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Vancouver has the highest population density among Canadian municipalities, according to the 2016 census, and New Westminster, the City of North Vancouver, Victoria and White Rock all make the top 10.

It was like that, too, before the first Europeans arrived in the 1700s, according to a study published in the Journal of Northwest Anthropology that was co-written by Richard M. Hutchings of the Institute for Critical Heritage and Tourism.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Salish Sea basin was one of continent's most densely populated areas when Europeans arrived Back to video

The Salish Sea Basin was one of the “most densely populated” pre-contact geographical areas, Hutchings said from his home on Gabriola Island, which is home to 98 of the pre-contact sites the study counted. Immediately after contact, indigenous populations began crashing, he said. The arrival of diseases such as measles and smallpox carried by Europeans was primarily responsible.

Hutchings and fellow researcher Scott Williams, of the Washington state Department of Transportation, examined 85 large Salish Sea islands, defined as at least two kilometres long. In total, the looked at 2,368 sites from Johnstone Strait and Bute Inlet in the north down to Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but not including ones on Vancouver Island, for their finding that the Salish Sea Basin had one of the highest pre-contact population densities in North America.