While I've been on Vancouver Island a fair amount, I admit I've never lived there. One thing that's surprised me is hearing about how much people from across the country hate Victoria! Whether they moved from Ottawa, Calgary, Toronto ... people seem to despise this little island city. I keep hearing the same complaints repeatedly, so read for yourself:
I moved here 4 years ago with my family from Ontario with the hopes of having a better lifestyle and unlimited opportunity. You would think on a smaller Island as beautiful as Victoria that the people who be more appreciative and maybe a little nicer, but what we and hundreds of other outsiders found is that the people here are colder than a praries winter. They are over-priveledged, anti social, self proclaimed and sadly lacking anything resembling social skills. Because of unrealistic real estate prices homeowners have experienced wealth that is unheard of in any other part of the country. In a nutshell the people here suck. The place is beautiful but the pretty beaches and the trees do not make up for the Islands lack of personality. It is overpriced so every other person has to build suites in thier homes so they can afford to put a roof over thier heads. They are jamming homes in every nook and cranny to accommodate the lack of affordable housing, leaving people permanently strapped and living off of credit pretending they actually have money. The health system here sucks and where else do you have to pay to have your garbage picked up. I am happy for those of you that are from here and have family but if any of you are planning on moving here without your family being there to help out with kids and whatnot, don't bother unless you have tons of extra cash to over pay for it. For those of us that wanted to come here and start a new life I want to say that the Island is like a giant high school with cliques that never let you in, that will
take 20 years to ever penetrate. My advice is to not give up your real family and friends for the crap that the Island offers and come here on vacation only, that way you are buying something from the shallow personalityless Islanders that will only be nice to you if you are buying something from them.
I will be glad to leave this Island and I feel dumber for having been on it.
Cheers
No, Victoria is not a nice place to live beyond the propaganda. Dig a little deeper. The general cultural attitude is cold, aloof, dead inside, uptight, socially cliquey, standoffish, mentally stupid, inefficient, lacking of any common sense, slow, cheap, poor, backward, insane, self delusional, and lots more. They will try to trick you with how great the weather and environment is. Victoria is probably the only place on Earth with any beautiful environment? Most of the jobs in Victoria BC are stingy paying, slave driving, perhaps even abusive, and don't recognize your talents. Low or high end jobs don't matter as they will pay you 25-33% less wage for the same work as cities and provinces outside of British Columbia, where they reward and value skills. You will get squeezed with cheap wages, and high housing, living costs at both ends. It gets worst as the upward mobility job prospects in Victoria BC are limited and limiting. Many Victoria students and locals leave and go work in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, South America, Asia, Europe, others in order to make big money and then maybe afford a Victoria house to buy. The joke local job market is a waste of time and life. Don't leave the prosperity of Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, etc for the monotony of Victoria. Many outside and local people say Victoria is over rated and move elsewhere in order to succeed. It seems the only prosperous Victorians are those who inherited old money wealth, or do big business in the rest of the world and then spend the wealth there. The lifer local Victorians are usually ignorant, poor, pissed off, and blocked. A friend referred to Victoria as the biggest outdoor insane asylum.
Victoria has all the resources and people to become just as prosperous and opportunistic as Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City, Montreal, Saskatoon, Regina, etc. The restricted, restrictive Victorian mental, social attitude keeps getting in the way of adventure, broad mindedness, and prosperity. Victoria region can climb high and go farther if it can get its inefficient disjointed, confusing, frustrating crap policies in order. The public and private sectors in Victoria are equally mental.
Run for the hill as fast as you can is my advice to anyone considering a move or relocation to Victoria. Oh, the holiday visit leaves you feeling like it could be a nice place to live, but THINK again. It is so boring there, the people are MINDLESS, void of any real personality, crap jobs, crappy salaries, all broke, no excitment of life in the air, just dead!
Run to the East my friend, you will be happier. People from the East are rooted and so normal and friendly, real people, no air of snobbery about them like the Vics.
I know many ex victorians who moved to Ontario and Alberta to make better money and actually have a wealthier life. The ones who stayed behind in Vic BC are depressed, angry, frustrated, and these ones are the ones from the wealthier families. The ones from the poorer families can add destitute and desperate to the list. All those friendly Victorians you see are just superficially acting in front of your face. The true happy people in Victoria are the visitors; the locals are very artificial and superficial.
