Gibsons

I’ve been to Gibsons three times that I can remember, and it smells like a place that’s trickled with gas and waiting for a tiny flame to explode.

So no one’s regularly commuting from Gibsons, which means to live there, you have to be able to work there, or retire. On a recent trip I took to Saturna Island, I learned that, since the pandemic, the population boomed from about 300 to 450 because of remote workers relocating there. I’m not sure what the pre to post-COVID Sunshine Coast numbers are, but I do sense that it’s less of a destination than the southern gulf islands. Those islands are between Vancouver Island and the mainland, so you get traffic from both ways and from Washington, but the Sunshine Coast is located in such as way that the vast majority of the traffic comes straight from Vancouver. You’d have to go to the northern Sunshine Coast to Powell River to get a ferry to mid-Vancouver island in Comox. And to get to the northern sunshine coast – which is much more sparsely populated than the southern part – it’s another ferry and a drive.

Places far less scenic and serene along the lower mainland are way more expensive to live. The reason is you can’t really commute to Vancouver, or any city, without a 40 minute ferry. And because the ferry on the southern sunshine coast is in Langdale – which would be a very long walk from Gibsons, the nearest true town – you probably would have to drive on, which adds a wait and a whole lot more planning, particularly on the trip from West Vancouver.

All of this means depending on trips to the city more than occassionally or leisurely is destined to be frustrating. Squamish, which if there were no waits, would theoretically be about as far away from Vancouver as Gibsons, would be a much easier place to commute from, since all you have to contend with is traffic – no bookings or limited travel times. And Squamish isn’t somewhere people typically commute from – the commute is more often the 30 minutes to Whistler.

Probably because of the day-trip and cottage traffic, Gibsons feels like a bigger town than 5 thousand people. It has multiple breweries and wineries and can sustain things like olive oil shops. Its claim to fame is mostly being where the old tv show The Beachcombers was filmed, but as more people migrate from Vancouver so they can have a home more conducive to their lifestyle or their family needs, it’s flirting with passing the precipice of sleepy, tranquil community to a lively, everything-you-need to feel like you’re not remote community.

Unlike Sechelt, which is about a 30 minute drive down the road and twice the size, Gibsons doesn’t have big box stores or giant parking lots. A lot of the town feels contained to the harbour area on its main strip, though not everything is in one small plot of land.

Because of the way it’s situated, Gibsons doesn’t get the same amount of wind and waves that Sechelt does. Sitting on the beach in Sechelt, the wind beats you, like it does on some of the beaches in Victoria. In Gibsons, it’s more like it felt on Saturna Island, where the breeze was gentle enough to read about without fighting to keep the pages open.

Although it has everything you need, the inconvenience of being to go to anywhere bigger – to access the big city amenities, like a hockey game – makes it feel more alone than most of Vancouver Island. It’s not an island, as many t-shirts sold there say, but it sure feels like one. It feels more like the small communities of Port Hardy on the northern tip of Vancouver Island or Tofino on its western side or even the smallest southern gulf islands than it does a small mainland town. It doesn’t feel as transient, but it does feel like a lot of people from the Vancouver area might have cottages there that they only visit in the summer months.

Aside from breweries cideries, and wineries, there’s a fair amount of hiking, both along the water’s edge and in the Elphinstone park or one of the other parks in the southern Sunshine Coast area. It marries a lot of things I like in a place, but I don’t know if I’d feel trapped there. After a few days on Saturna, I felt like I’d seen 75% of the island, and if I were there long-term I’d get bored of not having more places to walk around or options for things to do.

Gibsons might be big enough, and close enough to Vancouver, to avoid that feeling, but realistically I’d be spending my day to day life contained to a small town, walking around the same areas, cut off or at least barricaded from all the services and amenities I currently grumble for having to travel more than 15 minutes to receive.

Fewer things means fewer people, though, which is increasingly difficult to find on the west coast. On the trails in North Vancouver on the weekend in the summer months, you won’t have a moment without hearing other conversations or negotiating when to try to pass people, or let them pass you. If one of the things you enjoy about the west coast is spending time outside and soaking that in, Gibsons might be one of the only places left where you’re in a full town with independent stores and at the same time have space to walk through a forest and plop down on the sand without unintentionally being in a party.