Returning to the City

Published at 18:04 on 4 November 2021

So I bicycled all over Vancouver today running various errands related to getting settled in here. And it came to me how much I really do like living in a big, older urban core. It’s so nice to have a more human (as opposed to automobile-centric) scale to things, and it’s also a big plus to have a wide variety of stores and services within easy reach. (Such as, for example, an electronic parts supply house, where I could procure a few parts to fabricate a replacement for the fused power cord that I forgot to bring up with me.)

I left Seattle not because I lacked appreciation for the benefits of a large city, but because Seattle forced me to give up access to wild nature in order to get those benefits. In fact, the vast majority of large North American cities have this problem. That Portland did not have it is one of the reasons I clung so tightly to that place, despite it massively not working well for me in either the employment or allergy departments.

Vancouver has that access to nature in spades. Not only is there Stanley Park, which is absolutely huge and contains large wild tracts, there is the North Shore, a quick ferry ride away, where suburbia (a lot of which is old-school, walkable, ferry-and-streetcar suburbia) gives way quite quickly to all-out wilderness. My temporary rental is in fact on the North Shore, and my host talked about bears prowling the neighborhood.

I just assumed that it would be too hard after fifty to convince Canada to let me in. Persuaded by a good friend, who thought otherwise, I decided to conduct a little experiment, and well, here I am.

Now we get to see how long it lasts. If there is one constant in my life, it is that work and living arrangements never last long, so it is not reasonable to expect this one to last long, either. It is reasonable to expect it might last two or three years, which would be long enough to secure permanent residency in Canada. If that happens, I will consider the little experiment a big success.

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