Victoria wages are sub par low and various living expenses are above par extortionary high because the owners and managers, all the decision makers know and hope the docile sheeple won't uncover their dirty ways and stand up. The place looks and behaves like a life sized experiment lab in mass social manipulation and control for the NWO. It is probably a society template for the future global world gradually being made even now?
I've lived in Victoria for my whole life. It's super boring here. I probably won't live here in the future.
I not saying Victoria is always 100% shitty to live in. The upward mobility in job prospests, social, wealth really sucks in Victoria because of the public and private sector entrenched cheap, restrictive attitudes. Paying peanuts hires you monkeys. The only reason why I stay in this city is because my family owns apartment building real estate worth about 20 years of a government manager's wages, in any place. I am not poor, only frustrated and bored. If this frustration happens to me and my well to do comfortable friends, what chances are there for other Victoria people lower down the social economic ladder? My friends and I can't make it on our own in Victoria and our families' wealth is keeping up afloat. In Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, etc, that could be different.
Thirty yeara ago Victoria Was a Beautiful place to live then the east moved west and turned Victoria into a Concrete jungle. Roads are now wall to wall parking lots. Real estate has plumpeted to a price my grandchildren will never be able to afford. If you don't like Viotoria then yoou are to blame. Please go back where you came from and let us return to the beautiful city we onse had
It's a common subject in Victoria and it doesn't matter who you work for or what you work as. Your schooling and experience doesn't matter to the brain dead local employers as they don't want to pay market pay. The screw up low quality staff they do have either quit or get fired for big mess ups, or they gang up bully you if you are too good and make them look bad. Even if all these BS things don't happen to you at one of the crappy Victoria jobs, you are going to get over worked and under paid anyway. It is not just one or few jobs that destroys your soul, it is the entire Victosria region. There are few good job, or any jobs that compensates and treats you properly
Sure Victoria is a nice place to live, if you are independently wealthy and don't need to depend on anyone else for anything. The place really sucks if you need to work for others to live and must go through life kissing their ass, licking their boots. then it isn't so nice for you.
I am not born but raised in Victoria. I must agree with a lot of the negative posts on here. I am 37, well educated and STRUGGLE to make ends meet. Rent is WAY too high for a dump of a basement suite. It is VERY closed off and hard to break the barrier of social realm. I am tired, depressed, and pissed off...and reading this have me going home a packing my car and catching the next ferry out. OH! In case you are considering on moving to the island? Watch out for the ferries, it will soon cost you $400.00 ROUND trip with one car and passenger on the ferries. So essentially you are stranded on "the rock" as we call it here, because is like Alcatraz, you can never get off. You will be stuck fighting for survival, while the baby boomers reap your blood sweat and tears. They will never give it up!
Victoria and Vancouver Island is like social, economic, cultural drug, JUST SAY NO! If you get hooked into moving to the island and Victoria, you will be frustrated beyond belief is various ways. If you are not yet on the island and BC's capital city, it is best for your peace of mind, happiness, and sanity to continue to be elsewhere. Even those already here yearn for the opportunity and resources to leave. Even the crappy jobs in Calgary pay more wages than the crappy jobs in Victoria. The good jobs would pay even more.
Even the weather isn't as good as people say it is. People in the east seem to think we've got some sort of semi-tropical paradise here,and we actually have a pretty lousy climate. Sure, we had a good summer this year, our first decent one in about 5 years, but most of the time it's cloudy, windy, raining, or just plain depressing.
Read the rest of the comments On Victoria on this site. You can and should visit Victoria for a short vacation. I stress VISIT Victoria, not give up everyone to move to Victoria. Others who moved long term to Victoria ended up moving back to their original city because the Victoria culture is dumb down, broke ass poor, anti success, and very uptight and restrictive. Only relocate to Victoria long term if your love poverty, lack of opportunities, stupid people, and being trapped on an island prison.
Victoria wouldn't suck so much if people could actually make something of their lives living in Victoria. Unfortunately, the local employers are too, greedy, cheap, unappreciative, clueless, and sometimes even abusive. You will never be able to afford a car, house, vacation, or any excitement living here. You and your kids will end moving out of here back to your home town to work and go to school. It is dead end here.
