My husband and I currently live in CA but are considering a move to Vancouver Island, to the Arbutus Ridge Community. I have Canadian citizenship but my husband does not. I would really like to hear from someone who has done a similar move and the hurdles you faced, e.g. healthcare, getting a dr.
Posted by No-Bluejay1081@reddit | expats | View on Reddit | 20 comments
trx212@reddit
Lived on the island for 8 years. Its getting expensive and there's no Dr's. Not much access to social services etc. If you need access to either of these things its going to be a problem.
No-Bluejay1081@reddit (OP)
Thanks. I'm beginning to realize that.
trx212@reddit
I recently moved to Calgary from vic and the hospital wait times are half here and I got a family dr in like 3months time versus 5 year on island. I get way more for my tax dollars here because bc keeps the tax dollar spending to the mainland. (I lived in bc 28 years) My child is on the spectrum and needs extra help. I got a combination of private and free public help within a month here. 5year wait for diagnosis in BC .
No-Bluejay1081@reddit (OP)
Dang! At our ages, we don't have 5 years to play with if either of us suffers some medical issue. Alas, Calgary is not an option for us. I didn't realize that there was such a disparity in medical support between the provinces. Thank you for your input!
MrG@reddit
The standard disclaimers about moving to Vancouver Island apply - have work lined up or otherwise be financially secure. The Dr shortage in BC is a real problem, we were fortunate to get one shorty after moving to the island in 2018. If you have any sort of ongoing health issues, you might want to reconsider just for that fact alone. Conversely if you are relatively healthy, you can stick it out until you find a doctor.
We live in the Cowichan Valley and are currently vacationing in San Diego for 3 weeks in order to get away from the rain and grey. Don’t get me wrong, having been to many countries in the world and after living in SF Bay Area for 9 years in the 90s, if you love the outdoors and a relatively peaceful style of life, Vancouver Island is hard to beat. This is doubly so if you become/are a boater as exploring the Gulf islands by boat and enjoying the sea life and the fishing makes life here even that much better. But as much as we love living in a temperate rain forest, and even though summer is amazing weather, in the winter our internal solar batteries need recharging. This is even with Vitamin D supplements. So getting away every January is important to us. Arbutus as you probably know is 55+. There are some really nice properties there. If you own property in the states and come up right now with the exchange rate on the dollar as it is, you can make out like a bandit.
No-Bluejay1081@reddit (OP)
Thank you. This is actually quite encouraging. I'm beginning to think that easing into a permanent move might be better for us, i.e. keeping our place here in CA and splitting time between here and there while we figure things out. We could try to find private insurance that would cover us while we're there. I'm sure that would be expensive and not easy but a possibility. The lifestyle and at Arbutus Ridge are alluring and as you said, the exchange rate alone is an incentive.
Pale-Candidate8860@reddit
Hello, I am originally from California, but lived in multiple states prior to making the move to The Lower Mainland as they call it here. My wife sponsored me, so I am in a similar boat. I have only lived here for 3 years, so pretty new. A couple of things to consider...
The current government(liberal coalition), including the incoming government(most likely conservative), have and will continue to stop spousal sponsorships. Right now, basically all new family sponsorships are not being allowed due to the large amount of immigrants let into the nation in such a short period of time. I was one of them. This includes; spouses, children, parents, grandparents, and siblings. Please consult an immigration lawyer as it might be difficult to pull this off as of this moment in time. Again, lawyer.
In terms of healthcare, my wife and I do not have a family doctor at all. You have to book appointments at clinics sometimes a week in advance or show up 2+ hours before the clinic opens to get a walk-in, which sometimes results in being told to come back in several hours later in the day. I have had rare occasions where they assisted me 10 minutes later, but don't expect that. My daughter, within a couple months of being born, was able to get a family doctor, because we found someone who is only taking people under 24 years old. Otherwise, clinics or emergency rooms are your only options. My wife couldn't get into a walk-in clinic when she got severe food poisoning and had to wait 9 hours in the emergency room before receiving treatment. With that said, its based on priority. I heard British Columbia is one of the most staffed provinces in the country outside of Ontario & Quebec.
In terms of other hurdles, it'll mostly be cultural, a wage cut(25%-50% AFTER currency conversion), and processing times for immigration. I had to be unemployed for 10 months waiting on my permanent residency to come in and I had no work permit option for the in-between wait. That was brutal.
