The Survival Guide to British Columbia

By Ian Ferguson

A completely satirical yet oddly practical guide to surviving and thriving in Canada’s westernmost province.

So you’ve arrived in British Columbia. Perhaps you’re just passing through; perhaps you want to stay a while. You may even be contemplating making British Columbia your home. What you need is a well-researched, clearly written, and comprehensive guide to living and even prospering in Canada’s westernmost province. This isn’t it. However, the information contained in this book will allow you to experience British Columbia with minimal damage to your health and well being.

Having lived in nearly every province in the country before settling in BC, Ian Ferguson can say with great authority that things work differently here. So differently, in fact, that visitors and newcomers from other parts of Canada may put themselves in physical (or social) peril if they try to dress, act, drive, work, vote, or socialize in the same ways as they would in Ontario, New Brunswick, or (god forbid) Alberta. With practical advice, little-known facts, and personal anecdotes, Ferguson tackles everything from how to recognize a local (and differentiate the various types of facial hair that delineate the male British Columbian) to how to survive both natural and unnatural disasters (whether it’s a light dusting of snow on the southern tip of Vancouver Island or a full-blown hockey riot) to how BC has been governed through the ages (like the time a bootlegger was put in charge of prohibition). Illuminating, hilarious, and only mildly offensive (if you have no sense of humour), The Survival Guide to British Columbia will make you question why you ever came here in the first place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heritage House
• Release date: Oct 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781772032864

Ian Ferguson

IAN FERGUSON won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for Village of the Small Houses. He is the co-author, with his brother, Will, of How to Be a Canadian, which was also shortlisted for the Leacock Medal and won the CBA Libris Award for non-fiction. A writer and creative director in the film and television industry, Ian Ferguson lives in Victoria.

Book preview

PRAISE FOR

The Survival Guide

to British Columbia

protester_bw.ai

When I first met Ian Ferguson I called him an arrogant easterner—he did live in Alberta, after all. But since moving to BC, Ian has discovered all our embarrassing secrets. This is the essential guide to Canada’s wild west coast.

Mark Leiren-Young

winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour for Never Shoot a Stampede Queen and author of Real Magic Secrets Revealed

He’s like a brother to me.

Will Ferguson

author of Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw

One-third practical, one-third odd, one-third enlightening, and one-third bloody hilarious.* If a provincial guide and a stand-up comedy routine mated, this book would be their bastard love child. Worth getting arrested for. Please send bail.

Cassie Stocks

winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour for Dance, Gladys, Dance

* based on Ian Ferguson’s arithmetic skills. (Thank God he writes better than he maths.)

Also, he’s very funny. You should buy this book.

Will Ferguson (again)

Somewhere in Kamloops is a hipster Welsh fashion designer who is going to be about as happy with this book as she is with her Canucks season tickets. But that’s okay, because any one of the rest of us who have lived in or visited BC is going to get one of those ice-cream-headache/hernia-kind of injuries from laughing at Ian Ferguson’s latest address to the nation.

J. Marshall Craig

author of Eh Mail and Megalife: The Autobiography of Nick Menza

As a lifelong Torontonian, I’m not sure why I was asked to review this particular book. I wondered if no BC writer would agree to read it, let alone wax poetic about it. However, having finished Ian Ferguson’s very instructive and fact-filled treatise, I now feel prepared for anything BC can throw at me. On a more serious note, and believe me, nothing about this book is serious, my sides are still aching from reading this special guide. Line after line, page after page, Ian Ferguson keeps the laughs and satirical insights coming. Clearly he’s bucking for a second Leacock Medal. And this may well win it!

Terry Fallis

two-time winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour

Some people think of British Columbia as nothing more than a place to film movies for tax breaks, or a convenient spot to put the business end of a pipeline. Ian Ferguson, however, understands that there’s more to us than that—we’re also brimming with deadly wildlife. And this survival guide is deadly funny.