Don't get yourself sold an inferior lemon. Always do some research on the internet before you say yes to any deal. You are the second person who was saved from moving their entire life to Victoria, on these Victoria blog forums. The other guy was prevented from moving his entire family and work from Toronto to Victoria. He decided to go to Sidney Australia instead. Knowledge is power.
Many locals and clueless newbies from other places thought Victoria would be a golden land of opportunity. That isn't the case. After the stark reality settled, then it became a matter of attempting to "escape from Vancouver Island". They could probably make a zombie apocalypse, survival horror, adventure movie with the same title, based on reality?
I have a friend who say the wages and employment situation in Victoria genrerally sucks. He also imports his dates and lovers from outside of Victoria, Vancouver Island and outside BC if possible. He feels the Victorian attitude in work, dating, and life is very uptight, cold, closed minded, superficial, backward, soul less, and just straight up crazy. Victorians lack passion, a pulse, common sense, alertness, attractiveness, charisma. Most of them look and behave like they are at a funeral for zombies. Calling Victorians dead fish would be insulting to the fish. Tourist see only the superficial surface and think the city is so wonderful after only 2 weeks. Lving in Victoria and working, living there for years will change your mind quick.
The cheap, abusive, clueless Victoria region job market and economy is making me into a bored, blocked, and dead inside zombie. The social culture is very stuck up, cold, cliquey, unfriendly, very superficial. I have no idea how some people can call Victoria a long term home, unless they are drunk, unconscious, or drugged up permanently. Most of the people (employers, associates, strangers) act through their lives as if they have no passion, soul, personality, or intelligence. Everyone is snotty, repressed, constipated, dull, gloomy like they are at a funeral.
Look friend, there isn't any web site blog that only has positive comments on how wonderful Victoria is to live in. The blogs may have a few good comments on Victoria, but they appear weak, superficial, insubstantial and sound more like propaganda slogans. Face the truth, Victoria is one culturally dumb and messed up place in general. I was born a Victorian and I can compare it to other cities all over the world. I'm qualified to judge. The place is a rust bucket dead beat car no matter how many mag wheels, car wax, car toys you try to add to it; it's not going to look and act like a pimp my ride
Victoria is OK to relocate to if you are at the bottom hole in your life. You have nothing left to lose. Most people wouldn't go there to live a restricted life (financial, social, mental health) of below average contentment if they knew the whole truth. The glitzy surface advertising is intended to lull you into a false sense of belief, make something more than it is. The reality when you arrive is something else. Definitely check out www.ratemyemployer.ca when you attempt to apply for Victoria jobs because many of the bad employers are Victoria based. Don't get conned like some of the other workers before you.
The opportunities to rise and improve yourself is mostly limited. Greater Victoria feels like a 5 thing town. You can only do the same 5 limited things in an ever repeating loop, day after day,week after week, month after month, year after year until you die. Employment and social opportunities are the craps, there are many crappy things to follow. Why do you think Victorians look and behave like zombies? They all had their souls and happiness, ambitions and dreams, sucked out of them. Most of them are trapped on Vancouver Island and they know it! Starring at the same prison walls long term would make even a sane, social person weird.
Is Victoria a nice place to live, is the question? No! There are many reasons why and the marketing propaganda types will not tell you and try to cover it up. People who live in Victoria or those formerly living in Victoria are your best sources of insider information. Listen to them as it can save you a lot of frustration and disappointment. Don't waste your time and money. The big picture is the whole of Greater Victoria is a left socialist wonder fantasy land. There is hardly any opportunities economically, everyone cheap and poor, skills and experiences won't get you jobs other cities would love to hire you for, at a much better wage too. Locals turn down oil industries that could make this place as rich as Alberta due to socialist pipedreams of ideal worlds. Basically, Victoria is poor, restrictive, and dopey in terms of economy, social life, cultural attitudes and behaviour. Forget your dreams here when you check them in at the entrance.
