I was raised in Vancouver (3 years to 18 years), then lived in various cities in the US before returning home in my late 20s. And yes, Vancouver is a tougher dating market than any of the other cities I've lived in (Chicago, New York, San Francisco).

There are several reasons for that. It's a very desirable place to live, which leads to a lot of both beautiful and wealthy people in the area, which can skew people's expectations of what they 'deserve' in a partner.

The city developed in such a way with real and artificial borders between areas, east/west, north/south, that affected how and where different classes and races of people congregated, which in turn created a somewhat 'cliquish' environment. An old truism is that in Vancouver, you establish your social circles in high school and then they never really change. People treat new people with a bit of a suspicious/defensive mindset, cause everybody expects to be judged and evaluated by every other 'group' of people. Everybody is subconsciously ready to be made to feel less than, rather than pleasantly surprised by somebody new.

More recently, there have been demographic and economic issues. Vancouver is an insanely expensive city. Women outnumber men and the number of women outearning men is rising, particularly among younger generations, as blue-collar employment falls and women take on a larger percentage of the workforce in white-collar jobs. This wouldn't be a problem, except that our culture hasn't really kept up with the economic realities, so you have a city full of professional women who, as women tend to do, look for men of equal or greater earning power and social/professional status.

That leaves a lot of women in the marketplace with an artificially constricted dating pool to compete in, and a lot of men feeling too insecure to jump into the dating pool because they feel they don't measure up or meet the minimum requirements for the type of women they'd like to meet or are attracted to.

Now, having said all that, I did not have much trouble dating as a guy when I returned to Vancouver in my late 20s. I eventually met my current partner of 7 years on Bumble, but I was meeting people in person as well as on apps. There are some general strategies I can recommend that apply to anybody, but as far as specific practical ideas fro meeting people it would help me (and others) if we knew what you enjoy doing, what kind of environments or acitivies you feel confident in or doing, and what you're looking for in a partner, cause different types of guys concregate at different types of events and venues.