A couple of years ago, I landed – thud! – back in the Lower Mainland after a decade-plus in northern B.C.
I’ll say one thing: the weather is definitely better here, most of the time. But the traffic’s a lot worse. So bad, in fact, adjusting to the grinding gridlock and fuel-and-sanity-sucking congestion has been the hardest part of assuming a new life in Lotus Land. Nobody admits it, but it’s the real reason why no one will ever visit you if you move down here.
I’d grown up in the Lower Mainland, but it’s changed. And, having lived firmly and defiantly “Beyond Hope” for so long, so have I.
I see things differently now. I don’t have a whole lot of patience with the myopic, Vancouver-centric attitude that is pervasive here. It pushes the communities, stories, people and issues in the rest of the province out past the margins.
