We lived in Yaletown when DS was born nearly 2 years ago (not there now). We were lucky and found a huge 2 bed apt. in Yale town a block away from where we were working for 1800CAD - but it took a lot of luck to find/get that, so you'll be looking at at least that in rent if you want to live close.
I don't know about daycare, but day to day, I liked being in Yaletown as it was 5 minutes away from the centre of town/work/the river/parks/library etc. Very clean, very safe (forgetting the riots).
Living is very expensive - food and booze are unbelievable. On the other hand health care is very good. We made do with public transport and zipcar (cars you can hire by the hour) but TBH I think life would have been better with a car of our own - if for no other reason than shopping - otherwise you're restricted to the even more expensive in town supermarkets, expensive and restricted home delivery, or bulk buying and lugging home from Costco.
Mobile phones will give you a shock too - we were unable to get a month to month contract and had to sign up for 18 months for about 50 dollars a month (and that was pretty cheap!)
Lastly, try and transfer your card/bank account if you can. You'll need a candian account (most of which you seem to have to pay monthly for) for a card and chequebook (which you need to pay for - but will probably need for paying rent), and they weren't going to give us a credit card at all, but conceeded that if we left a deposit then we could have one with a tiny limit. In the end we called up American Express who we used in the UK and were happy to give us a canadian card.
Yell if you want a Brit's advice on something and I'll see if I can help