Charles Demers

author of Property Values and the Juno Award–nominated Fatherland

Sure, the British Columbia Tourism Association won’t speak highly of Ian Ferguson ... but he will live on in my heart as a very entertaining writer. (He may not live on for much longer, mind you, as the province is due to try to kill him again. Pick up this book while you can still get him to sign it!)

Ali Hassan

stand-up comic, actor, and host of CBC’s Laugh Out Loud

"In the past, Ian Ferguson has seen fit to tackle the big subjects. He has square danced with topics like how to be Canadian and what’s going through the mind of Justin Trudeau, both large, amorphous subjects. This time he’s set his aim a little smaller, specifically taking on Canada’s westernmost province. Laced with Ferguson’s trademark wit and observant style, The Survival Guide to British Columbia is a book that will

educate those from different hemispheres about the province’s benefits and problems, and amuse those more local who are aware that British Columbia is neither British (anymore) nor Columbian (ever). You will learn about the importance of salmon to B.C. residents (excluding vegans), and oddly enough, how the Welsh are viewed. You should be prepared to have your perception of that noble land forever altered. I laughed. I cried. I longed for a Nanaimo bar. It’s that tasty."

Drew Hayden Taylor

award-winning playwright, filmmaker, and author of Chasing

Painted Horses and Take Us to Your Chief: and Other Stories

The Survival Guide to British Columbia, by Ian Ferguson.A little illustration of BC features, including protestors, a bear, marijuana leaves, a float plane, yoga, orcas, cruise ships, and mountains.

Foreword

Introduction

1 Location, Location, Location 

Surviving Your Arrival

2 Talking and Arguing 

Surviving Your Conversations

3 How to Spot a Local 

Surviving by Identifying

4 Dress for Success 

Surviving the Fashion

5 It’s a Damp Cold 

Surviving the Weather

6 Food and Stuff 

Surviving the Cuisine

7 Governance through Shenanigans 

Surviving the Politics

8 Entertainment and Stuff 

Surviving the Culture

9 Finding a Place to Live 

Surviving Residentially

10 Working Hard and Hardly Working

Surviving Your Employment

11 Higher Education 

Surviving Your Schooling

12 Having Fun and Making Friends

Surviving and Thriving

A man holding up a protest sign.

Afterword

The Survival Guide to British Columbia Quiz

Answers to the Survival Guide to British Columbia Quiz

Acknowledgements

Index

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Foreword

I once

wrote a newspaper column in which I said Ian Ferguson looks like a photocopier repairman.

It was meant as a compliment. There’s no authorly affectation to Ian. No turtleneck sweater. No hipster skinny jeans. No too-cool black leather jacket. No haughty disdain. Instead, I wrote, he could blend into any Tim Hortons in the land. Good for him.

Therefore, I was shocked—shocked, I say!—to read the following line in this book: British Columbia is the worst-dressed province in Canada.

Et tu, Ian? Is this how you act after we British Columbians welcomed you into our comfortably disheveled midst? Is this how you slip in the knife even as we embrace you like one of our beloved old-growth conifers?

Yes, yes it is—and that’s a good thing. Let me explain. First, when Ian says we are worst-dressed, that is not necessarily a bad thing (if preening like a peacock were important to us, we would flash our feathers, not wear moth-eaten Fly United T-shirts to work, grad ceremonies, the opera, or when officiating at weddings). Second, he doesn’t so much stick a shiv in British Columbian ribs as tickle them. Ian is one of the wittiest, funniest people I know, and who doesn’t like funny? And third, we all need friends to tell us the truths to which we are blind when we stand too close to the trees (or hug them; see conifers, above) to make out the forest.

This is Ian’s great gift: recognizing absurdities in the things that others take for granted. Stephen Leacock called this the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life. Those incongruities are the heart of satire, which is a particularly Canadian kind of funny.

