> and an international border divide the two cities, keeping them farther apart than their geographic and cultural identities would suggest.
For real, crossing into Canada from the US at Vancouver is probably the toughest English speaking border I've dealt with as an American. England, Ireland, the Anzacs, I've never had an issue, but damn, every time I visit Vancouver I budget extra time to deal with immigration. I go through Toronto a lot, too, and never have issues there, but nearly everyone I know gets harassed on both sides of the Canadian/US border up at the Couv.
True. I live in Seattle and had a friend visiting early last month and I wanted to take him to Vancouver for a day trip. We drove to the border and I explained to the border guard we are just sight-seeing for the day. The guard directed us to pull over near their facility and they made us give them our keys, cell phones, and wallets while they went through everything in my car. We were put into two different rooms and questioned for 1.5 hours. They even went through my laptop bag and found paperwork about an upcoming surgery in a week and accused me of not giving them details about that. They left my car in a mess.
All in all, the day trip wasn't worth the feeling of violation.
I think what is frustrating is not the stopping and questioning but the attitude. I have been stopped on the way to Vancouver. For the most part Canadian border control is professional and polite.
On the way back a few times I have encountered surly demeaning behavior. Being a border patrol officer would be a tedious job at times and I don't expect a smile but outward hostility is ridiculous. For non citizen encountering this it is a terrible and lasting bad first impression of the US.
In my singular experience crossing this border, the US guards were way more relaxed than the Canadian guards. The Canadian guards seemed very concerned that my plates were from the East Coast and asked us about 10 questions down that line, while the US guards asked us maybe 2 questions total.
I think your experience depends on your citizenship. As a canadian the canadian border guards are nice to me. With a work visa, the american border guards aren't as nice. Also the border guards start becoming nicer once they see a history for your passport in their console if you never had any shit happen.
Also a NEXUS / Global Entry card makes them far more nicer.
I'm in Vancouver - flew here from Seattle yesterday and fwiw had zero hassle with immigration, but when I've crossed the border by road in Montana I noticed the same assholery with the US customs guys. One of themy accused me of trying to import contraband seashells (solely based on the fact I had traveled from Italy via Calgary!).
Honestly the day trip people would annoy me if I were a border patrol officer. Commuting in and potentially exploiting economic loopholes or something. That or smugling drugs across the border.
Especially given the strength of the USD over CAD these days
There is a similar border near Basel, between the EU and a small country with a very high currency, that people routinely commute across. Last time I went through it (admittedly many years ago) I barely noticed it.
On the way to EU, no problem at all. Entering CH, depends on your plates, they check these first. When with Swiss plates, you have much better chances of hassle-free slide.
Once I was stopped, checked thoroughly for about 40 minutes, in the middle of the night. They did some sort of exercise on me, taking away all my money, put them into envelope, then returning back and so on. Went through whole car, backpack, everything. Not a nice experience
I went into CH at the Basel crossing twice this year in a car with GB plates, nobody was interested. Drove through Geneva several times too without being stopped.
Sorry to hear this, but unfortunately I am not surprised. Back in the 1990s until about 2001 you couldn't walk down the street anywhere in downtown Vancouver without finding a majority of the population was American tourists. Then the CDN dollar shot up, passports became required, and then this new attitude began. The BC economy tanked. I still do not think tourism has recovered even though the CDN dollar is super low again and has been so for at least 2-3 years. Tourism is huge to the BC economy, almost 30% or some crazy high number. They want it all to be high-income tech workers now so it is all focused on becoming an H1-B visa workaround destination now, mostly for Microsoft employees and other big corps that have hit their quotas in USA. Would be nice if tourism was a thing in BC again but I don't know who would champion it, all of the companies shut down or moved to the US.
Forestry is about the size of tech ($14 billion) which is twice tourism.
To put it into perspective, the BC government spends and collects $50 billion each year.
Financial services, real estate, retail, and other services are big. I doubt tourism is or ever was more than 3% of the economy, except maybe in 1986 and 2010.
