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What are the negative things about living in Vancouver island and the smaller islands? What are the positive? |
Travel Info I live in Ontario and want to move to BC with my small family. Please help. Travel Tips I moved to Victoria 3 years ago from Edmonton. While I found that island living was not right for me, there are definitely a lot of people who LOVE it. From my experience, here are some of the advantages and disadvantages: Advantages - Without exaggeration, one of the most beautiful areas in the world - If you like outdoors activities, you can do them year round - Victoria gets far less rain than surrounding areas (e.g. Vancouver, Seattle) and the summers are beautiful - sunny and 25 degrees every single day - Only snows 1-2 times a year (could be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on how you feel about snow) - Lots of activities for kids and young families - particularly lots of nice parks and walking trails - Great schools (public and private) - Slow pace of life - everyone is pretty laid back, people take the afternoon off work if it's a particularly nice day, etc. - Cheaper than Vancouver and Toronto (although housing costs are increasing) Disadvantages: - It's small - if you don't like a small town atmosphere, beware - Since it's small, it can be difficult to make friends when you didn't grow up there - Victoria, at least, gets overrun by tourists from March-October. It's hard to do things downtown during high season. - It is difficult to get off the island. Flights are expensive you usually have to connect through Vancouver or Seattle. Ferries are also expensive and take a lot of time. - Even though it doesn't rain quite as much as Vancouver, it still gets its fair share. This winter, for example, we had rain and cloud for at least 4 months straight (but this was a particularly bad winter). My experience is primarily based on living in Victoria, but the surrounding communities are somewhat similar (just smaller). Hope this helps! Others Negative - you are stuck on an Island. When you want to leave it is expensive and time consuming to do it. Ferries are the worst, and you need to avoid them all summer, and all long weekends. If you spend as much time waiting in line for a ferry as the ferry trip during those periods, you got off easy! The wait is usually longer. Lots of people move to the Island to retire. So, a higher elderly demographic, and accommodation is constantly becoming less and less affordable. It use to be mainly Victoria, but it has crept up the Island to include most of it. Positive - it is a beautiful place. Great for outdoor types. Great hiking, camping, boating, fishing. Lots of things to discover and usually not to far from the city. The winter is usually mild. But there were a lot of rain storms this winter, and I don't know if weather patterns have changed, so really can't tell you if the mild winters are a thing of the past, or gone for awhile. No long term snow anyway. It generally snows a couple times a winter and it is long if the snow stays for a week. I currently live 5 years in central Island, lived 5 years Victoria, and all my life on the Coast of BC. There are many Canadian living there who came from Toronto. Toronto is center of SARS , Bedbugs and Toxic molds, so these people have brought with them all these deceases for us, just be careful to ask who are your neighbors |
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