Satire is an outsider’s form of humour, one that comes from standing back and looking at things from afar, from taking in the view from high in the bleachers, where it’s easier to see that down on the field, all is not as it should be. It’s no accident that Canadian satire’s greatest practitioners tend to come from the edges of the country: Eric Nicol, a three-time winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour, hailed from one of Canada’s bookends, British Columbia, while Rick Mercer and the 22 Minutes crew emerged from another, Newfoundland. Note that Saturday Night Live, that pillar of ’Merican parody, was created by another outsider, Canada’s Lorne Michaels.

This pattern extends to Ian, who grew up in a place that is as far from mainstream Canada, geographically and in every other way, as Trump is from Trudeau. Fort Vermilion, Alberta, a tiny flyspeck on the sprawling pink map of the Dominion, was where he wound up after his dad piled the family into their 1953 Mercury Zephyr and drove north from Edmonton—way north, not far from the Northwest Territories. How and why they came to live there, six kids in a no-running-water, no-electricity cabin, is a ripping yarn, entertainingly told in Village of the Small Houses, the memoir-of-sorts that earned Ian his own Leacock medal in 2004. (And let me pause here to argue that Village should be required reading in every high school in the land, so accurate is its description of life in a certain slice of Canada at a certain point in history.)

Urbanites might be surprised to learn how the Ferguson kids fared once they left what was described as the third poorest community in Canada. Ian became a bestselling and award-winning author, playwright, actor, and director. Brother Sean gained note (as it were) as a composer and professor at McGill University. Brother Will also became a bestselling author and Leacock winner.

Imagine that, two Leacock laureates in one family. And that’s not even mentioning the Leacock nomination Ian and Will earned for the humour book they wrote together, the gazillion-selling (not that I’m jealous, much) How to Be a Canadian (Even If You Already Are One). That book also won the 2002 Libris Award for non-fiction. I’m pretty sure that makes the Ferguson boys the Canadian Arts scene’s version of hockey’s Sutter brothers.

If Torontonians are stunned that this sort of success should have been enjoyed by someone from, well, anywhere but Toronto, others will argue Ian’s unconventional background is what allowed him to see Canada in a different light. I really did feel like, when I left Fort Vermilion, I had come to a foreign country, he once told me.

He might say the same of moving to British Columbia, as he did a few years ago. And not just any part of the province either, but Vancouver Island, which is like BC squared. If BC marches to a different drummer, the Island dances to a horn section that no one else can hear at all. To plagiarize myself: it’s where the rest of the Great White North shovels its flakes.

The thing is, for such famously free-spirited people, we British Columbians tend to get awfully uptight when people poke fun at our loopiness (or, frankly, at anything else). As you will discover by reading The Survival Guide to British Columbia, taking offence (particularly on behalf of others) is one of our favourite hobbies.

Or perhaps, if you recognize yourself in that description, you might just want to give this book a miss. Frankly, if you are so fragile or humourless that you cannot take a little affectionate-but-accurate joshing, if your default setting is Self-Righteous Indignation, or if your reaction to the phrase trigger warning is not an eye-rolling smirk, then you should probably spare yourself the grief. Trust me, you will melt, little snowflake, you will melt.

On the other hand, if you have enough confidence to laugh at yourself, you’ll enjoy the read. And if you actually are a baffled newcomer trying to navigate life on the right side of the Rockies (that’s right as in better), you’ll find it essential.

