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The information here is an AI summary of the advice people in our Discord have shared. Their experiences may not always reflect the accurate process. None of this should be considered financial, immigration, or real estate advice.
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The Vancouver Island Regional Library downtown is also noted as a welcoming hangout spot — right downtown, 4 minutes from the ocean, sometimes with live music programming. The VIU Library (on the university campus in the forest) is a quieter option with gorgeous views from the upper floors.
The community offered a strong reading list including: Five Little Indians (Michelle Good), Obasan (Joy Kogawa), The Book of Form and Emptiness (Ruth Ozeki), The Jade Peony (Wayson Choy), My Name Is Seepeetza (Shirley Sterling), assorted Douglas Coupland novels (JPod, Generation X, Microserfs), the Trickster trilogy by Eden Robinson, and Iona Whishaw's mystery series starting with A Killer in King's Cove. Greenwood by Michael Christie is a haunting and compelling fictional story about a BC island affected by climate change, the dystopian world around it and the lives that collide around it. The Curve of Time is Muriel Wylie Blanchet‘a excellent memoir, a widow who sailed the BC coast with her small children in the 1930s.
Vancouver Island was home to one of Canada’s most beloved artists, Emily Carr, Who set out as a single woman to capture Vancouver Island, landscapes and indigenous communities before they disappeared. In addition to being one of Canada’s group of seven painters, she wrote widely of life in turn of the century Victoria BC, and her books are short and poignant peeks at the life and upbringing on Vancouver Island before WWII.