British Columbia's Port of Vancouver has long ranked as one of the world's major seasonal cruise ports because of the Canadian province's picturesque coastline, which is as attractive to visitors as that of Alaska to the north. Last year the Canadian gateway handled 820,000 cruise ship passengers, and that figure is expected to rise to 830,000 this year. Although ships were taking tourists to the far north by the late 1800s, today's industry is considered to have started in the 1960s, after Stanley McDonald founded Princess Cruises around a short-term charter of Canadian Pacific's 1949-built Princess Patricia. He then went on to charter the much larger and newer Italia from Italy's Crociere d'Oltremare in 1967. This ship, which originally sailed only to Mexico, began sailing out of Vancouver to Alaska in the summer of 1969 in competition with the older ships of the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railways, as well as three small vessels which were operated by Seattle-based Alaska Cruise Line.
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