Hi, here are some links you may find useful. For Campbell River http://www.campbellriver.ca/Pages/default.aspx For Duncan http://www.city.duncan.bc.ca/ and for the Cowichan Valley http://www.cvrd.bc.ca/

To be honest most people seem happy wherever they live on the Island so it is down to personal choice.

well, if you don't like small towns which have had their best time - i guess cumberland itself is out of your list.
cumberland had its heydays as a mining and logging town until about mid last century. although there is some development discussed in the area between downtown and the inland highway (the trylogy project, with mall, casino, condos and some townhouses as they are called here - no idea if i spelled the name correctly and i'm currently not up to date what's going on there) , most cumberlanders like to keep the way it is. when i first went up there it looked to me like these old frontier towns out of the cheap western films... i know now that the have an active community and for its size quite a bit going on - but be warned, its more towards the alternative side.
on the other hand is the comox valley relatively small, which means your as fast in one of courtenay's malls for your shopping or its cultural stuff like cinema, theatre, gallery... as you are in campbell river's centre if you happen to live in its outskirts.

the comox valley has the right mixture for me - but as maddhobs said, it's down to your personal preferences. why don't you do a reccie and look what suits you most?

I think that you might be missing part of the point, that would most likely be a gross amount, out of that has to come operating expenses like rent and utilities etc for the office plus you have to employ a receptionist/nurse.

That reduces it somewhat, most likely closer to that $99,500 figure mentioned further down thread.

Please come to Kamloops, we are in need of a few Doctors in this neck of the woods.

Hi there, I have lived in Campbell River for a year now and I like it very much. It depends what you are looking for in life and at the we are very much enjoying this town. We have 3 children who have happily settled in school and there is a doc across the road in a local practice who seems to be very content with his lot. I will answer as many q's as I can if it helps you

I was just there ten days straight ... there was a major shopping mall ... but I saw a few smaller ones. I found the lifestyle very relaxed, a slow slow pace of life, hardly any traffic .. everything is 15 minutes by car. Myself I loved to visit but I could never live there because I have always lived in major cities (london, paris, lausanne, calcutta, montreal) and that is what I feel comfortable with.

if we talk about the same town - they must be proud at lake geneva to be mentioned in the same sentence with cities that all (not sure about montreal though?) probably have nearly the population of the whole country it is located in...

The comments on Duncan are interesting, thanks for the input and links maddhobbs -more research for us to do

We have not been to the Island yet. The reccie idea fell apart as things have moved much quicker than we expected so the plan now is to narrow down to a few jobs, then fly over to make the final decision.

In terms of the money I have no idea but must admit that the figure of $99K after tax and expenses is a little lower than we expected based on discussions with other rural GPs in BC on other forums.

However it's a lifestyle move for us -greater opportunity for OH to practice the clinical side of medicine, slower pace of life, options for the family to do outdoor activities and hopefully a better future for the kids.

Ellsie I'll be harassing you with questions once we know which clinics / part of town etc !

Danny B, Kamloops is actually high on our shortlist but no positions for overseas qualified doctors there at the moment -they want Canadians !

I don't think that site is very reliable. I've just looked up my own job and the average salary it quotes for Toronto is less than the hiring floor in practice. We couldn't attract anyone to our organization if we paid so low. The site is just plain wrong (at least in this instance).

LOL Yes I've been there too!
As anywhere there are parts of town you would choose not to live in but may be very interesting from a GP point of view. This is thought of as a blue collar town whereas Courtney-Comox, next town down is more of a white collar.
I have moved around a lot but this town amazes me every day as there is such stunning scenery peeking round every corner.