I had lived in Vancouver for close to 15 years and never heard anything about this "magical day", it's clearly not as heavily publicized as you make it out to be.

Most people in Vancouver aren't interested enough in whales to go out and watch them, so unless your friends are nature lovers you might not hear about them unless you ask. I've lived in Vancouver or on Vancouver Island my whole life. Not only is the Strait on the migration path for orcas but there are also resident orcas, who live in the area year-round. I don't know about Stanley Park and False Creek specifically, but for not much more than the cost of the aquarium ticket, you can take your kids on a whale watching tour. Or if you make the habit of taking the ferry, you can just watch out the windows. I've seen a couple pods that way.

There's a reason orcas feature heavily in First Nations art, local sports team mascots, etc here. They're beautiful animals but they're not exotics.

>for not much more than the cost of the aquarium ticket, you can take your kids on a whale watching tour.

That's laughable. A cursory check indicates the pricing starting at ~$80 for a single child. A family of four? That's ~$420.

Children's tickets are ~$20 at the aquarium (and they have special discounts for kids from local schools and the disabled). A family of four at the aquarium would cost ~ $110

In what world does a 4x multiple qualify as "for not much more..."?

The bonus feature, though, is that the whales on the more expensive excursion are living free, not in captivity. That's worth 4x, I think.

I agree. But at that price, it's not even within the realm of possibility for a huge chunk of Canadians.

Sure, I know about whale watching tours around the straight, and especially on the island side. Those are pretty heavily advertised.

I meant specifically the orcas visiting downtown that I had never heard of. I did not know this was a thing and can't recall hearing it on the news.

You pretty much have to be on the water to see it when it happens, otherwise it is a less than memorable story on the evening news or in the next day's paper. If the animals are still around by that time, chances are that it takes on a different type of urgency. False Creek is a very confined space that is overrun by human activity, and I doubt that Burrard Inlet would qualify as ideal whale habitat either.

They don't exactly broadcast it on loudspeakers. I live in the West End of Vancouver. It's pretty common.

Do you have concrete examples of how it's advertised, then? You saying "it's common" and implying somehow kids all know about it in such a way that causes them to have a connection is a very bold claim and generally would require proof to back up.

As a kid growing up in Yaletown, I had never heard of pods of orcas coming that close, nor that it was possible to watch them. And I grew up in Yaletown for close to 15 years.