?

We’ve done some big, elaborate, niche deep dives and packages, thanks to our ambitiously fearless editor-in-chief, Stacey McLachlan (just look at 33 Reasons to Love Vancouver to see what I mean, and know that 33 was the final pared-down number). And while I’ll always find a way to shout out her more elaborate undertakings, it’s her deep dives into the nuances of Vancouver, and dare I say, humanity’s most complex mysteries, that stick with me. Armed with humour, curiosity and a level of gumption that would humble a kid detective, Stacey has tackled life’s great questions: Why don’t we have a mascot? Are our beaches actually sandy on purpose? She never dodges the hard-hitting truths. Her airport exposé back in November was one I’d always wondered about, and it felt like it was written just for me (and in loving memory of my 125 mL La Roche-Posay sunscreen). She’ll always get to the bottom of it, and we’ll all have a great time on the way down. (One thing I’ll never get to the bottom of? My 125 ml La Roche Posay sunscreen). —Kerri Donaldson, assistant editor

Jinmi’s Birthday Bapsang Was the Home-Cooked Meal I’d Been Missing

Full disclosure: I’ve only been working here at Vanmag for six months, but when I was “just a fan” of the publication, I came to the magazine (whether newsletter, website or dutifully waiting for an issue in the mail—subscriptions, by the way, are free!) to find out about things that truly make Vancouver special, written by folks who had true, personal experiences with them. See, what makes Vanmag a great playbook for the city is that what we write about can’t be replicated by AI, and this personal, touching experience by intern Ashley Kim is just one example of that. Sharing Korean roots with Jinmi’s chef Jay, Ashley was all in when she found out about the restaurant’s secret Birthday Bapsang meal inspired by “a meal that a mother would make at home on one’s birthday.” Choosing to celebrate her big day at Jinmi with friends, Ashley also decided to put her journalism skills to the test and grab an interview with chef Jay while she was at it. The result is a beautiful, intimate story that touches on inherited culture, feelings of home and, of course, gives the inside track on where and how to get a really special meal in Vancouver. —Kristi Alexandra, managing editor