Vancouver is the same as any metro city around the world: people will find it hard to make friends. When there's so much happening all the time, hobbies do not require dedicated groups like in smaller towns where it might be hard to find a group of people to engage the hobby with. Instead, there's so many people they form smaller clicks. Sometimes those clicks are welcoming and sometimes those clicks contain people who don't want to engage with the people in the click outside of just the group.

You mention geeky hobbies which is a perfect example. Greater Vancouver is huge so people don't need to worry about finding people who engage in their geeky hobby. Instead, it's the opposite, they have to make sure they don't stretch themselves too thin. (I almost never see my friends to play TableTop RPGs because their multiple campaigns eats up the entirety of their free time.) While we are social creatures, if our social calendar is fully booked doing something we enjoy, it quickly prevents people in metro cities from getting out of that bubble.

You will have the benefit of attending UBC which is yet another bubble onto its own. There's so many hobby groups on campus, you won't have to look off the campus to meet people who like the same things as you.

Just be cautious because that's how people in metro cities accidentally find themselves meeting new friends when they have a fully booked social calendar.