Comment by teunispeters
2 days ago
... Visit first. When I left (2018-ish) Vancouver was one of the most expensive cities on the planet. (put it this way : the only places more expensive were in China ...). It's a beautiful city, close (ish) to skiing - especially Whistler (2 hours drive, or various other transportation methods) but there are a lot of closer ski sites too. Warmer and wetter than Seattle (slightly) due to being surrounded by mountains. I have to admit I miss Vancouver badly.
Toronto's a much better "hub" for tech work. (I work remotely out of Winnipeg now, and am liking that too).
Mind, Vancouver does have a lot of tech, and if you want to work more with tech world that speaks other world languages, Vancouver is very good, too. Or music, or film, or really media of any kind. Also better diversity and cheaper food than almost anywhere I've visited.
Just not - unless you really figure out where and how to look, or if you have good connections - a particularly affordable city, at least as far as rent goes. Everything else though is good.
Thanks for a great answer. I did visit Vancouver last year. Just arriving at the airpoirt with its lush green-blue colour scheme and a small river running through the hallways towards entering the country where the two tall totem poles wish all visitors a warm welcome. It felt like coming home.
In Vancouver we rented a car and visited almost all suburbs. For me the absolute dream would be Vancouver West, Vancouver North followed closely by Kitsilano. North and West seemed like a Twin Peaks dream all surrounded by the woods and mountains. I fell in love.
Downtown was in our view, beautiful but broken by (1) homeless roaming, (2) homeless with psychiatric issues making a scene and (3) opiate drug users aka junkies. It is not somewhere I want my kids to roam. This was terrible, but we are willing to overlook it.
We also went to Toronto. World class city. But we stayed in Vaughn and had to endure 1 hour commute in traffic each direction. Being stuck in traffic is not an appealing lifestyle. Toronto felt like an awesome world class metropolis city with more opportunities probably than Vancouver. Anecdotally the standup shows were better (actually most hilarious of all) in Toronto than Vancouver too :)