—Jack Knox

Jack Knox is an award-winning columnist for the Times-Colonist newspaper in Victoria, BC. His is also the author of three bestselling books, including Hard Knox: Musings from the Edge of Canada and Opportunity Knox: Twenty Years for Award-Losing Humour Writing, both nominated for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

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Introduction

So

you’ve arrived in British Columbia. Good for you. You may be just passing through, although where you’d be passing through to, considering the location, is a question for another time and perhaps another book. Your options are limited. You may be planning to stick around for a while or even make the province your new home. Perhaps you’re just visiting and consider yourself a tourist or traveller. Welcome. Please leave nothing behind but footprints and money. Perhaps you’ve enrolled in one of BC’s fine post-secondary institutions of higher learning—or possibly one of the many private colleges or trade schools, some of which are actually quite reputable. Again, thank you for your contribution to the economy, and here’s hoping your diploma in hair extension technology pays off. You could even be—fingers crossed—a skilled tradesperson, in which case, geez, thanks for stopping by, we could really use your help. Any idea when the drywall will be delivered?

No matter what has brought you to the westernmost part of Canada, you should be prepared for what awaits you. The place is pretty, from top to bottom, but also pretty scary. If you’re coming to BC—for whatever reason and for however long—you should be aware that a lot of what you’re going to deal with will ... how’s the best way to put this? Kill you. BC will try to kill you, sometimes with kindness, but still.

You’ll need to be ready to cope with disasters, both natural and unnatural. On the natural side there will be forest fires, floods, blizzards, heat waves, avalanches, mudslides, rivers running red with blood, plagues of locusts ... Something for everybody, really. BC’s department of tourism recently changed its advertising slogan from Beautiful British Columbia to BC: Come and watch the biblical prophecies unfold.

On the unnatural side, you’ve got gas prices, raw sewage pumped directly into the Georgia Strait (as well as the body of water bearing the same name), disarticulated human feet washing ashore, unvaccinated children coughing their lungs out, what passes for the Vancouver Canucks penalty kill, politics in general (and municipal politics in particular), and bicycle lanes ... Endless, endless bike lanes.

These will all try to kill you, except for the Vancouver Canucks penalty kill, which (despite the name) will just break your heart. I know what you’re thinking. Bike lanes? Seriously, how will bike lanes try to kill me? And, How dangerous could a local mayor actually be? Oh, just wait. Or, skip to Chapter Two or Chapter Seven. I don’t mind if you read ahead. You paid for the book, after all. Unless you’re the type of person who likes to read the first few pages of a book before deciding to purchase it and you’re currently standing in a bookstore attempting to arrive at that decision, in which case let me just point out that I still get my royalties, whether you pay for the book or not. As long as it leaves the store, I get paid. So, I’m not counselling you to shoplift, because, uh, that would be really, really wrong and probably illegal. I’m just saying that if money’s a little tight, don’t worry about my end.

Where was I? Oh, right. Even if you can find a way to avoid catastrophes, you will still have to make your way through BC and deal with British Columbians and British Columbianisms. For your own safety and security, you should learn the customs and culture of BC in order to avoid mishaps or misunderstandings.

Now I can hear you ask another question, the most obvious question really, which is probably something like What qualifies you to write a survival guide to British Columbia? or Why should I listen to your advice? or Do you think those are real security cameras in this bookstore? Something along those lines, and I certainly don’t want to put words in your mouth. It’s bad enough that I can hear you.

Here’s the thing. I am a survivor of British Columbia. The province tried to kill me the first three times I visited. Let me explain. When I was in grade two, my family took a road trip from my home town in northern Alberta to BC. My mother originally hails from Burnaby, so I believe it was some sort of family reunion. We did visit our big-city, or at least large-town, relatives in, I think, Abbotsford and Ladysmith. It was the middle of the summer, blisteringly hot, and the car overheated on our way up the Mount Robson Pass. We pulled over to both let the engine cool down and stretch our legs, and I got distracted by some sheep, or possibly goats, as they tiptoed up an impossibly sheer cliff. Defying both the laws of gravity and common sense, and to get a closer look, I leaned so far over the tubular steel safety railing that I fell. Fortunately, a passerby had been paying attention and was able to grab me by my ankles and, with a little help from other concerned bystanders, hoist me to safety.

My next encounter came when, after cleverly deciding to drop out of high school to explore the rewarding and challenging field of manual labour, I ended up working on