Geezers Rule on Vancouver Island

Just what I’d always suspected: Geezers rule on Vancouver Island.

Recent national demographic information noted that there is a larger quotient of 60-plus people in this chunk of land off the coast of British Columbia than anywhere else in the country.

In a couple of communities the median age now is, I believe, 107. I meet them. They clutter up the aisles of supermarkets with their walkers and scooters on pension day.

The reason they’re here, it is suggested, is the climate. As the years encroach, most sensible people seek pleasant, wafting breezes rather than pounding blizzards.

I understand that. I understand that to the degree that I don’t find this island to be warm enough, and seek my balm in Hawaii or Palm Springs in the chilly months. But, as far as the rest of Canada (a vast and frigid wasteland, I like to think) is concerned the Island is pretty benevolent. I have a good-sized palm tree in my front yard that I do not need to winterize, and there are so many palms in Victoria that they are no longer even a slight curiosity. Yeah, it’s a pretty nice place, and that’s why the old farts come here.

But, I don’t really want them to. I mean, I’m entitled because I’m a west coast boy. But people from Timmins, Ontario or Cold Lake Alberta, I think should stay in the place they were spawned at. Sorry if it’s too cold, but them’s the breaks.

I don’t want them to come here for a number of reasons:

1. I don’t believe the statistics about 60-plus, for I think the majority of the newly-arrived oldsters are 80 or 90 plus, and they ‘all’ take to the highway, driving huge RVs at times when I have to do my fairly regular commute between Comox and Victoria (about 140 miles – I use the old measurement for distance for the sake of my US and UK readers, and also because I’m bloody-minded and hate metric because it’s too logical and too French) and impede the traffic flow for the entire distance by driving 20 mph below the posted speed in both slow and fast lanes.

2. They bring with them ‘furrin’ ideas, like the ones that suggest that we should vote for political parties that are popular in establishment Ontario, rather than ones that are ‘populist’ (hence anti-Ontario establishment) in coastal BC. What’s worse is that such are their numbers; they sometimes end up electing the bastards, and then the rest of us are stuck with them.

3. They drive up the prices of real estate inordinately. Well, I don’t really mind that so much since it means I can sell my house for hundreds of thousands more than I paid for it, but it does kind of shaft younger people – the actually ‘productive’ elements of any society.

4. They demand all sorts of infrastructure niceties: The concept of ‘frontier’ doesn’t appeal to them, and they want to sort of health care, for example, that they had back in Guelph, ON. And, since their numbers are so huge, that puts a demand on me, the homegrown taxpayer.

So, in light of all the above, my ‘modest proposal’ is this: We can welcome dotage outsiders on one condition. The condition is based on the fact that Vancouver Island is very large – nearly 300 miles long and 50 miles wide (it’s by far the largest island on the west coast of North America), but all the population virtually is stuck on the lower half (my half). There is a whole half of the Island north of Campbell River that is just crying out for population. Towns like Port Hardy and Port McNeill have lost population in recent years.

So, I suggest that all new arrivees should have to go up north if they want to come here. I mean, really, they’d love it. It’s very beautiful and wonderfully unspoiled (if you ignore the logging clearcuts and mining operations); offers recreational opportunities galore, and the roads are hardly traveled by anybody. You can drive at 45 and nobody will really give a damn, or succumb to road rage.

If you think this all makes me sound curmudgeonly, so be it. I’m entitled. I’m getting older, too.