I thought it was Surrey by the sea

LOL I thought you meant chinese mainlanders :drunk:

Ahh yes the surfing on the east side of the island is to die for.

Naniamo is Surrey by the sea. Kelowna is Surrey on the lake.

I guess it's better than real Surrey? At least there's no weekly car fires :troll::pokerface::badpokerface:

Is Surrey where you have all your roided up brodozer driving Albertans? I thought they were somewhere else.

The island seems neat til you get fucked by the ferries and have zero skiing.

No it's the buddy guys with their straight pipe v6 300c with the Bentley grills and v6 Mustangs :accepted:

Oh come on. Zero? That’s rough. Lol. It’s too bad Mt. arrowsmith shutdown. Grew up on that hill. It was great.



As for Nanaimo having a racetrack? As a part time Cowichan Resident, I take offence to that.

My buddy in Surrey was trying to sell his house and basically procrastinated until he missed the last window last year, took it off the market and has since had a baby

Today his realtor who almost exclusively deals with Chinese and Korean immigrants phoned him up saying he’s got buyers lined up for the price he was asking last year and the market is “hot” again.

This is a big realtor too not some guy scratching to make a handful of sales a year

So is he gonna take it?

No.. his baby needs a roof over its head now lol

We have mount Washington for skiing. https://www.mountwashington.ca/

Also isn't Vancouver Hell on earth?

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/0...iminalization/

That becomes less of an issue when you structure your life to have very little want or need to go back to the mainland...

Mount Washington is hell on earth when you are riding in the rain with a few inches of mashed potatoes on top of ice.

It's probably better than nothing, but an hour and a half drive for a whole 500m of vertical isn't great.

I know what you mean but that just sounds like getting fucked by the ferries with extra steps if you have to structure your life differently to avoid them lol. If your family is from there it's probably easier but with all my extended family being here I'd be dealing with them at least a few times a year, usually on holidays, which sounds terrible based on how much my friends who are currently in that situation complain about it.

That and there's lots of things I'd like to see and do on the mainland. I don't like the idea of being limited to just what's on the island, as neat as parts of it are. I think I'm the only person on here who does TSD's but those are all on the mainland. If I lost that and skiing I'm down two of my biggest hobbies.

Maybe "structure" is the wrong word. More like your life evolves.

You saying: "That and there's lots of things I'd like to see and do on the mainland. I don't like the idea of being limited to just what's on the island" is from a mainland perspective/bias.

It's been nearly 16 years since I made the jump over now.
Sure, year 1 I was travelling to the mainland nearly 2-3 times per month.
Now at year 16, it's 2-3 times per year. My life is here now. There is plenty to do here, nothing is "limiting", there's very little on the mainland which I can't get here and that I have an overwhelming urge that I need to go do. And other things I like to do I have better access to over here than I ever did on the mainland (Boating/Fishing is a huge one, and wilderness activities)

Shit I work with people who haven't travelled to the mainland in years, more prevalently the ones born and raised here. I ask them if they feel like they're missing anything, the answer is "nope".

That’s human nature. People can and will justify anything and everything. Like my cousin lives in NY proper. In a shitty 1 bedroom that’s like 100 years old and paid 1.5million usd for it just so he can “walk” to the city. NY is a friggin dirty, nasty, urban sprawl and you couldn’t pay me to live there but to some it’s the best place in the world.

People say shit about jersey but at least you get a proper home and a nice community. Same with Vancouver island. It works for some but not for all. People who love it there, really love it.

2-3 times a year is still more than I'd want to deal with the ferries but I imagine it's much less hassle when you're starting out right next to them. Driving down to them from here is terrible.

Sure, but that doesn't change that certain things physically don't exist there. When my kids want to go to Science World, that's not on the island. When I want to ski at Revelstoke, that's not on the island. Plus work alone would have me on the ferries 10-15x per year because the customers, yet again, aren't on the island.

Obviously for you it works well, and that's great. Of course people raised there are used to it lol. For me it would suck to live there. I'm not trying to insult your home, I'm just being honest. Just like I imagine it would probably suck for you to move here. Different needs, different locations. I'm also assuming you came from the lower mainland? I couldn't stand living there either.

I think the key takeaway from what Great68 said is that life evolves and I see it in a similar vein. I wouldn’t use it evolve, I would use adapt. I know everyone says we are creatures of habit and while I won't disagree outright, I think we are primarily creatures of our environment.

The thing about the island is… most don’t leave unless they have too… or are 18. Lol.


Growing up on the island, it was rare we went to the mainland once a year. Vacation? Flew out of Victoria. I can actually count the number of times I left. Twice for Indy, once for monster trucks. Phantom of the opera and Science world with school once. Why else do you need to leave?

Skiing was an eye opener once seeing whistler, but in reality it was completely adequate and fun growing up.

For anyone wanting to ski in Whistler the first ferry leaves Nanaimo at 6:15 AM. You can be in Whistler before 10 AM and be back in Nanaimo the same day.

The island also has some things the mainland does not have. Like Tofino, The Royal BC museum and the best salmon fishing in the world.

I dont know if some people are being naive, stuck up or what but the entire lower mainland is turning into a cesspool. I had a shovel in my car at all times to clean up human fecal waste from entry ways in "posh" Coal Harbour along with slash proof gloves in case I encountered yet another posse of crackheads living in an emergency stairway that wanted to attack me. Guy's wearing suits on their way to work taking a steaming piss outside near the lobby was also a pretty common sight

I'd love to live on the island and could picture myself fucking off to Sooke

8 hours driving for 5 hours of skiing still isn't very good though.

The rest of those are great reasons to visit. I've done so, several times. I just don't like any of them enough to want to move there for them.

I'm sure any of us could adapt to living anywhere if we needed to. My point is that for me there's no reason to choose to put myself in a position where I have to adapt to a place that's missing a ton of the things I like to be able to do.

I'll throw this thought out there: are you adapting to not leaving the island because you don't need to, or are you adapting to avoid the ferries because they're so inconvenient? There's no way to really know unless an earthquake scoots it up against the mainland though.

I didn't realize you were in the Okanagan. Making comparisons to accessing amenities in the lower mainland is a bit funny, considering it's 4.5 hours away. The highways are also frequently are affected by inclement weather and other issues.

This one.

Looking at comparables for what I can get in the suburbs for $650 - 850K, nothing worth moving further away for.

Kind of like this place.

https://www.rew.ca/properties/479697...-port-moody-bc