Vancouver is a very long way away

I have been reflecting on this ever since I got back from Vancouver and while I was recovering from the awful journey (a story for another day) and the even more awful jet lag. The bald facts are clear: Vancouver is a nine and a half hour flight away and there is an eight hour time difference. On my way back, I stopped in Montreal for two days, and the Vancouver to Montreal leg was a flight of almost five hours. That amazed me. It means that Montreal is almost the half way point of the distance between London and Vancouver. Nothing until that moment had brought home to me quite how enormous Canada is. Suddenly, having my only immediate family there felt even less enticing than it had before. What when one of us became ill? There was no possibility of a rapid arrival at the bedside and fond support. Selfishly, this matters to me.


However, there are other, perhaps more important, ways that Vancouver is a very long way away. Until I visited, I had not appreciated quite what a young city Vancouver is. I had visited the East coast of Canada before, and was aware of its history, of the many things we shared. I knew that Europeans had colonised it as early as the mid-sixteenth century. I had foolishly expected Vancouver to have developed very soon after this, completely ignoring the vast and impassable terrain in between. In fact, of course, the West coast was not reached by people trekking across Canada, but by sea, and not until the late eighteenth century, more than 200 years later. The colony of British Columbia was much later still, only being founded in 1858, and the City of Vancouver was incorporated in 1886. The reality, therefore, is that Vancouver really is a very new city, with little more than 130 years of existence behind it.


This makes enormous differences to the outlook and attitudes of the people. It has frequently been noted that most north americans are much more outward looking than Europeans; that they lack the innate cynicism that we have developed, and I found this to be true. But there are other things. Vancouver is a far more cosmopolitan city than I had expected, having welcomed waves of incomers over the last 130 years. It is extraordinarily modern, but it relishes every tiny bit of history it can find: any building older than about 60 years is protected and has a plaque attached to it. I went to Mass at the Roman Catholic Cathedral and found it warm and welcoming, not always a trait of European Cathedrals. People seem genuinely nice and friendly.

The other differences are probably more to do with size. People think nothing of going shopping in Seattle - a mere three hours drive away. They will even drive the approximately 40 minutes to the border to buy cheaper petrol in the USA - which seemed to me slightly self-defeating, but I didn't like to enquire too critically. They are also great outdoors people - and I don't mean taking a picnic to a field for a damp afternoon. They are blessed with some of the most glorious scenery in the world all, in relative terms, on their doorstep. Everybody seems to kayak, ski, swim, hike and any number of other sports.

So, am I trying to get myself a visa? Well, no. To be honest, I am too European. I like the scale of Europe, the history, the art, the fact that I can get it all within an hour's flight at most. I like the little streets and the small farms. I like the differences as you cross borders. And I like the fact that there are lots of different shades of green in the forests we have left, not the monochrome of the pines. So I shall stay here. And hope that we all stay well for a long time.