If you're not afraid of manual labor, I believe CN and CP rail is doing a run of hires for diesel and rail car mechanics soon. CP's situated in PoCo, CN has a yard near Science World.
Working as a rail car mechanic is pretty easy - most of your problems are solved with either a pry bar or a hammer, and if they aren't, chances are you're using the wrong size hammer and/or prybar.
Stay away from management unless you like having 0 worker rights and being yelled at 6 AM sharp every morning. Stay away from the running trades side entirely. Signals and communications is alright if you like digging holes. Track maintenance is contract heavy and would have you in one of the Directional Corridors, e.g. trains whizzing by around you non-stop.
There's also a lot of other small-time rail operations by third parties in the Vancouver area due to the ports, so if you can't get in with one of the big companies, you can springboard to one after 6-8 months slaving away at a Procor or a GATX plant somewhere.