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No dear, I'm not trolling but I admit I'm getting thoroughly fed up and tired with the relentless "let's all trash Vancouver" posts.
I just wanted to give you an opportunity to come up with something more original rather than you keep on wasting your time repeating your same old, same old put downs about Vancouver over and over and over again like you've been doing for the past 4 years.
You don't even live in Vancouver anymore and yet because of your own personal failures and disatisfactions from when you did live there you still persist in trying to persuade the world that Vancouver is a terrible place and that all the happy people who live there and love it there are insecure failures who use bad judgement. I'm quoting you there.
So after 4 years of the same old, same old ad nauseum complaints from you, I have to ask you ....... who is it that is really doing the trolling here?
Life is too short to waste time being miserable about your past mistakes. Maybe you should just give it a rest, do yourself a favour and get on with the business of enjoying the life you have where you are now instead of trolling the Vancouver board.
These are not "let's all trash Vancouver" posts, it's sharing information and perspective on things. "Let's all trash Vancouver" is something from your imagination.
I'm a working pro interested in making a buck and career, having fun and enjoying culture and people, and I was underwhelmed of what Vancouver had to offer, apart from its nature and sports options. I'm sure there are a lot of people in a similar situation and they may be interested what I have to say.
Vancouver is not a place in general for professionals to come in for opportunities or making money. There's a serious lack of formative industries in Vancouver, even for its modest size. Vancouver is also not a place with particularly interesting culture and people. Virtually any pro may move directly to a place like Seattle and most likely would end up improving their personal situation.
I don't care if someone is living happily in Vancouver, it's not the point, but I'm annoyed by the posts that try to rebut the obvious that Vancouver is seriously lacking on some fronts (even putting its size in perspective) by posting lists of industries or communal cultural events like it matters or disproves the points made. It's flooding the topic with nonsense and I can't help but notice it.
Vancouver is not a place in general for professionals to come in for opportunities or making money. There's a serious lack of formative industries in Vancouver, even for its modest size. Vancouver is also not a place with particularly interesting culture and people. Virtually any pro may move directly to a place like Seattle and most likely would end up improving their personal situation.
Vancouver is the butt of all jokes among globe trotter professionals....
Getting to Toronto Island costs money and time, plus you are restricted by ferry schedules.
I've been. Not impressed. Nice views of Toronto, but it's flat and boring.
It doesn't even come close to what Stanley Park has...it laughable you are comparing the two.
The ravine parks are nice, I'll give you that.
I have never been to Toronto Island, and I have been here since 1987. Never on my list of places to go.
Vancouver is a beautiful city and has a lot to offer but for the normal working person it's the place where dreams die.
Years ago Vancouver was Canada's fun, quirky. non-conformist refuge. The place you fled to after the divorce, to "find" yourself, to live an alternative lifestyle, a place where monetary gain was not the sole purpose of your life plan, and the place to go have fun at the beach for the summer. Vancouver didn't try to be anything but Vancouver and to hell with what the world thought.
Think people just go to the island for that. 2.4 million people is too large to keep Vancouver as a hippie-town. It's now an Asian gateway investment/money laundering hub. A bit sterile, yes, but there will still decent pockets strewn across the city if you know where to look.
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Originally Posted by botticelli
I have to disagree on this again.
If I were wealthy, there are literally dozens of cities I would consider before Vancouver. And no, I won't be content with Vancouver - too small, too isolated, not enough fun. Why shouldn't I choose London, or Paris, or Munich, or Barcelona, or Melbourne?
Nature is really not a boasting right. Plenty of cities have great nature around them. Get over it already.
If I was very wealthy I'd be nowhere near Vancouver as well (personally I'd like to be in Santa Monica or various parts of Australia, or if there was no civil unrest a really wealthy coastal part of Hong Kong).
I think though as a high 5-figure or low 6-figure white collar career person with strong anchors and ties to the Canadian economy or professional licensing, Vancouver would really hit the mark, if nature was your thing. More than Toronto and Montreal, for example. And this is why anyone saying nature isn't a deciding factor is putting forth a totally asinine argument - people MOVE from Toronto to forgo all the cultural entertainment and lifestyle so they can ski 30 minutes from their backyard all winter and go to the beach in 15 minutes in the summer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheTourist
You are missing or, most likely, just pretend to be missing the point of the message for the sake of keep arguing and appearing like there's a substance in your arguments.
I said that cities were not defined by nature, which meant that nature was not a #1 feature describing the cities.
Apparently, it was understood by people who have no special interest in Vancouver or live there now, unlike you.
Wait, did you even bother to read before pressing the reply button? I just basically said what you did - nature is ONE of the key critical elements in city planning. Climate can be tied in there. It is not everything, otherwise you could call a tropical island in the middle of the ocean a great place to live. It is also not to be dismissed, underestimated, or disregarded.
Climate and nature sucks in Canada. Blame my parents for coming here (but really, I thank them from the bottom of my heart because they took me out of a bigger dump so I am being facetious), my career choice, my education, my professional licensing, my life partner, etc. It absolutely sucks. I've been to every province in Canada, and even 2 out of 3 territories. Seasonally great in most areas in the summer, but I don't consider it remotely livable year round.