The Victoria contradictory nutty culture is the base of everything else that you could ever encounter in life. That's not a very good stable foundation to build everything else on top. Watch, observe, interact carefully and you will notice overt or covert signs of group insanity at work. You want to go left but turn right. Yes is no and no is yes. They want and should decide on something and end up not deciding on anything. It should be fast and results are slow. They should drive their cars on a green light but run a red light instead. They want good, efficient, quality and choose cheap, dumpy, and incompetent. These are just some brief examples.
"I like to warn people who are comtemplating moving their entire life to Victoria BC, that they need to think things over very carefully. All the negatives they would find in other major Canadian cities are even more concentrated in Victoria and it feels worse. There are 1000s of university and college graduates who graduate and can't find work worthy of their education and end up fighting for low pay, crappy jobs that are beneath their abilities and experiences. Large parts of the people are unemployed or under employed for years. You can forget about owning cars, houses, condos, or go on any vacations. You would be lucky to afford rent, food, untilites for the long term."
The Victoria social culture and offiical policies are non-conductive towards job creation, wealth creation, and building a prosperous life. Everything seems to function to keep people down. Lots of people keep cycling in and out of various school programs and still can't find well paying, stable, long term employemnet. No matter your education, skills, experience, "oh no never you". You will get much time and effort wasting run around. In the end, you will all end up moving awat from Victoria to Edmonton and Calagary to work for the oil sands industries to make real money. There is a big difference between finding a good job in Alberta in 3 days and 3+ years to find a bad job in British Columbia.
Victoria, BC Canada is poor, frustrating, limited, and ever monotonous. It is like being stuck on the same ride ever repeating and can't get off. I imagined Purgatory would be like Victoria in the afterlife. It give mediocre a bad name.
There are not enough jobs good or bad to go around in Victoria. Employers have a tendency to low ball workers on pay and benefits because they think they can. This often results in higher than usual staff turnovers and declining quality. Alberta uses more pay to attract good workers, British Columbia offers more abuse and cheap pay to attract workers. Victoria is not competitive as a labour market as places like Calgary, Toronto, etc. Life in Victoria in general is being stuck in an endless loop going nowhere. I have Victoria friends who got fed up with the slow and clueless Victorian ways and went to Fort MacMurray AB to make real oil sands money. The endless wasted time and money spent on job courses in schools resulted in no Victoria jobs.
Victoria is frustrating because you can die of old age while you are waiting for any kind of results you may want. The culture and bureaucracies grind so slowly. There are not many opportunities to shine as it is, but it gets ridiculously slow and drawn out when the other factors are included. Living in Victoria is fun like watching paint dry or grass grow. You can go away for 5-10 years at a time and them return sporadically and nothing much changes. You don't notice this if you are visiting. You will notice if you live in Victoria for months or years.
Greater Victoria does occasionally show some progress, but they are far and few followed by long times of nothing much. The whole place is socially, economically, and culturally disfunctional. The locals and other people wouldn't be going to Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge, Fort MacMurray Alberta to make some real money if it was so good in Victoria and BC. Most people don't have a 1000 year life span to wait for Victoria to get more work, better work, better pay and benefits. One life time in Victoria and BC isn't enough to see any serious changes and improvements.
University degrees, college diplomas or whatever matters little in Victoria. All your impressive work experience and qualifications don't matter one bit. The way the Victoria system works behind the scenes is a real mystery. Any other major centre would at least have some sort of decision making rules and procedures whereas Victoria runs on whims, tarot cards, ouija boards, dart boards, or reading signs from animal sacrifice entrails, or whatever crazy decision mechanism. You can even be the perfect fit for a job or date and it doesn't matter. Winning the lottery jackpot would probably be easier? You can repeadly apply for anything until the cows come home or old age death catches up to you, in Victoria BC.
The Victoria economy and social culture is like living in box prison. Any happy, sane, content person from any other place will almost always turn into a bitter, frustrated, depressed, whack job if they are forced to live in Victoria too long, for months, years, decades. The area just takes your enthusiasm, drive, ambitions, hopes, and talents and flushes them all down the garberator disposal to chop it all up. It is bad when times are good and more bad when times are bad.
