Holiday/Vacation Time.

This might not be your immediate priority when planning a move to Vancouver, but its something that we hadn’t thought much about before moving here.

In Ireland we were used to about five weeks holidays if not more. So it came as something of a shock to the system when we were told the standard is TWO WEEKS per year. I know that that’s how it works in the US, but I thought Canada might be a little more flexible.

Obvisouly some companies are more open to negotiating increased holiday time than others, but in general, they seem pretty set in their ways.

So if you are moving from the other side of the world and you use a week holiday at Christmas time to go back to your home country, that leaves you with little time to take holidays in Canada throughout the year. To be frank, this has been a real pain in the backside for us.

Incidentally though, the price of domestic air travel is pretty prohibitive anyway (I’m just full of good news in this post). Seriously though, a return flight to Toronto is about $700, and return to Calgary is about $300. So for that kind of cash you might get used to staying put on the west coast.

There’s plenty to do in this part of the world, well for at least the first year anyway.
Brief overview of close-ish road trip options as follows (including approx. travel times)

Whistler – 2 hours by car
Squamish (about 1 hour south of Whistler)
Seattle, Washington – 3.5 hours by car
Portland, Oregon – 7 hours by car
Kelowna – 5 hours by car
Vancouver Island ( need to take BC ferries) 1.5 hours
Tofino (Vancouver Island) 5 hours inc. ferry
Victoria (Capital of BC on the Island) 3.5 hours