Why I Am Ready To Join The Vancouver Exodus

Or, Why I Am On The Brink of Becoming An Expat

It was one of those Sundays in early January when you wake up to bright, stark sunlight streaming through your blinds.

My fellow Vancouverites might know the one. It’s been grey and dreary for months. You open your curtains to a brave new world and see, with sudden, startling clarity, all of the dust that had gathered in the cracks of your life while you had been hibernating through the long winter.

Every year, on this particular day in January, I find myself wandering around the city alone in an unsettled daze—one hand on this first pulse of summer, wondering how, with all of the dust and cracks, I can keep on pushing forward.

It was freezing out, being January in Canada and a cloudless day, but I needed to get out of the house.

At that point, I had been “home” for a month after spending half a year in Europe.

In that month, I spent a lot of time with my head between my hands complaining to friends about how torn I was between feeling the need to put my adult life together and wanting to get on a plane back to Europe as soon as I can afford being jobless for another few months.

My best girlfriend, a.k.a. The One That I Complain To Most, said to me, “Grace, get away from the city. Go for a walk. Go to Stanley Park, wander into the forest and think about it. What do you really want? What makes you happy? Don’t think about what society says you should be doing. Think about what you should be doing.”

“But it’s coooooold,” I said.

“Oh princess,” she said. “Suck it up, bundle up, and thank me later.”

And so, on that particular day in January, I dug out my warmest clothes, which, either ironically or coincidentally, looked very Pacific Northwest—red plaid flannel shirt, TNA Sea-To-Sky sweater (that one every girl in Vancouver owns), dark jeans, brown combat boots, fur-lined parka, knit gloves, and white toque (that’s what we call beanies in Canada).

I packed my fancy but compact travel camera as well. I thought that if I tried to look at my own city through the eyes of a traveler, I might find new perspectives that I hadn’t been able to see before.

I walked to the SkyTrain (the Vancouver metro) and rode towards the glass towers rising out of Vancouver’s downtown core. I passed the offices of the Central Business District where all lights had been switched off for the weekend, and to the far end of the downtown Vancouver peninsula where the 1001-acre Stanley Park is located.

Camera in hand, I meandered into the park. West Georgia Street turned into Lost Lagoon into a forest trail where the light got darker and the trees thicker with every step I took.

In the month that I had been “home,” I had come across a lot of questions, which were driving me to bouts of insomnia, frenzies of metro platform pacing, and uncharacteristically melodramatic speech.

Away from the bustle of the city and my 9 to 5 job, I was able to start working through these questions.

“Am I meant to settle down in this city, or is my home to be elsewhere in the world?”

“Should I start putting my life in order and live the adulthood society approves of, or should I continue chasing freedom to distant and foreign horizons, wherever those may be?”

“Do I want to build a home and take my belongings out of boxes, or do I want to take those boxes of belongings to the market and sell it all so I can keep on running?”

“Is it wiser for me to lay the foundations for my future in Vancouver, or should I start digging elsewhere? After all, I’ve already been location scouting for years.”

“If I am meant to stay, do I have the courage to do so?”

“If I am meant to leave, do I have the courage to do so?”

As I wandered deeper into Stanley Park, the din of traffic from the Lions Gate Bridge fading into a cacophony of crows in the trees and my breath misty puffs in the crisp January air, I found my answers.

And it broke my heart.

I don’t belong in this city.

I have to go.

And I’m not coming back for a long, long time.

This city is not meant to be my home. I don’t belong in the Pacific Northwest.

Logically speaking, it adds up.

Firstly, my parents chose this city, not me. If it had been up to me, I probably would have stayed in California where I was born.

I’m not a big fan of the great Canadian outdoors. Sure, I enjoy hiking or skiing when dragged by friends but I never feel the urge to seek it out myself. I usually turn down invitations to go camping.

I’d rather go to a museum or chat with foreigners (or locals if I’m the foreigner) at a bar where I don’t recognize any of the beers on tap and the bartender has no idea what I’m trying to order.

I like art, architecture, cities, culture, languages, and history.

When I was in Europe, I said to every European I met, “I’m so jealous of you people! You can hop on a train and in 4 hours you’re in a different country with a different culture, language, history, etc. In Canada, firstly, there aren’t really any trains. So you get into a car and drive for 4 hours in any direction and you’re in a forest.”

Or if you live in the Canadian prairies and drive 4 hours in any direction, everything still looks exactly the same and you still haven’t come across any human civilization.

Speaking of the prairies, for my non-Canadian friends who haven’t heard, we have a joke that Saskatchewan, one of our prairie provinces, is so flat you can watch your dog run away for 3 days.

In Europe, if your dog runs away, it will likely turn down an ancient cobblestone alley within a minute and be lost somewhere in history forever.

There is an interesting phenomenon that has been occurring at an increasingly rapid pace over the past number of years.

We call it the “Exodus of Millennials,” or, as I like to put it “The Great Vancouver Exodus.” 

There is an affordability crisis in this city. Vancouver is ranked the 2nd least affordable city in the world next to only Hong Kong. Considering what it costs to live in places like New York or London, our dilemma here should be quite apparent.

Housing prices have grown at an alarming rate. As of 2016, 91% of single-family homes are valued at over $1 million CAD. Our salaries have not grown to match.

One of my best friends is a realtor. For years, she has been saying, “Get into the market as soon as you can.”

The rest of us who are less educated in real estate would talk about waiting for the real estate bubble to burst.

I somehow ended up in the industry myself recently and began paying attention to trends and numbers. Vancouver’s bubble isn’t going to burst anytime soon. It’s either get in as soon as possible, or get out of town.

It’s ridiculous, really.

Let me put it this way.

