Love/Hate Relationship

(Yes, I know: four posts in one day. Behold the power of procrastination.)

As an outsider, I've been thinking about the love/hate relationship that I have with this city and with this province. There are times when I think "I want to stay here forever!" and there are times when we say things like, "If we raised our kids here.... not that we'd want to raise our kids here..." (This is aside from the point of "it's really far away from my friends and family.")

Things I love about Victoria/The Island/BC:

• It's so pretty! My goodness: it was really clear out the other day, and we were driving south on Shelbourne, and suddenly it hit us: this place is gorgeous! It was so clear that you could see all the mountains in Washington everywhere, and they are all snow-capped right now. So breath-taking. And I can see it from my home! And all the pretty trees and flowers!
• For goodness sake: I live on an island! I can walk to the ocean! I didn't realise how much I was addicted to ocean air until we left the island for a weekend. As soon as we returned to the ferry, we started breathing deeply.
• Did I mention that an "unusually harsh winter," such as the one we're having right now, means that we're hovering around the freezing mark, and it might snow tomorrow? This is still thrilling to me, after all those ridiculous Saskatchewan winters. No frost-bitten toes, just by driving to school. No plugging in the car, no scraping, and no terrible winter boots hurting my ankles. I can go for a walk whenever I want to, and I don't fall on the ice. No 40 below.
• I have met some wonderful people here. The church people have become family, and everyone I've met in the history department is just unbelievably nice.
• People are really polite, if they're not driving in a parking lot! When we get off the bus, there's a whole string of people calling out "thank you!"
• Paying $16/month for unlimited bussing, if you're a post-secondary student, with a fabulous transit system. Students in this city also get a lot of other discounts at stores, I just discovered.
• The way in which this city protects and encourages small local businesses. (Even though I grumble about missing my big box stores, which is funny, because I loved the quirky stores back home.)
• Old buildings and everything cultural that you'd ever want.
• How easy it is to be environmentally friendly: free recycling pick-up!
• The fact that everyone I've met that has heard the word "bunnyhug" has loved the term and has decided to adopt it.
• Cheap and easy-to-find Mackintosh's Toffee Bars in all the tourist shops! (Apparently, it's a distinctly "Canadian" product.)
• My "corner store" being a fantastical cheese shop.
• Fair trade coffee, of the sort sold at 10 000 Villages, sold in every tiny grocery store.
• Murchees! Silk Road! Tea! Coffee! Bookstores!
• Fabulous Chinatown.
• The aging British population which appeared out of the woodwork, to show their support for Lynne Truss.
• Living in a city that purports to "out-English the English."
• Living in a place where friends and family actually want to visit.

Things that drive me crazy about this province:

• The provincial government, and especially the fact that there's no subsidised driver training program in schools, but instead kids have to pay $800 for driving lessons (or they just don't take them, and just start at a lower class on the graduated license). This makes my blood boil, for many reasons. (Especially when drivers nearly mow us down in parking lots, having no idea about right of way, because they didn't learn that and assume that parking lots have no rules.)
• The provincial government, and especially the way it treats the school system.
• The fact that, while we're one of the most educated cities in Canada (72.5% of the population has post-secondary), it also means that the bar has been set ridiculously high for getting a suitable job. The high employment rate is caused by the presence of lots of trades-type jobs, fisheries and nowhere-leading call centre jobs. Good luck, if you're a teacher.
• The fact that it takes eight billion hours and is really expensive to get anywhere, thanks to all the beautiful scenery (ocean and mountains). As a result, it's really insular. (If we took our car to Vancouver, it would cost about $140-150, in total.)
• Four-hour waits for emergency rooms being seen as "standard."
• The really high cost of food.
• Tourists making it frightening to drive downtown, because they walk all over the road.
• The way in which people act like they live in the greatest city on earth, and act like we escaped Saskatchewan with our lives.
• The really prevalent drug culture.
• The city having no idea what to do with its homeless population, causing a lot of tension here.
• The fact that the main library downtown doesn't have movies you can borrow. Boo!
• Everyone here is frightened by weather.
• Really, really rabid activism. (I get frightened by such things.)
• The potential of a giant earthquake, which could push this island 45 feet toward Hawaii, killing all of us. Sitting here, eating our granola, waiting for "the Big One."

I know I'll end up updating this list.