Frustrating is a good starting word to describe life in Victoria. More will follow as you move and get a full treatment from the city. Like everyone else here, you will find out more as you get more familiar. All the negative comments can save you a lot of time, money, and bother before you get sucked in. If I were you new people from other places, move to some other place other than Victoria that has a chance of making you move worth it. Personally, I would like a potential return on my investment. I dislike it when I pay the price and not get my goods, Victoria.
I am so grateful that some of my friends and I have parents with some means and resources. IF this wasn't true, we would have disappeared by now. This city is one of the most mental, restricted, barren major cities I have ever experienced anywhere. It is like living in a city populated by as the others said. "zombies". Trying to improve one's living standards is next to almost impossible as everything in Victoria seems to be set up in a way that is designed to oppress you and make you fail. The temporary government jobs with the good pay are contract, temporary at best. Most of the private sector jobs don't even exist or they pay the cheapest degrading pay possible. The private employers will try to get the top workers for the bottom most wage scale. Good and cheap can't co-exist together.
Even if just one person or family is saved from making the mistake of moving their entire life to Greater Victoria, it would have been worth it. Whoever started this blog topic must have had that goal in mind, to prevent others from making his mistake? Victoria has beautiful environment, that is true. Unfortunately, the less than desirable cultural traits of most people and organizations is what brings down the region and negatively overwhelms the good points. The sad sack culture leads to slow progress for all things, limitations, restrictions, dysfunction, repression, and a general feeling of hardly any progress while running really fast to stay in the exact same spot.
Victoria is a good place to live if you like poverty, lack of opportunities, and like getting ripped off. These qualities makes the people slow, mentally lost, cranky, and depressing. Many of them are probably depressed themselves? People want and need food, shelter, money, social and fun to be happy and content. Victoria culture and economics has and lack in all.
Victoria lacking in all things is quite an under statement. It is like offering someone who accidentally cut off their own head, while shaving, a bandage to help minimally to stop the bleeding. While other major Canadian metro regions like Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton, Ottawa, Montreal, want to spend billions on mega projects like rail transit, a bridge, airport, docks, they get their crap together and find the funding to get the good built as fast and efficiently as possible. They like results.
Victoria, can't even get the 13 bickering government municipalities and all the various ass clown groups to agree on what to have for lunch at the planning meetings, never mind the big regional projects. They will procrastinate and pander to every small minded citizen and equally small minded community group who wants their 5 minutes of fame. The compromises, endless studies, petitions and counter referendums will drag on for months, years while everything gets studied to death and nothing gets done. After they waste a lot of time and money, they will discover that the best decision was the original choice. Victoria as BC capital is a fine example of how "democracy" has gone wrong. The only way to get the Victoria mess functional is "efficient dictatorship". Some tough guy or girl basically has to slap all the dead wood around, tie them up like a rodeo calf, put their foot down really hard, twist some arms and ram things through. To do otherwise is to die of old age while slowly going nowhere, really slow.
Perhaps you noticed the people in Victoria and Vancouver Island to be friendly only if you and they are in the some social clique? If you try to be friendly to other people outside your establish clique, you are going to get the Victorian treatment. The treatment is less fun than going through border customs and being subjected to a body cavity search for contraband. Victorians are superficially friendly to your face at work, official functions, to keep up appearances. They would not want to get to know you personally after the business is done. Afterwards, they don't know you from a hole in the ground.
Victoria people hang out with their own that they have known for years or decades. You, the newcomer with your bright eyed enthusiasm, fresh new ideas, lively passion, could be seen as a threat to their stale status quo. You could be deconstructed by them and remade in their mode, to become just like them. If you refuse to ASSimilate, you are going to be put into internal social exile. You will have your own invisible box prison around you wherever you go in Victoria. It is like this for work, social, residential needs. Is that cliquey enough for you?
Sure victoria is a nice place to live, if you are already rich. Making enough money to have a better life is not too easy anywhere, but appears less likely in victoria for previosly mentioned reasons. You are in for an unpleasant surprise if you think you are goin to give up your old life in another bigger Canadian city go to Victoria to make it big with lots of money, good job, cool friends, house, condo, etc.
