I'm from Canada, Vanguard does not have brokerage accounts in Canada. You have to buy ETFs in Canada (such as VAB, VCN and VXC as you pointed out), Vanguard does not have mutual funds in Canada.
Not a stupid question, as you can see our cousins to the south are spoiled as Vanguard has all kinds of mutual funds there. When people say they are investing in Vanguard they either mean in their mutual funds or ETFs, or their different ownership rules of the company, apparently when you invest in their funds you supposedly become some sort of owner of Vanguard, ignore that it isn't important except that it lowers fees.
You do need a brokerage account (an account to trade stocks) to buy these ETFs. The big banks can open accounts for you. I'm with BMO investorline, I like it because I can make contributions to RRSP and TFSA a lot more easy and transferring funds is easy. It does cost 9.99 per trade.
A lot of people in Canada love Questrade, free to buy ETFs but not free to sell. You should google canadiancouchpotato to read up on asset allocation, they post examples of easy Vanguard 3 fund portfolios.
http://canadiancouchpotato.com/model-portfolios-2/I hope I'm not complicating things, but you could by US listed ETFs if you really wanted to but you should read up on that to figure out if you want to go through that hassle.