By the way, once he has legal status, getting a driver's license is as simple as trading your California DL for a BC one at ICBC. However, they will shred it, so make sure to take pictures/scan it front and back. Just in case. Also make sure to call the DMV in California to cancel your driver's license. Otherwise, you'll get an interesting thing like I did, which was being called for jury duty because its based on your driver license's validity(speaking for Washington based on personal experience). But you can easily be excused by just calling the right department and telling them that you live out of state/country.
I hope the information helped.
No-Bluejay1081@reddit (OP)
Thank you so much for this valuable information. The husband sponsorship issue is truly an eye-opener. I thought it would be easy! The medical coverage or lack thereof is another issue. My husband is 82 and I'm 74 so I'm not surely how welcoming BC would be for a senior, especially on Vancouver Island, where medical support might be even more daunting. I'm not worried about me but I am concerned about hubby. Right now we're on Medicare but the Trump administration (oligarchy) has plans to slash that program. As you said, Canada is now leaning right, so it might be difficult to consider a move like this, especially at our age. If we were younger, we could consider spending 6 mos. in each place to see how things pan out in both countries but again, at our age? Obviously, the work restrictions are not an issue for us. This is a conundrum for sure. We are somewhat in a California bubble and will not be affected (for a while) by the insanity that is no pervasive in this country but who knows how long that will last. Would you mind sharing what area you live in and despite the hardships you've had to overcome, are you happy you made the move? We've visited Vancouver Island several times and it appears to me a nature lover's dream and that's what I'm looking for.
Pale-Candidate8860@reddit
To be clear on the political part, restricting immigration has become a nonpartisan thing. The liberals began the cuts and restrictions with the approval of the socialists(NDP). The conservatives are simply going to continue with this plan as the costs of everything, along with artificial housing restrictions(takes up to 18 months to get a building permit approved and accounts for 1/3 the cost of all construction projects) has led to the current housing crisis.
I'm not sure if your husband would have an easy time or not as it will depend on what an immigration lawyer tells you. The rules are changing weekly.
I have been to the island. Only Victoria and Butchart Gardens though. The Gardens were nice, but Victoria not so much. I have heard from many people that the rest of the island is amazing and Victoria is a stain on the beauty. It is because during COVID, a lot of cities around Canada started shipping homeless people en mass to Victoria when they heard the city was buying hotels and converting them into homeless shelters. They were doing this, but it was intended only for their local homeless population. Now its so out of control, the city is going to require provincial and federal assistance to figure out what to do with all the homeless. Again, the areas outside are apparently outstanding and I believe it as I have lived in parts of the US with a similar dynamic.
In the beginning, I was extremely frustrated due to the differences in work ethic, pace of life, and willingness to just do something instead of forming a committee and having dozens of meetings on what to do. As time has gone on, there are aspects I have come to appreciate.
The safety standards are surprisingly much better here. For example, I live in one of the surrounding cities of Vancouver and everyone talks about how dangerous the metropolitan area has become. Shootings, stabbings, overall spikes in crime. Vancouver(650,000) only had 10 murders last year. I lived in a town of 38,000 that had more annual murders than that. I don't worry about getting car jacked, or shot, or mugged, or anything along those lines. I didn't realize those stresses existed until I came here. Because when I came here, those stresses disappeared.
I'm late 20s in age and am a permanent resident.
No-Bluejay1081@reddit (OP)
Thank you again for this information. I find it interesting that Victoria didn't appeal to you. I thought it a lovely city and very user friendly. It's true that there are seedy pockets where the homeless situation is obvious. Unfortunately, that's a social issue that most big cities now have. We've travelled the island extensively and it is truly beautiful with a lot of diverse terrain. I yearn to live somewhere where those stresses you mention are not as prevalent. We live in the Monterrey Bay Area and although beautiful, crime among other things is on the rise. It sounds like you have found a good place to roost. No place is perfect, so it all depends on priorities at a particular stage of life, as those do change.
