Body painting festivals that take place in North America include the North American Body Painting Championship, Face and Body Art International Convention in Orlando, Florida, Bodygras Body Painting Competition in Nanaimo, BC and the Face Painting and Body Art Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Departure Bay ferry is the only marine link on the Trans Canada system that has no freeway or other high mobility highway access, instead routing TCH traffic through downtown Nanaimo streets to reach the ferry to Vancouver.

Nanaimo has had a succession of four distinct Chinatowns.

Nanaimo also has three BC Ferry terminals located at Departure Bay, Duke Point, and downtown.

Nanaimo has also been experiencing job growth in the technology sector.

Nanaimo has been dubbed ' the capital of Google Earth '.

Nanaimo has over 30 elementary and secondary schools, most of which are public and are operated by School District 68 Nanaimo-Ladysmith.

The Nanaimo Blues Society has organized and presented five highly successful, Summertime Blues!

Nanaimo has one sister city.

Highway 19 then veers south onto a new 20 km ( 12 mi ) long four-lane expressway known as the " Nanaimo Parkway ", which has five at-grade intersections along its length.

Nanaimo — Cowichan is a federal electoral district in British Columbia, Canada, that has been represented in the House of Commons of Canada since 1988.

The Pacific Region has five offices in Burnaby ( serving metro Vancouver ), Kelowna, Nanaimo, Prince George and Victoria.

He has also acted as Chair of the Nanaimo Conference Centre Advisory Committee, Chair of the Downtown Nanaimo Partnership, Director of the Nanaimo Regional District Board and President of the Port Theatre from 1994 to 1999.

Ron has won several awards including Tourism Nanaimo ’ s Citizen of the Year 1999, Re / Max manager of the year for Western Canada in 1999 and was one of the 125 notable citizens for Nanaimo ’ s 125th anniversary.

Ron Cantelon has five children and resides in Nanaimo.

It is also one of only two parts of the Trans-Canada system in which the highway is officially designated as north-south, the other being Autoroute 85 / Route 185 from Autoroute 20 in Quebec to the New Brunswick border ( the Trans-Canada is otherwise designated as east-west from Nanaimo to St. John's, although there are significant north-south sections north of Hope BC, Sault Ste.

The two busiest routes of the BC Ferries system cross the strait, between Tsawwassen ( south of Vancouver ) and Swartz Bay ( near Victoria ) and between Horseshoe Bay ( north of Vancouver ) and Nanaimo.

The remaining two seats were won by the Socialist Party and the Social Democratic Party in the coal-mining ridings of Nanaimo City and Newcastle.

They began looking for possible locations on the islands around Nanaimo, like Taylor Bay on Gabriola Island, but decided on Newcastle Island.

Within each county, or judicial district, justices are resident in the following locations: Chilliwack ; Cranbrook ; Kamloops ; Kelowna ; Nanaimo ; Nelson ; New Westminster ; Prince George ; Prince Rupert ; Victoria ; and Vancouver.

In four locations ( Nanaimo, Nelson, Powell River, and the Sunshine Coast ) the municipality operates the service, while private operators are contracted to deliver the transit services elsewhere.

Passenger rail service to Victoria is provided by Via Rail, which operates the Victoria – Courtenay train north, along the eastern coast of Vancouver Island, to the cities of Nanaimo, Courtenay, and points between.

The community was bypassed by the official Trans-Canada Highway in the 1950s, when government prioritized the connection of major communities in its budgets, choosing instead to connect Nanaimo with Victoria.

Another blunder was the botched construction of the PacifiCat BC Ferries, which would later become part of the FastCat Fiasco ; the project, designed to speed transportation between Vancouver and Nanaimo, was plagued by cost over-runs and poor technical decisions.

Dunsmuir sold Wellington Coal through its Departure Bay docks, while competing Nanaimo coal was sold by the London-based Vancouver Coal Company through the Nanaimo docks.

Located on Vancouver Island, Nanaimo is about 110 km northwest of Victoria, and 55 km west of Vancouver, separated by the Strait of Georgia, and linked to Vancouver via the Horseshoe Bay BC Ferries terminal in West Vancouver.

Nanaimo is probably the northernmost location of a Mediterranean climate ( Köppen Csb ) in the world, and is slightly shielded from the Aleutian Low ’ s influence by the mountains of central Vancouver Island, so that summers are unusually dry for its latitude and location — though summer drying as a trend is found in the immediate lee of the coastal ranges as far north as Skagway, Alaska.

Nanaimo is served by three airports: Nanaimo Airport ( YCD ) with services to Vancouver ( YVR ), Nanaimo Harbour Water Airport with services to Vancouver harbour and Vancouver Airport ( YVR South Terminal ), and Nanaimo / Long Lake Water Airport.

Bus service in the city is provided by Nanaimo Regional Transit.

Nanaimo is served by three newspapers — the Glacier Media-owned Nanaimo Daily News with about 6367 ( audited ) copies six days a week and the Harbour City Star with approx.

Nanaimo is also served by the Jim Pattison Group's CHWF-FM ( The Wolf ) and CKWV-FM ( The Wave ), as well as CHLY-FM, an independent community campus radio station.

In the Canadian House of Commons, Nanaimo is represented by the ridings of Nanaimo — Cowichan ( Jean Crowder, New Democratic Party ) and Nanaimo — Alberni ( James Lunney, Conservative ).

In the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, Nanaimo is represented by the ridings of Nanaimo ( Leonard Krog, British Columbia New Democratic Party ) and Nanaimo-Parksville ( Ron Cantelon, British Columbia Liberal Party ).

The mayor of Nanaimo is currently John Ruttan, who was preceded by Gary Korpan.

* The Nanaimo BMX Association, sanctioned by the ABA-American Bicycle Association races at Beban Park.

As the site of the main ferry terminal, Nanaimo is the gateway to many other destinations both on the island — Tofino, Comox Valley, Parksville, Campbell River, Port Alberni, Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park — and off its coast — Newcastle Island, Protection Island, Gabriola Island, Valdes Island, and many other of the Gulf Islands.

The main campus of Vancouver Island University is located in Nanaimo, which brings many international students to the city.

By the 1960s, many Italian businesses also sprang up in the Hastings and Nanaimo area, but the cultural core remained on Commercial Drive.

In 2001, after being carried on cable channel 12 on many systems in the Vancouver / Victoria television market for many years, KVOS was bumped up the dial to different cable channels, such as channel 23 ( now 30 ) in Vancouver, 46 in Nanaimo and points northwest and eventually 70 in Victoria, due to the launch of Victoria station CIVI, which is now carried on channel 12 on many systems in the area.

It includes the Fraser Lowland, roughly equivalent to the region known as the Lower Mainland, and the Nanaimo Lowland and Nahwitti Lowland on Vancouver Island, as well as the Discovery Islands, an archipelago of many low-lying islands between them in the Johnstone Strait and adjoining waterways between the mainland and Vancouver Island.

On September 11, 2005, a fire broke out near the south eastern edge of the bog with its smoke and ash being blown many kilometers, permeating the entire Lower Mainland and reaching all the way to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.