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Greater Vancouver is the metropolitan area centred on the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, roughly coterminous with the Greater Vancouver Regional District, which is governed by a body known as Metro Vancouver. Greater Vancouver as a term predates the existence of the regional district (created in 1966) and is often used to include areas beyond the boundaries of the regional district, and also does not generally include wilderness and agricultural areas within that regional district. As a geographic region, it is part of the Lower Mainland, one of British Columbia's three main geospatial/cultural divisions and overlaps with the Lower Fraser Valley, with the Central and Upper Fraser Valley areas to the east being in the Fraser Valley Regional District, which was created from two others upon the expansion of the Greater Vancouver Regional District to include Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. Other modes of regional governance and administration which Greater Vancouver is covered by are the North Vancouver and Coquitlam Forests Districts, the Ministry of Environment's Lower Mainland Region (which includes the Sunshine Coast, the Fraser Health Authority and the New Westminster Land District, among others. Private corporate and non-profit organizations often include adjoining towns and cities such as Mission, Chilliwack, Abbotsford and Squamish within their use of the term "Greater Vancouver", though since the creation of the term "Metro Vancouver", that has come to be used in the media interchangeably with the name of the region and/or regional district, even though it technically only refers to the governing body of the regional district. As a term, "Greater Vancouver" tends to refer in local use to urban and suburban areas only, and does not include parts of the regional district such as Bowen Island, although industries such as the film industry even include Squamish, Whistler and Hope as being in "the Vancouver area" or "in Greater Vancouver".
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