SexySwedishSpy@reddit
I moved from Scotland to Vancouver in 2022. It's a very expensive city. It's not hard to find housing, but it costs a pretty penny. My husband and I rented a 1-bed flat near Kerrisdale for CAD$3,300 a month. Parking and bills were extra. This was on the high side because we were foreigners and only one of the big complexes would accept our foreign bank details. We looked at other flats in a similar price range, one in the city. If you move into the outside communities, it's cheaper. The Arbutus Ridge area itself is wonderful for being Vancouver. It's affluent and nearby Kerrisdale has lots of conveniences. It's easy to get to Richmond and the airport using the older road that connects from Arbutus.
Public transport is good and the city is driveable, if you don't need to make it across the bridges, which are chaos at all times of day. Setting up a bank account is reasonably easy, as is getting a phone plan. Family doctors are extremely hard to find and in the absence of them, you have to use the public clinics. It's hard to get an appointment. There are online services that can help with prescription renewal etc. Dental care is much easier. The old pharmacy in Kerrisdale is the pharmacy I've ever been to. There are some great places in Kerrsidale, which strives to keep some of the 'old ways' alive.
There are not that many grocery stores in the area and the ones that exist are small. They have the everyday essentials, but they were never super for a big shop. There is a Walmart and Costco in Richmond. We always ended up going to the Walmart because the Costco is super-busy always. You often have to queue to get in, unless you can get there are odd times. It's a very densely populated city that has grown very rapidly in the last 25 years and many public amenities just haven't kept pace.
We moved from Vancouver in 2024 because it was too expensive for us and I didn't like the culture. We met a handful of wonderful people, but I'm Swedish and I didn't like how sterile the city was an how devoid it was of plant and animal life. Everything in the city (especially around Arbutus) is well-manicured. It's a very clean city. But there was no birdlife (apart from the crows) and no insects. It was weird to sit outside on the balcony and hear nothing apart from the distant hum of traffic. I'm used to hearing birdsong and seeing some bugs flitter in the sunlight. But there was none of that and I felt as if I was living on a graveyard. I just couldn't do it.
My husband is American and found Canadian culture to be less sterile, but still strange. People behave strangely and keep you at arm's length. It gets tiring. But there are genuine people, like there are in all places. As I said, we made some wonderful friends there who we're still in touch with! I think the culture-shock is less if you move from the US than from the UK, as I did.
I'm happy to answer more specific questions, but those were my intitial thoughts.
No-Bluejay1081@reddit (OP)
Thank you for all this information. Our destination is actually Arbutus Ridge on Vancouver Island but a lot of what you've posted is still relevant to facts that will determine whether we make the big move.
SexySwedishSpy@reddit
What I'd like to add abut the Island is that it's scenically beautiful, even if you're just on the outskirt of a small town. Nature there is a lot more unspoiled than it is in the metropolitan areas on the mainland. The amenities are potentially even more limited, but places like Victoria have a lovely and almost European seaside-town feel to them. Several people at the company that I worked at in Vancouver lived there full time (as our company allowed peopl to work from home for long stretches of time). It also has a thriving art scene in the form of local pottery and so on. I loved finding the local pieces in the thrift stores that we had available on the mainland.
SCCityGIRL74@reddit
Good to know. Thanks!
MyOwntediousthoughts@reddit
I think they are looking at Arbutus Ridge in the Cowichan valley on the island. It seems to be geared for reitreees, of which there is a large population on the island. It makes getting a family doctor reeeaally difficult. Many things US residents struggle with when moving here is the lack of variety in shopping - not kidding. Especially as a Californian - no Target, no Trader Joes, no higher quality stores really. Your main town would be Duncan I suppose and you will be underwhelmed by the restaurants and stores.
No-Bluejay1081@reddit (OP)
You are correct about Arbutus Ridge and it becoming clearer all the time that medical coverage could be an issue. Shopping and restaurant options are far less of an issue but then again, we haven't really gone without. As they say, you don't miss it until it's gone. Yes, Trader Joe's would definitely be missed. :(
SexySwedishSpy@reddit
Oh, haha.
I do completely agree with the point about shopping, though, The nearest Trader Joe (to either Vancouver proper or Vancouver Island) is in Seattle, over 3 hours and one border crossing away.
zyine@reddit
CA is the abbreviation for both Canada and California
DillionM@reddit
Maybe they should consider Ontario, CA.....
I couldn't help it, sorry.
No-Bluejay1081@reddit (OP)
Nooooo. I grew up in Toronto and could not go back to that climate.