British Columbia of British Columbia, and Victoria became the united colony's capital. In 1871, British Columbia became the sixth province of Canada. Its Latin motto is "Splendor sine occasu" ("Splendour without Diminishment"). The capital of British Columbia remains Victoria, the fifteenth-largest metropolitan region in Canada, named for Queen Victoria who ruled during the creation of the original colonies. The largest city is Vancouver, the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada, the largest in Western Canada, and the second-largest in the Pacific Northwest. In October 2013, British Columbia had an estimated population of 4,606,371 (about 2.5 million of whom were in Greater Vancouver). The
Geography of British Columbia British Columbia Ministry of Forests and Range subdivides the province's ecoregions into a system of biogeoclimatic zones: In botany, nearly all of British Columbia is part of the Rocky Mountain Floristic Province. Founded as several colonies as part of the British Empire, the political geography is complicated by the fact that during colonization no treaties or conquests of First Nations (the indigenous people) occurred outside of a few small areas of the province. The resulting legal and political system is based upon the British, and later Canadian state that evolved from it. At present much of the province is subject