Victoria-Fraserview

Victoria-Fraserview is a southeast Vancouver neighbourhood of roughly 30,000 people, stretching from Knight Street east to Vivian Drive and from East 41st Avenue south to the Fraser River. Originally developed in the 1940s as veterans' housing — part of roughly 1,100 homes built across Victoria-Fraserview and neighbouring Sunset by the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation — it has since become one of the city's primary immigrant gateway communities. Over 84 percent of residents identify as a visible minority, with Chinese-Canadians making up more than half the population. South Asian and Filipino communities are also substantial, at roughly 12 and 10 percent respectively. Cantonese is the most common mother tongue at 26 percent, and about three-quarters of residents speak English as a second language. The housing stock is dominated by post-war single-family homes and the distinctive Vancouver Specials built in the 1960s through 1980s, with roughly 46 percent of dwellings being detached houses. Median household income sits near the national average, making Victoria-Fraserview a solidly working-to-middle-class neighbourhood by Vancouver standards.

Victoria-Fraserview presents an unusual political profile: it votes NDP provincially, Liberal federally, and strongly centre-right municipally. George Chow has held the provincial seat of Vancouver-Fraserview for the NDP since 2017, when he upset BC Liberal Attorney General Suzanne Anton, and won re-election in 2020 and 2024. Federally, the neighbourhood falls within Vancouver South, held by Liberal Harjit Sajjan since 2015. Yet municipally, Ken Sim won 71.0 percent of the neighbourhood vote — 3,042 of 4,286 valid ballots — making it effectively ABC's strongest result at scale anywhere in the city. Shaughnessy gave Sim a higher percentage (73.8 percent) but from just 668 ballots at a single poll. Sim carried all three polling stations with remarkably consistent margins, ranging from 69.2 percent at David Oppenheimer Elementary to 71.7 percent at both Waverley Elementary and David Thompson Secondary. Stewart managed just 15.0 percent, well behind his city-wide average.

Municipal Issues

Anti-Asian hate crime was the most viscerally felt issue in Victoria-Fraserview. Vancouver police documented a surge in anti-Asian hate incidents beginning in 2020, and one California-based research centre labelled Vancouver the anti-Asian hate crime capital of North America. Random assaults on elderly Asian residents received extensive coverage in Chinese-language media and generated deep anger in a neighbourhood where Chinese-Canadian residents make up the majority. ABC's pledge to hire 100 additional police officers and 100 mental health nurses spoke directly to these safety concerns, and Sim's identity as the first Chinese-Canadian mayoral frontrunner from a major party gave his candidacy particular resonance. The 2022 result was less an ideological shift than a consolidation: in 2018, the combined centre-right vote across Sim (NPA), Wai Young (Coalition Vancouver), and other candidates had already exceeded 68 percent, but split among four or five candidates. ABC unified that coalition.

The River District, a 130-acre waterfront development in the neighbourhood's southeast corner between Kerr Street and Boundary Road, was the largest active development project in Victoria-Fraserview. When completed, it was projected to house roughly 15,000 to 18,000 residents and create thousands of jobs, transforming a former industrial site along the Fraser River into a mixed-use community. However, the development was generating significant traffic congestion on Southeast Marine Drive, the neighbourhood's main east-west arterial. Victoria-Fraserview also remained notably isolated from rapid transit — there is no SkyTrain station in the neighbourhood, and the original 2006 River District plan had envisioned a passenger rail connection on the existing CP rail line to Marine Drive Canada Line station, a promise that had never materialized. The No. 31 bus route, launched in 2020, provided the only new transit link, connecting to Metrotown Station in Burnaby.

The neighbourhood's Victoria Drive commercial corridor, stretching south from 41st Avenue, reflects the area's multicultural character — Asian supermarkets, Vietnamese restaurants, Chinese barbecue shops, South Asian eateries, and Filipino grocers operate alongside one another with multilingual signage. Preserving this working-class commercial strip from redevelopment pressure was a local concern, as was the broader question of how densification proposals under the city's planning framework would affect a neighbourhood that had historically been defined by its single-family character.