Christmas, Canada Day, Civic Day, Labour Day, News Years Day, any other holiday in any other city Canadian or otherwise would be filled with lots of happy, cheerful, outgoing, friendly party people doing their things. Every calendar day in Victoria is no different if they were statutory holidays or regular work days. It is all very dull, boring, comatose, completely lacking in anything resembling passion. It is always like being at a funeral or having a full car tear down inspection by border officers. There are always cold, distant expressions, a carrot up the ass types of looks. Laxatives won't help the Victoria culture.
There seems to be prevalence of general life in Victoria to be boring and dull. I feel the people and culture of Victoria are very uptight, dull, and boring. Most of the time they act really odd. Nobody can accuse most Victoria people of being adventurous.
We moved here in 1980 and always found it a really difficult place to make a living. We stayed because we got trapped here for financial reasons but have been dreaming of escaping for a long time. There are way too many people chasing too few good jobs. It is also very insular and unfriendly to newcommers. I still remember being asked when I wanted to register my car in BC by the clerk with a sneer "what do you people want here" as if Albertans were from outer space and not Canadians.
It is too bad the rest of Canada has such cold winters but I wouldn't recommend anyone moving here unless you are retired and have lots of money. If you are able to make money elsewhere and live here part time is also a good plan. It is expensive and boring. Most of the locals donot want to meet new people and are snobs. The ferries keep you trapped here as it is inconvenient and expensive to leave.
People with brains, abilities, education can get worhty employment and pay in places like Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto because of their assumption of skill and merit. Nepotism corrupt Victoria would label you under or over qualified at the same time and place. They will want to pay cheap for the good people anyway. They drive all the best job applicants to other cities and even outside of BC. The left over results will be sub standard and messed up. The remaining highest ranking best of the worse stupid ones will be promoted to leadership positions and pay. Then you have situations of the most incompetent getting the best jobs and benefits.
I agree that Victorians are cheap, restricted, and crusty. The only friendly, sociable, with a clue, intelligent, cool Victorians are the ones fresh off the plane or boat. They haven't been in Victoria long enough to absorb all the mental culture yet.
Calgary, Edomonton Alberta generate revenue by selling oil and gas and other goods to the world. They have a wealthy lifestyle, mindset, higher wages, and the pricey toys and services to prove their good life. The costs and taxes are much lower and the average workers can aspire to build something with their lives. Then you have Victoria, Vancouver British Columbia that generates revenue by putting up all kinds of sales, income, environmental taxes, surcharges, fees to scrape away the already pathetic low wages of BC citizens. All the costs of living are already too high as it is. On top of this, BCers refuse to pump oil, gas off the Pacific coast, transport Alberta oil and gas to sell to the rising rich countries in Asia and South America. The transport of oil and gas could potentially screw the environment. BC say bye bye to lots of high pay jobs, supporting jobs, and lots of wealth while the various taxes further impoverish the BC people.
Most people seem to be poor and bored in Victoria. It is no wonder they are cranky, uptight, stingy. The bad low wages and taxes on everything will drain you like a vampire. The BC people are anti wealth and pro tax. The government will be more than happy to suck you dry in various ways, unlike Alberta in all things.
Victorians are no common sense, spaced out, jerk around idiots, most of them are anyways. If you love uptight, crazy, procrastinating, closed minded, poor ass, eco freaks, unreliable, indecisive, mental cases, Victoria is the city to spend the years of your life. It takes a special kind of self torturing, masochistic, poverty loving, success hating, nut bar to actually want to volunteer to move to Victoria. The more with it Victorians themselves want to leave. Victoria would actually be up to stuff if the living standards and conditions could match the high environment quality. Instead you will live the poor life of a frustrated crazy person in a beautiful environment. Why do you think BC province is so economically, culturally, socially screwed up when compared to other Canadian provinces? Victoria is the capital city.
The Victorian area economy and job market is getting worse and worse. Don't let any government or agency propaganda fool you into thinking everything is just great. The real proof is on the ground, the front lines. There are long lines of people on various ad web sites pleading for almost non-existent jobs. The jobs lists on all the employment sites are sparse for Victoria. If you do get a job, there are most likely the cheap slave driving kind. The spaced out employers want to hire staff, but not want to hire at the same time. Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, etc were not this messed up and on top of things. I can't believe some of you actually want to move to Victoria to become part of that culture?
