People & Places
Living on Vancouver Island
Judith Round and her husband Philip moved from Hampshire to Vancouver Island in British Columbia 18 months ago. Here, she offers some insights into the privileges of Island life
Over the past 20 years, Philip and I have visited Vancouver Island almost annually and now it has become our home. We think it's the most perfect place on earth to live: in fact we find it very hard to leave this island paradise, often referred to as 'the land of the lotus eaters'. But, before telling you of the many attractions of the place, let's get rid of some of the misconceptions our friends in England have about where we live.
First of all, the city of Vancouver is not to be found on Vancouver Island – so no, we can't join friends who are on business trips to the city for lunch when they suddenly find themselves free for an hour or two. On the other hand, the fact that Victoria, at the southernmost tip of the Island, is the BC provincial capital does give the Island a city of some proportions. But if you're an urban dweller keen on sophisticated shopping and lots of nightlife, the smallish towns of the Island are not for you.
Secondly, Vancouver Island is not another Isle of Wight. Its length is the same as that of England, although it is only about two-thirds the width, and the Beaufort chain of mountains running down its spine have proved to be far harder to penetrate and cross than the Pennines.
Thirdly, unless you are very well off, it's not really possible to live on the Island and to commute to Vancouver. There is no bridge, the frequent scheduled flights from several Island airports may take only 30 minutes but are expensive, and the regular ferry services take at least 90 minutes – far more like an English Channel crossing than one across the Solent. Although the ferries are seen by British Columbians as part of their highway network, during the summer they are often the cause of great queues and you may have to wait for hours unless you pay a hefty advance reservation fee. On the positive side, the cost of a single crossing for a normal car and a couple of passengers is around CN$50 (about £25) which is good in comparison to ferry costs in Europe.
Lastly, there are not the job opportunities on the Island that can be found in the big cities. Unless your trade or profession is in high demand (construction trades, restaurant chefs, medicine, for example), think long and hard before you make the Island your first choice. The small communities can be difficult places in which to break into employment and salaries tend to be lower than elsewhere. Do your research and find a job before buying into the Island dream.
Now those issues are out of the way, let's look at the positive reasons for living here. The Island enjoys some of the best weather in Canada, although there is a difference of several degrees and inches of rainfall between the area around Victoria in the south and Port Hardy in the North – think Torquay and Carlisle. Actually, the summers are on average hotter and drier than those in Britain and the winters slightly cooler and wetter. Of course, one of the advantages of that rain is that it falls as snow where it hits the Beauforts and so we have excellent winter sports facilities. From where, we live in the Comox Valley we can get up to Mount Washington to ski in 30 minutes, we are surrounded by golf courses open most of the year, and we are ten minutes from heart-stoppingly beautiful beaches with plenty of fishing and sailing opportunities offshore.
Although the Island is not much smaller than England, it has a population of less than a million compared with England's 49 million, so there's lots of space. Most of the Island's inhabitants live in its southern half and along the east coast. The northern sector, with its lower temperatures, higher rainfall and poorer economy, is very lightly populated indeed. The extra space means larger lots for houses and a general feel that new housing doesn't have to be squeezed in to tiny bits of land, apart from in Victoria where there is growing pressure on prime land.
The average price of a house in Victoria is only CN$500,000 (£250,000) and in the rest of the Island about CN$300,000 (£150,000). Having said that, you will pay much more than that for a bit of prime real estate with mountain or ocean views and house prices are rising rapidly (they have gone up over 20 per cent per annum in the Comox Valley for two years running). Our house here – admittedly bought when the exchange rate was much better – cost us less than half the sale price of the one we sold in the south of England and is twice the size with over an acre of land.
We really love living in the Comox Valley, which is about halfway up the east coast of the Island. There's a real sense of community here with lots of well-attended and welcoming voluntary organisations and societies, well equipped schools, and a good choice of restaurants and small shops. We like the fact that the sea is so close (I paddle in a dragon boat twice a week and we have learnt to kayak) and that we can gaze from beaches across the Georgia Strait at the snow-capped peaks on the mainland. We enjoy being so close to winter sports venues for curling, skiing, snowshoeing, and skating. We revel in the trails through the forests and up the mountains towards a glacier, which introduce us to a wilderness we never knew in England.
We are very content in our beautiful and spacious house with its garden and woodland full of bird song and from which we can see no other house (but we have counted as many as seven bald headed eagles at one time soaring over us on the thermals). We really appreciate being surrounded by smallholdings and farms which mean we have a twice weekly farmers' market at which we do most of our food shopping. We have made lots of new friends and have had lots of new experiences, from barbecues on the beach while watching the harvest moon rise, to racing over the waves in a Zodiac watching whales at play.
We feel very privileged to be living here and wouldn't swap it for the world. But perhaps by writing this I'm betraying Canada's best-kept secret…
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