I had a friend who worked at the Canadian border in BC a few years back. According to him, the main reason the border exists is to control goods coming from the states so that they can be taxed. A lot of people go south of the border to go shopping and don't accurately declare what they're bringing back.
I'm a frequent traveller and former Vancouver resident. Hands down worst border crossing everywhere along the BC/WA border. I have talked to many with similar experiences.
Until pot was legalised in WA the border officers were on a mad hunt to find weed on every person crossing. They would do so under the guise of accusing you of going to work illegally and any number of other things.
Then after WA legalised BC decided that they would step up their own reefer madness campaign to keep the WA weed out. As if BC needs to import it, but I digress. They even went as far as staging a "COPS"-style programme on television to showcase all the vagrants they catch. It was eventually cancelled, but not before exposing the world to all of the security theatre of the BC border crossing.
The irony of it all is that weed is everywhere in Canada and the US and the BC/WA border is just a shitshow of angry assholes on both sides. It is very unfortunate for the tourism industry on both sides.
Add me to that list. I've visited close to 50 countries and by far the worst experience I ever had was driving into BC on I5. A distant second would be getting accused by Cuban security of trying to smuggle coke from Cancun to Havana -- but at least they were polite. It was exactly as you described, they tried this whole psych routine trying to make us for pot smugglers, searched the whole car, etc. Guy was just a complete asshole.
I've been effectively banned from Canada. I was arrested (never charged) many years ago when I was 19. It was on suspicion of "intending to injure a vehicle" Don't ask, it was in Utah.
Anyway, the court has no records of my being arrested, but somehow the Canadian border police do.
The last time I went up to Montreal on the train I was pulled aside and asked if I'd ever been arrested. I first said no, but then laughed and said, "Yeah actually. 20 years ago."
Then I was told that they were going to let me through that time but don't come through again unless I can show proof that I wasn't charged with a crime.
I haven't been back. Though I have travelled wide and far since and not caught any slack. Seriously Canada. I like you, but you're not that awesome. Ridiculous.
>Then I was told that they were going to let me through that time but don't come through again unless I can show proof that I wasn't charged with a crime.
They asked you to prove a negative? This speaks volumes about the mindset of run-of-the-mill border guards and the sensibility of their policies...
At least in principle you might be able to get a court to write a letter saying you haven't been charged.
I was once asked by a Cypriot border guard to prove I couldn't speak Greek. I still can't think of what I could have said/done that would have convinced them. And yes I did ask at the time. And yes it annoyed them that I asked.
>I was once asked by a Cypriot border guard to prove I couldn't speak Greek.
As a point of interest, this is actually possible! There is a well-known effect in cognitive science called the Stroop effect [0], in which the semantic value of a word interferes with the main task of having to declare the color of the font. If the task is performed with Greek words and you don't speak Greek, you will be able to enumerate the color of the "ink" without any penalty in reaction time.
Apparently this was used in the 50's to root out Russian spies in the CIA.
(But the absurdity of the border-guard's demands are not lost on me, of course!)
If we want to nitpick, wouldn't this test only work for people who read the language? In theory, if you spoke Greek, but never learned to read it, you would pass the test as well.
That said, there are electrophysiological markers of semantic incongruency (e.g. table + fork = congruent, cat + rag = incongruent) that work in the auditory modality. If you're interested, the component in question is called the N400 and you should be able to find plenty of references on google shcolar.
I had worked remotely from Vancouver for an American company for two years, and so I made regular business trips to Seattle to discuss things in person.
My experience was rather different - the return trip was always easy and fast, and I don't recall ever having to even get out of the car at the border; they just asked me a few questions and waved me through. Always very polite and friendly.
Crossing into US was much more daunting: you always had to park the car for them to inspect, and then wait anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple hours in a queue to get interviewed by a CBP agent. More often than not, they were pretty rude (not just to myself; I observed other people getting similar treatment). I think there was exactly one crossing where the treatment that I've got was truly professional.
