Hi everyone,

Have just managed to delete my previous post so I'll keep it short and sweet this time.
OH and me are researching moving to Canada, esp. BC (I want the milder version of the Canadian winter). So I was looking for recommendations of towns to visit during our reccie trip - we will be visiting Vancouver, but in terms of housing, this will be too expensive for us. Have read about Maple Ridge, Kelowna, Kamloops, Pentincton, Princeton - can anybody recommend any of these (or others) based on their own experience? How easy is it to set in/how accepting are they of people with other accents? How far is it to commute to larger cities with jobs? And are there any problems with antisocial behaviour/yobbishness? I think maybe I am looking for the impossible (somewhere safe, affordable, clean, civilised, and not with months of on-off winter gales) but you can always ask the experts and hope for the best!
Greetings from sunny Yorkshire (well, at least it's sunny today)
PS. We are going to the Leeds expo in Autumn, would anybody recommend this?

A lot depends on what you do or want to do. Anywhere as far out a Abbotsford is commutable to Vancouver, even Chilliwack at a push. Kamloops and Kelowna are larger cities, Princeton is miles from anywhere with not much to do, still a bit of the wild west in it.

If you don't want the extremes of temperatures, take a look at the Fraser Valley and South Surrey, Southern half of Van Island.

We've found Kamloops very easy to settle into. Climate, amenities, social life etc has all worked out very well. The city is experiencing strong growth - we started a business which has been successful, and I've had no problem taking on additional contracts, and now a permanent full time job with the university too.

There's nowhere you'd really commute to from Kamloops, though plenty of outlying smaller communities that you could commute into town from if you didn't want to live too close to the city.

There are few social/crime problems to worry about, it's a very laid back slow pace of life (35+ degree heat has a lot to do with that, I think). Winter's are comparatively mild by Canadian standards, and is generally over by early March.

From my visits there and what the OH (a BC native) told me the climate is the same in BC as the rest of Canada apart from lack of humidity unless you live on the coast or the island then its more temperate so guess it depends what part of BC you wonna live.

The Okanagan climate is absolutely nothing like Sask, NS, ON etc. In fact, nothing like AB either.

She's a BC native....was she high on the old organic BC cactus when she told you that fairytale ?




R.

Nope she lived in the interior, Quesnel near Prince George for 20 years then Victoria for 3, then Vancouver for a couple before moving east and always told me BC interior is very simlar to ON without the humidty and from what Ive seen Id agree, went back cple of winters ago, temps and snow levels similar to ON, Vancouver/Victoria was temperate and rainy with no snow in winter, summer cple years back was pretty hot similar to ON but no humidity so seems pretty similar to me unless you live on the coast. Obv there maybe little pockets that are different and above is a generalisation of the interior and coast.

Dunno what she was smoking but the OP better not take any notice of your OH's opinion!

The old BC cactus for sure...too high to know whether it's dry, humid, hot, cold, snowy or windy. Just the weather, duuuude !