This City of Vancouver-sponsored tourism video from 1976 aims to entice visitors to the city with the promise of mountains and friendly people.
You can "ski in the morning, sail in the afternoon and play a round of golf before dark," teases the narrator over clips of dazzlingly attractive athletic people while increasingly cheesy synth music plays.
Though, the narrator does suggest you would have to be a pretty active person to pull that off. He also notes most people prefer to split up their leisure and that sailing is a predominantly summer activity.
The 20-minute film was posted to which frequently posts historic clips.
According to the video's description, the promotion was shown at film festivals and even won awards such as Best Travel Film at the Columbus International Film Festival, a Special Jury Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, 2nd Place Best Canadian Travel Film, and a Bronze Award at the Film and Television Festival of New York.
The film describes Vancouver as a "vibrant" city, "young and alive, still building" but there are some questionable moments.
The script is a little all over the place with lines that range from questionable, such as, "if you're young at heart, happiness is a yellow bus" (with no further clarification), to casually racist when Indigenous dancers are referred to as "Native 小蓝视频 Indians."
There's also a moment where the camera is focused on women in bikinis with the narration: "There is that more sedentary and completely chauvinist pastime of girl-watching. Vancouver has appropriate areas set aside for this endeavour. Interfaces of land and sea known as beaches."
It eventually cuts awkwardly (there are a lot of awkward cuts) to a sailboat with the line, "of course, there are other things to do at the beach."
Overall, the video is going for the hard sell on Vancouver, highlighting Chinatown, Gastown, Stanley Park, and the Bloedel conservatory plus annual events like the Folk Fest, Squamish Loggers Day, Bathtub racing, and the Pemberton Rodeo.
There's a clip at the rodeo where a man is visibly thrown from his horse and kicked which is particularly brutal.
The cinematography of the video is pretty impressive for the 1970s and there is a man zipping around on a paraglider throughout the footage.
"Pick your brand of action," says the narrator, "there is a happening to satisfy your needs."
And, according to this video, "just being here is a celebration."
