tweed_wearer

My wife and I have lived in Vancouver for over a year. I can see why the city is wonderful and why everybody wants to live here but recently I have become down in the dumps and disillusioned about how hard it is to make friends here. The only social occasions I am invited to are those arranged by Irish, South African and British colleagues in another department where I work. Even those tend to wrap up before 9pm.

We are expecting our first child in April. This weekend we went to our baby prep class and we met many of the kind of people we would like to be friends with - parents to be who were educated, friendly, outgoing, funny and from a range of backgrounds. Friends in the UK spoke a lot of how they made strong and lasting friendships and support networks with those they met at baby prep, however when our course ended, everybody put on their coats, said quite a sincere "good luck" and left. No pub, no exchange of phone numbers -information obtained, now home time. I left feeling like as though I had been snubbed, though of course I have no right to make someone my friend!

Do I have two heads? Is my Frankie Boyle sense of humour scaring people away?

I'm not just here to moan, I genuinely just want to know, do others find the same? I feel so strongly at the moment that I would happily leave and never return.

withabix

Probably.

Especially if you're a Class A tw*t like he is!

Vancouverites generally don't 'get' British humour anyway - they just tell you that you've got a 'nice accent'....

Dorothy

You were at a baby prep course. I would presume no pub because at least 50% of the attendees were pregnant!

Did you offer your phone number or ask if anyone wanted to grab a coffee or to meet up at a later date? Or were you waiting for them to come up and offer first?

And think about it... When you lived in the UK how many immigrants were you friends with? Really friends. Did you go out of your way to make them feel welcome and try to "get" their sense of humour?

scrubbedexpat091

Vancouver is notorious for being a not so friendly city. Even those from Vancouver and Canada find it that way at times, it's just a difficult city to fit into and make friends, or if single date, not a good city for dating either.

Oink

And you want to do is to tell them to naff off as you don't have an accent. Its just how English is meant to sound when it's spoken correctly.


But there is a lot of superficial and dull knobheads here. If I was you I wouldn't have nothing to do with them, just get on with life here on your own or with you family. Personally I try and avoid them like the plague.

Pollyana

For Brits, meeting up in the pub isn't always about having an alcoholic drink. Its a place to socialise and chat, with friends, work mates, whatever. For us its usually preferable to meeting in people's homes, and its more part of British society to meet up in the pub than in a coffee shop.

Siouxie

Ask for advice about something - Canadians that I have met love to feel as though they are helping.

The biggest problem is that most people you will meet have already got established friendships going back decades - just like most of us had in the UK. That doesn't mean you can't make friends, just that you have to make more effort than you would normally. Canadians also tend to be very polite and don't like to say 'no' so if you want to arrange something, set a specific date, time and place rather than say 'sometime' because that 'sometime' will never happen.

You will find that once your little one starts mixing with other children your circle will increase greatly - but in the meantime, why not say "you know what, we're finding it really hard to meet people here" and see what happens. I honestly don't think that Canadians, generally, are unfriendly - it just doesn't occur to them that you might be a bit lonely and looking to expand your circle!

Hang in there..

Dorothy

In Canada the pub is where people go for alcohol.

themajor

EXCELLENT ADVICE !!

scrubbedexpat091

Not necessarily, lots of pubs sell food and some have quite good food. We have several pubs in town where lots of people go to just eat and have non-alcoholic drinks.

We visit pubs at times and never drink alcohol, just go for the food and to go out. Neither of us are British.

Pubs are evolving away from being just places to go and drink.

dbd33

Cradles, maybe, but most people here don't behave like them. There is a social scene involving pubs and Canada now has pubs with windows and full sized glasses!

I know my daughter has made friends through the various baby events she, and her child, attend so it does happen. I don't know though how it'll be when the seeming endless maternity leave finally expires; I can't imagine there will be time for friends after working and bicycling to and from the organic dual ethnicity daycare.

itsasmallworld

"organic dual ethnicity daycare"

That cracked me up!

caretaker

There are a lot of nice open genuine people in Vancouver and most of them are from Saskatchewan.

JamesM

And sweet potato fries + Hooters girls.

Alan2005

This is how I felt when going to the office. Friday came around and my thoughts where "finally, we are going to the pub for a couple of after office pints." But no, that doesn't happen. Everyone buggers off home or goes out to see cam or craig (kreg) that they've known since the womb or some shit like that.

I should have guessed because a few of us did actually go down the pub for lunch one day and I made the mistake of ordering first. 6 waters, 1 coke and a pint of stellar was the drinks order