Points North

By James Fife

When it all got started...

"You know, this looks like a pretty nice place to retire."

That was 15 years ago. This incident recently came back to me, I think because my wife Marilyn and I were in the throes of seriously considering buying a home in James Bay and our friends and acquaintances who learned the news were asking us "Why Victoria?" That made me reflect back on how we had seemed to come back to the city every few years, at first as part of visiting someplace else, but, eventually, it had become a destination in its own right. As I tried to explain that insistent "why," it slowly dawned how we seemed to have been coming back to Victoria, almost unconsciously, drawn by something that appealed to us at a real gut level. That's when the penny loudly dropped: we had been in essence thinking about Victoria as a potential residence for a decade and half.

Now it all made sense, and the seeming suddenness of the decision to dive into buying a home a thousand miles away from where our current life lay was not so scary, like some sign of a temporary, insane obsession. No, it was something years in the making after all. In that light, our rapidly ripening intention to buy into James Bay did not appear so rash: that huge step of laying down roots in Victoria, when all of our present life was anchored to San Diego (family, friends, job, house, decades of history). It now seemed more like Fate, Kismet, or, at least, the result of some long-term mulling over a seed planted on that first view from the tour bus on the way back to Vancouver from Butchart Gardens.

Now that the mystery was solved and the urge to commit to owning homes into two countries at once lost some of the tinge of being a sign of psychosis, our minds were able to grasp more of the concrete reasons why we were on this course that was hurtling so quickly to consummation. Part of why it seemed such a runaway train came from the basic fact that things are done differently in Canada from how they are done in California (a realization I expect to be a constant in these notes as they go along). As it turns out, perhaps unexpectedly, the process of buying a house is simpler in Canada than in the U.S. Once Marilyn and I took the plunge to go ahead and buy, the actual buying was so much less complicated than we had experienced in our two house purchases in San Diego. Odd.

But the speed at which the closing moved forward made us try to justify (to ourselves and people in San Diego) why we were so taken with living in James Bay that we were so confident this was the right thing to do. So what was it about James Bay? Why the almost delirious glee at the thought of living here? Of walking the lush, tree-lined streets (so different from the mediterranean light and open sky of San Diego). Of strolling the Harbor Path (sorry, Harbour Path) around Laurel Point. Of making easy trips to the quaint, but bustling, heart of James Bay at Menzies and Simcoe. Of staring across the Salish Sea to the snow peaks on the Olympic Peninsula from the beaches along Dallas Road. Of dinners at Vic's, or the Harbor House, or the Blue Crab, or any of the other 'old favorites' we hadn't discovered yet. Of the unperturbed peacocks of Beacon Hill. Of the unexpected, but always delightful, way Canadians just greeted us on the street as we passed, perfect strangers, something we nearly never see at "home." Of the millions of little moments and sensations and impressions that just added up to confirm that flitting impression 15 years ago that "Yes, this is a pretty fine place to live."

The hurtling rush of the purchase is over, and we are, come what may, residents of James Bay now. And of San Diego. At least for a while yet. The scary part is past and replaced by the growing conviction that this was indeed the right thing to do. We know it when we think about James Bay, about all Victoria, about all Vancouver Island (what we've seen so far). Seems now like it's going to shape up as a pretty full adventure, as we learn more about our new city and how different Canada is under the superficial similarity to the U.S. that easily fools Americans like us. But we're open to it all. And we know, too, that we'll be helped along the way of our acclimatization (mental and physical---we are from San Diego, after all) by that consistent friendliness and kindness that drew us to and settled us in James Bay to begin with.

Funny now to think how it all began with a passing comment on the view through a bus window.