Note that I wasn't a citizen, or even permanent resident, of either country at the time - I had a work visa in Canada, and a visitor/business visa in US.
No idea if this has changed recently; my experience is from 2009-2010.
This isn't appropriate for one-time day travellers and vacationers. Certainly it is a good program but it is no excuse to be assholes to tourists bringing money into either country for what used to be a good time.
It is a background check. USA uses your fingerprints for air travel authentication. Canada uses an iris scan for authentication. The authentications are separate but the travel history is shared for visa tracking purposes. It is much less invasive than being queried and documented on varied subject by every singe border agent. The files on you grow much bigger with the unlimited scope of questioning of a border agent. Of course, they can still stop you and ask you details (and do) but I have found once you are on file they stop digging around into your private life because they know you have a background check on file.
Anecdote: I have found going in to Canada (through Vancouver) as a visitor much more difficult than coming back home to the States. I was recently en route to a film festival at Whistler and did not realize my passport was expired... the Canadian folks did not care at all when I entered. Coming home the American staff held me up for 5 hours.
Also, back in 1998, I went to Canada with my uncle to get a toilet (he wanted a larger liter-per-flush unit than you could get in the US) and the Canadian crossing guards thought that was hilarious when we declared it as a reason for entry. Coming home, it warranted a complete search of our persons and vehicle. Even though we had a receipt.
The treatment has been similar in my 20 or so trips up there: coming in to my home takes significantly longer than visiting a foreign land. I find it exasperating.
Did anyone even read the article? They're opening the tech corridor in Canada due to Canada's "friendlier immigration policies" so they can import more workers from China and India, not to spread the difference. They complain about not enough tech grads from US universities, but the reality is they don't want to pay for them.
It is far cheaper and easier to import their labour force or offshore more jobs than it is to try to hire and pay "qualified tech grads" in the US.
The tech corridor has nothing to do with a tech corridor per say, and more to do with Canada's lax immigration policies. They used up whatever h1b they were alotted in the US and now want to use Canada's more lax immigration equivalent.
I've ridden the Amtrak to Seattle and Portland a few times. It's a much longer trip but its so convenient to not need to bring down a car and be able to use wifi the whole way. If there was a faster rail link I'd go down to Seattle all the time.
Last I rode it, wifi wasn't enabled on the Canadian side, apparently due to Washington and Oregon budget cuts. Which is a real bummer, the route follows the coast and high-speed data is spotty or unavailable in several areas.
Other than that I love taking the Cascade train, customs is much easier and faster than traveling by road and I get way more work done.
Seriously, Vancouver needs to deal with housing costs. As the article points out, junior developers are comfortable renting a cheap apartment. But executives want to own a house - and not a house two hours out in the countryside. Vancouver houses are just ludicrously expensive; this keeps good people away.
Vancouver invests a great deal of political time and effort to pretending to create affordable housing. The problem is that the only way to actually reduce prices is to allow for more construction, and there are many and varied obstacles to doing so, including zoning commissions, NIMBY-ism, and developer/council interests (which are all often impossible to disentangle).
2 hours is a pretty big exaggeration.
To put in perspective, ~2 hours drive from downtown Vancouver is Yale BC, or if you went northwest down the 99, that would put you in Pemberton, which both are really in the middle of nowhere. I don't know of any large city where you can buy a detached singe family house cheaply anywhere close to the downtown core.
Google maps says that a typical commute arriving at 9 am would take between 40 minutes to an hour and 5 minutes from Langley to downtown Vancouver. Of course if there is a crazy accident or severe construction it could take way longer, but that is the same as a commute anywhere to anywhere.
Not wanting "ludicrously expensive" housing does not mean expecting "cheap" housing...
Pretty much everyone agrees Vancouver is needlessly expensive. I mean it's not Tokyo, Hong Kong, NYC, SF, etc where there's an inherent justification for paying lots of money to live there. I've heard the nightlife is nothing to look forward to nor is it known for it's culture.
