Ah, Vancouver. At once hip and conformist, flakey and staid. For years Vancouver has jousted with my home town, Melbourne, for the ill-defined and less understood title of “Most Liveable City”. One could be forgiven for concluding that a city’s “liveability” requires it to have exorbitant housing costs, one of many traits Melbourne and Vancouver share. (Note that San Francisco is often the USA’s “Most Liveable City”.)

Melbourne has won the worldwide title five years running, while Vancouver is has faded a tad, recently yielding its runner-up position to Vienna. Nothing is more certain than change, which dictates that Melbourne and Vancouver can only grow less livable, at least in relative terms.

We found ourselves visiting with Lauren and Peter in their uber-efficient one bedroom apartment smack dab in the middle of downtown Vancouver. Yes, the same Lauren and Peter we had seen married only days earlier on the prairies of Alberta. We were going to skip Vancouver, but then realized that we hadn’t actually spent any time with Lauren, despite having spent four days at her “wedding that kept on giving”. For a couple that had just written, directed, produced, cast, starred in, built the sets, promoted, and swept the theatre for an eighty-four hour production, they were remarkably well rested and relaxed. Our overnight stay did not appear to disrupt their honeymoon in the least. To be sure, honeymoons aren’t what they used to be.
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