The situation for all or most of Canada and BC or Victoria is the same when attracting immigrants and locals to move for work. However, it is even more so on Vancouver Island and Victoria. We really like your mad skills and experience in whatever high job you are doind, move or emmigrate to work for us. When you finally arrive, the story changes to something like, "Oh, we don't recognize any of the skills and education from you home region or country. You can waste years and lots of money to go back to school again so we can have jobs at your expense. If that isn't good for you, we do have jobs as cleaners, retailers, fast food workers, taxi drivers, hospitality workers, delivery drivers for all your mad skills." Do you feel dumb for falling into the sales scam by Canada, BC, Victoria, etc? You left your home region and country to go from doctor, lawyer, engineer, teacher, government official to beocme a pizza delivery driver/cook in Canada. The governments, employers/trades associations, schools are all in on the "bait and switch" con job conspiracy. Many get tricked because they don't know any better and lapse in judgement.
Unlike many of the other major Canadian metro regions where merit has value, Victoria is all about nepotism, corruption connections. The answer to everything work, social, cultural is always, "you are great, exactly what we wanted and hoped for, but oh no not you! We'll keep you in mind and find someone else like you and give it to them. You ok with that?"
The wages are pathetically cheap and the expenses are high. You make less and get squeezed to pay more for all goods and services. The various sales, environmental, carbon taxes and various fees and levies will kill your finances later. Federal income taxes and payments will take another chunk of money from you. That is probably one of the reasons why Victoria people seemed silent, grouchy, unfriendly, uptight, reserved, paranoid? They don't have much to be joyous about, taxed to death, under paid and abused to death, frustrated, gloomy, and bored. They can't earn and save enough to have a good enjoyable life. They have a hard time just surviving, no time or resources to have a fun social life too.
Victoria would be a lot more fulfilling, fun, happy, and content if many of the people are not economically, socially, psychologically, financially frustrated and blocked. People can't be happy, outgoing, sociable, and content if they are not achieving their goals and dreams. Life is good when one has what they want and need and life really sucks when people don't. Victoria is a prison to many people when they are not allowed to live up to their potential. People leave Victoria and BC to other places when home is not good.
No kidding! It seems like Victoria, Vancouver Island and all of BC is a crooked price fixing racket? The governments and private businesses look for every small excuse to pay workers slave wages while at the same time charge you extortion high prices for all goods and services. The people are not people or staff, just money milking cows. Getting squeezed at both ends means your prospects are fairly limited or limiting. A main reason why BC is bleeding out brains, talent, and workers is because the BC culture in all things, don't know how to treat people well.
Yes everything is a racket in BC and especially Victoria the capital city. I am actually surprised they still have any brains left as they seem to bleed all the good people out to other places. They don't know how to treat capable people and their competitors in other places do. This is probably a repeat, but good and cheap abusive can't co-exist in the same place and time. It must be a natural law of the universe?
Victoria is not a nice place to live. The natural environment is nice, but most of the people are not nice. They are culturally uptight, repressive, closed minded, socially restricted to their cliques, and mentally dumb. Common sense is definitely not common in the Victoria region. General life in Victoria is an oxymoron (conflicting illogic) or any other type of moron. The social mental attitude is one of the main reasons why the area economy and social life is messed up. The environment can only be fully enjoyed if one is independently wealthy and powerful, separated from the need to work or bow to others for a living. The low wages, cheap work environment, daily life pressures will grind you, wear you down, and remove most joys in life from you life in Victoria. You will be sorry if you did not do your research homework before moving your life.
I personally know many people who are chronically unemployed or under employed just because the live in Greater Victoria. The region is not prosperous because it has almost no heavy industries with the higher pay as a foundation. This leads to everything else that follows been even more cheap and limited. In most other places, these people would probably have accidentally hit a good paying job, or any other job by now. You almost never get a job even if you are qualified. You keep getting sent back to school for endless retraining and always no work.