The problem could easily be solved by simply building more. Unlike SF or Manhattan, Vancouver doesn't even have artificial land growth limitations for being on an inlet/island to rationalize the lack of growth.
I'm not sure what you mean by artificial land growth limitations. If you're talking about building height or city size limitations, Vancouver certainly has height restrictions, and it's surrounded on all sides too (UBC, Burrard Inlet, Burnaby, and the Fraser). You could build more outside of Vancouver proper, but then executives wouldn't want to live so far.
The problem could easily be solved by simply building more. Vancouver doesn't even have artificial land growth limitations for being on an inlet/island to rationalize the lack of growth.
You must be kidding. Vancouver has mountains to the north, the Pacific Ocean to the west and an international border to the south. Throw in the fact that the city was built entirely on a peninsula + river delta and you have major chokepoint problems.
Eastward expansion is a possibility but that is occupied by some of the best farmland in the country.
I've heard the nightlife is nothing to look forward to nor is it known for it's culture.
If that's your criteria then there's no question Vancouver isn't right for you. But it does have some of the best climate in the country and is one of the premiere meccas for outdoor activities. Different strokes I guess.
The growth will occur on the USA side of the border, Everett and Bellingham, simply because the obstacles to founding a startup company anywhere in Canada are ridiculously unfriendly.
With salaries and housing prices as they are in Vancouver, the case to stay on the Canadian side of the border instead of leaving for Seattle is awfully weak.
I'm hoping Victoria turns into an active startup scene soon. I want to move west for proximity to Seattle/SF but Vancouver's cost of living was a big turn off. $2k/m in Toronto goes a very long way compared to most big cities (thank you liberal municipal building policy!) where I'm not sure it's worth the trade off.
Not having to deal with months of winter (I don't mind BC's rain) and a 1-2hr ferry to Seattle/Vancouver does sound alluring though.
Victoria is much more affordable than Vancouver (although rentals are currently tight), and has less summer rain (rain shadow from the Olympic mountains).
It could be considered more of a Salish Sea triangle for startups, with Victoria, Vancouver, and Seattle all being close and each having advantages and disadvantages.
Healthcare costs are lower and more predictable in Canada for employees and employers alike.
This is particularly important for a couple having kids. Also Canada guarantees a year of mandatory* family leave at partial salary split between both parents.
If you're gonna pay taxes, might as well pay them for good benefits.
edit: *clarification: it's mandatory to allow leave, not mandatory to take it. But most people take most of it.
The parental benefit payout is capped at C$528/week before tax. That's nothing to sneeze at, but with housing expenses in Vancouver, it's similar to unpaid leave in Seattle.
How is barely paying anything for healthcare not good?
Please explain to me why the ability to choose what parent gets to raise their child for the first year so the other can persue their executive (or whatever) career while the government pays for it is a "harm" to your business?
Yep, I used to live 5 miles from there. Looks about right. Thousands of miles of wire fence makes up most of the border. Not very secure. Easy to walk over or through if you wanted to.
I have lived in the Seattle area for the past 3.5 years, and only just moved back to Atlanta. While I was in Seattle, my transit use was approximately:
- 65% bus
- 25% bike
- 10% car
No car needed if you're located near a regular bus route and don't work anywhere requiring multiple bridge crossings.
Extremely cold is pushing it. Chilly is probably more apt.
It generally has a mid-level UV index, so you feel warm in direct sunlight, but the humidity is very low so the 'breeze' feels cold. Some may find this unpleasant.
For real, crossing into Canada from the US at Vancouver is probably the toughest English speaking border I've dealt with as an American. England, Ireland, the Anzacs, I've never had an issue, but damn, every time I visit Vancouver I budget extra time to deal with immigration. I go through Toronto a lot, too, and never have issues there, but nearly everyone I know gets harassed on both sides of the Canadian/US border up at the Couv.