Hate it as much as I do? No choice but to come to Vancouver. I'm not going to go out and claim it is some significant financial and cultural hub of influence because it isn't. As I repeated a dozen times it's the only livable climate to me in all of Canada that is in a city of more than 500,000 people. That's basically the case for probably a significant chunk of the people who live there too.
So yeah, nature and climate does matter a great deal. Take any city planning course and you can see it's one of the most major components to consider when planning cities in the 21st century. You can argue til your face is blue about "well, nature is just one component, it isn't that important in the face of X, Y, and Z etc. and so you shouldn't move or come here for those reasons" but the reality is it is one of the most important components for a large chunk of the population. Otherwise I assume California wouldn't have 10% more people (3-4 million more!) in it than Canada at only 5% of its physical size.
I think though as a high 5-figure or low 6-figure white collar career person with strong anchors and ties to the Canadian economy or professional licensing, Vancouver would really hit the mark, if nature was your thing. More than Toronto and Montreal, for example. And this is why anyone saying nature isn't a deciding factor is putting forth a totally asinine argument - people MOVE from Toronto to forgo all the cultural entertainment and lifestyle so they can ski 30 minutes from their backyard all winter and go to the beach in 15 minutes in the summer.
People move out ot Toronto mainly for one reason that you eloquently exposed...weather sucks in winter..there is no way of sugarcoat this....when I was living in Canada I refused more lucrative offers in Toronto or in Calgary and stayed in Vancouver.
The touted ski-beach closeness is a secondary added benefit.
6 figure salary is still a tall order in the real private sector job market environment in Vancouver so I'm not talking union protected/infested kingdoms (yes the $100+K longshoremen at the port for example) or quasi government organizations where who you know is what counts.
Quote:
Climate and nature sucks in Canada. Blame my parents for coming here (but really, I thank them from the bottom of my heart because they took me out of a bigger dump so I am being facetious), my career choice, my education, my professional licensing, my life partner, etc. It absolutely sucks. I've been to every province in Canada, and even 2 out of 3 territories. Seasonally great in some areas, but I don't consider it livable year round.
Hate it as much as I do? No choice but to come to Vancouver. I'm not going to go out and claim it is some significant financial and cultural hub of influence because it isn't. As I repeated a dozen times it's the only livable climate to me in all of Canada that is in a city of more than 500,000 people. That's basically the case for probably a significant chunk of the people who live there too.
So yeah, nature and climate does matter a great deal. Take any city planning course and you can see it's one of the most major components to consider when planning cities in the 21st century.
Nature is beautiful but weather sucks in winter in almost all of Canada I would say more appropriately....I agree with everything else and your post is another confirmation that the "nowhere else to go" factor that help Vancouver punching above it real intrinsic value in term of desirability.
Most Canadians are enthralled by American cities. I wish I had a dollar for every Canadian who loves Seattle more than Vancouver. Vancouver is 1/3 Asian so perhaps not having mostly white people around makes it feel less "Canadian" to you . Vancouver is an international city, for young Chinese it is like Paris in the 20s. To really enjoy the city it requires a fair amount of money so many who go there just exist. If you are young the best place to go in North America might be San Francisco. (but forget about Canadianness there)
I lived in Vancouver for 27 years and its a huge center of activity. However, its so multicultural now and the new cultures seem hell bent on segregating themselves from us, which is a bummer.
If I had my way, I would tie up an Asian man and woman and force them to listen to us speak french or spanish or german for 4 hours per day. This will include all kinds of insults that they wont be able to understand.
It might seem that new cultures segregate themselves, but have you given any thought to how they must feel when they arrive?
Does everyone welcome them with open arms, I doubt it.
Also with language barriers, one would probably tend to hang out with culture and language of the same. Or if you don't understand or speak a language very well, you usually tend to stay in the background and keep more to yourself?
Do you feel like other cultures are insulting you in their own language? Can't say I've ever felt that. Probably more the other way around.
People move out ot Toronto mainly for one reason that you eloquently exposed...weather sucks in winter..there is no way of sugarcoat this....when I was living in Canada I refused more lucrative offers in Toronto or in Calgary and stayed in Vancouver.
I always say this to myself: if I ever leave Toronto, there are two primary reasons. One is miserably long winter. I am bothered by its length rather than the coldness. Snow and sub-zero temperature is November (as of now) and March or even April is unacceptable.
And the second is the horrible public transit that doesn't seem to have much hope, or nowhere near as good as it should be in 20 or 30 years.
I will never move to Vancouver for the sole reason that it is too small a city. You can make more money to offset the high cost, but there is nothing you can do to change its smallness.
I lived in Vancouver for 27 years and its a huge center of activity. However, its so multicultural now and the new cultures seem hell bent on segregating themselves from us, which is a bummer.
If I had my way, I would tie up an Asian man and woman and force them to listen to us speak french or spanish or german for 4 hours per day. This will include all kinds of insults that they wont be able to understand.
See how they feel.
Truly, seek help. Your misdirected anger is eating away at you. You see ghosts where there aren't any.
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