Vancouver Area (to live in, expensive, residence)

[StuckPA]

I'm looking at the Vancouver area as a possible future residence and in the meantime would like some info on a couple of things-

1)What's a decent part of the Vancouver area I can go to that won't be as crowded as the city but not so far away that I can't get to anything?

2)I know it's quite expensive to live in BC but how expensive and is it true you need a liquid net worth of $700k to get into Canada...