The internet is a good research tool. Before the internet, people would move to a place and find out it is not all that it is made out to be. It is too late to find out the truth. Most people hate wasting time, money, talent, enthusiasm, and other resources on any lost causes. Skills, education, experience, merit doesn't matter like it does in other normal Canadian regions. Life in Victoria needs to be independently rich, work free, connected or you will be left high and dry with nothing. Many organizations large to small do "fake job hiring" to test how many job applicants they get per job posting, or to scare their unionized work force into accepting lower labour contracts by showing how many people are available to replace them. The resumes and applications sit somewhere collecting dust and unread for months, years, maybe a decade?
Victoria is a great place to live if certain conditions and situations are met. You would love it in Victoria if you are too rich to have to work for a living and money just flows over you like by magic. You can use the excess cash as toilet paper to wipe your rear. The bleak reality for most of the Victoria people is a lot less lavish and frivolous. Victoria would be great for you if the scenery and environment can pay all your expenses and give you free money to live the lifestyle you want. You are most likely to get your job applications ignored repeatedly by all sorts of employers of varying size, as their existing lazy and incompetent staff procrastinate. The hiring and start date deadlines will pass as nobody seems to care about inefficiency and lost time and money. The stacks of resumes will grow moldy somewhere as the organizations will continually job advertise for jobs they seem to have no intentions of filling. They treat it like it was a joke game to take up extra free time.
Oh definitely Victoria is not a good place to live. You can visit it as many times as you like and then go back home. However, never ever make it your permanent home if you have a choice. Trading in your goals and objective dreams for a few moments of beautiful environment isn't worth it. The entire regional system is totally lacking in every way. Read all the people's comments. They are not BSing you. It is the real experience.
Life in Victoria just continuously dumps on locals and visitors who stay too long. The glitter is gone and replaced by frustration and dreary drab. It must be the bad vibes of the whole region that makes even a bright sunny day feel oppressive and grey? It is a good thing there is occasional sunshine or living and dealing with Victoria would multiple times more depressing. The entire region is like this.
Victoria is not happening enough as a city, a major Canadian city. I met many people who come to Victoria expecting good and big things with their lives and find excessive limitations instead. There is not enough of all the good things that everyone wants to going around. They are in short supply. I agree with all the comments about Victoria before mine. If I could relaunch my life from the beginning, I would not go to Victoria and choose other Canadian cities with more opportunities to go up not down. I was sold an expectation that can't be met by the local Victoria material available. They under performed expectations.
(Source: http://www.topix.com/forum/ca/victoria-bc/TCDL3J6RA3GF50S20/p5)
Comment:
Well ... I'll stop here, although I could keep posting because the complaints go on for another eighty pages! I wouldn't have guessed it but Victoria may actually be the most hated city in Canada ... even more complaints/rants than Ottawa, Edmonton or even Winnipeg!
I thought about moving to Victoria for a time, but once I researched the cost of living I didn't bother going. Even in shit towns on the island you're looking at around 700,000+ for a condo!
The problem is that the rest of Canada is a cold shit hole, so naturally everyone gravitates to British Columbia. But even BC's north is a redneck, frozen crap pile, so almost everyone goes to the lower mainland and Vancouver Island. Being that the average Vancouver house now costs 1 million dollars and the city grows bigger, dingier and less affordable by the day ... people think they can flee to Vancouver Island for warmth, safety and decent living. How wrong they are!
Victoria is small; the nearby towns even smaller. In such a small community there isn't going to be enough work to go round, locals will always be favored and resent outsiders; with lack of space comes lack of affordable housing; and without decent employment and housing the quality of life is dramatically depressed. The situation carries on because there's always a stream of fresh bodies looking for one decent place in Canada to live ...
I have to shake my head at some of the comments too, poor saps! Ottawa is a shit hole, so is Edmonton! Saskatchewan is another shit pile, and good luck moving to the "friendly" east coast! Sure there may be work in Calgary or Toronto, but neither of those cities are exactly great to live in either. The poor suckers don't realize the rest are big steaming turds too!
This fucking country ... nowhere to go but you'll notice the same complaints from east to west: awful people; hideous winters and cold; no employment, unaffordable housing; barely surviving with the cost of living; the only warm or halfway decent areas are full of the mega rich and you can basically expect to serve them and lick their asses until you croak.
There is no escape in this giant gulag known as Canada.
Post Script -
To get a taste of islanders and Vic enjoy this "rap video" of some tough Vics thugging it.
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