For 4 years, I worked full-time. One of my offices was on Burrard Street where the rent per square foot is the second highest in Canada. One of my other offices was a block away where I had an unobstructed view of the 2010 Olympic Cauldron. I spent a lot of time ordering people around.

You’d think I was doing pretty well for myself.

In those 4 years, I first lived in a 300 sq. ft. apartment that cost 1/3 of my salary and was located on the far end of downtown between two noisy bridges. I then moved to the hippie district of Vancouver (don’t ask; my partner at the time liked it there) and lived in an unremarkable 1-bedroom that hadn’t been updated since the 70s.

I didn’t try too hard, but I did try to save for a down payment. For you lucky Europeans who don’t know, a down payment is a lump sum of money one needs to pay upfront when purchasing a property—usually at least 20% of the sale price.

4 years of saving later, all I could afford was a single-roomed shoe box in an up-and-coming (read: will be safe in 20 years) neighborhood.

After my hippie-town partner walked out on me in spring of 2015, I decided it wasn’t worth spending my hard-earned money on a shoe box that I’ll nevertheless be paying off for 20 years. So I bought myself a one-way ticket to Europe instead.

Note: he now pays $850 CAD a month for a 75 sq.ft. bedroom in a 100-year-old house shared with some 10 people up the street from where we used to live. The house is so old it appears impossible to keep clean, every stair is caving in the center, and the floorboards are obnoxiously squeaky. It recently sold for $1.4 million.

Those lopsided 17th century canal houses in Amsterdam are better kept than this.

Over the past few years, I have found myself at increasingly more going-away parties.

“My start-up got funded in New York,” says one departee (yes, I made that word up).

“I just got promoted to head office in Toronto,” says another.

And every one of them says things like, “I’m moving to San Francisco, London, Berlin, Madrid, Paris, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, whatever, because I just can’t be here anymore.”

For the most part, my core group of about 5 friends remained unaffected. However, having spoken (read: complained) at length to them recently, I realized that they are all seriously considering joining the Exodus.

They all started thinking about it at the same time. Their timelines for leaving fall within the same year. Their reasons for leaving are similar. My consideration of the aspects of my own Exodus line up perfectly with theirs.

In fact, in the month that I’ve been “home,” one of my closest friends has already made it to San Francisco.

My best girlfriend a.k.a. The One That I Complain To Most is in the process of saving to move somewhere tropical with her husband so they can work as diving instructors.

Even the realtor, who has been making a killing off of our real estate market, is ready to go.

“I’m going to London next year to get my Master’s,” she said. “We are so secluded here and I feel like there’s a lot more I could be doing for both myself and the world.”

She’s been doing a lot of volunteering abroad and, after everything she’s seen, feels compelled to get involved in international peacekeeping.

I’ve seen the outrageous amounts of money realtors pull in. She has all of the makings of a realtor—smart, driven, ambitious, organized, well-spoken, well-dressed, attractive, and trustworthy—and she is good at it.

For someone like her want to give up a real estate market like Vancouver is saying something.

When it comes to business, Vancouver is a satellite city. I dare even say that Canada is a satellite country.

As a marketer who often works cross-border with the US, I have always been miffed at the huge discrepancy between marketing budgets allotted to the US vs. Canada.

“There just isn’t enough of a market in Canada,” I’m always told.

Fun fact: the entire population of Canada can fit into the State of California.

When it comes to international business, Canada usually concedes to the decisions of the US division. When it comes to national business, Vancouver usually concedes to Toronto.

If you’ve never experienced this, allow me to tell you that it is frustrating to have to follow directions from a voice over a phone located 3 time zones away and in a completely different part of the country.

Therefore, everyone is leaving. Those of the ambitious, career-oriented kind are all fleeing for greener (and more affordable) pastures elsewhere. This is happening so rapidly and thoroughly that the entire future of the Vancouver economy is being threatened.

25 countries later, I still think Vancouver is one of, if not the most beautiful city in the world.

But it is precariously poised to become a ghost town and I am far from ready for the afterlife.

And honestly, I’ve been wanting to leave for the last decade of my life. My long-time friends will tell you that I’ve been talking about it and keeping an eye out for a good location since I was 17.

Yes, I’ve strayed far and for long periods of time but due mostly to relationships, I’ve always ended up back in Vancouver.

Now that I am unattached, it’s time to make some decisions for myself and myself only.

And both my logical and emotional sides are telling me to join the Exodus.

I’m not sure where I’ll end up, but for now, Europe is calling.

By this point, I had wandered from the north end of Stanley Park to the south end.

I sat down on a bench by the water somewhere between Second and Third Beach facing the sunset.

I was terrified. Is it really true that I am meant to leave everything familiar to chase horizons?

And yet my head was clear.

“Thank you, Tanya,” I mouthed silently to my best girlfriend a.k.a. The One That I Complain To Most.

Really, take Tanya’s advice: if you ever need clarity, go for a long walk alone.

I had been torn since before my 2015 trip, which was essentially a 6-month stroll across Europe. What I learned then, plus what I learned during my Pacific Northwest walk gave me these conclusions:

I want to live a global life.

I want to be fluent in 5 languages.

I want to raise a multilingual, globally-inspired child.

I want someone who will live this unconventional life with me, or be supportive as I live it alone.

I will never be done traveling.

I need to get out of town.

My walk ended at the stone-stacked Inukshuk at the far end of English Bay. The Inukshuk is an iconic symbol of Vancouver, having been the basis for our 2010 Winter Olympics logo.

I stood there for a while, watching the last orange rays of sunset disappear behind the mountains and shivering in the winter chill.

I realized I was saying goodbye.

It’s almost time to join the Exodus.

 

*This column has been reworked and reprinted in Vancity Buzz (February 11, 2016)