Many Vancouverites end up moving to the Bay Area or Seattle. To users of /r/vancouver, was there anything about that region or state that made you long to be back in Vancouver, or BC, or Canada in general?

One weekend in December of 2007, when I was just 16, me and my family went down to Seattle. I actually remember the exact date, November 30th through December 2nd (Friday-Sunday), because on that weekend there was a major windstorm event in the Pacific Northwest.

We stayed at the Rodeway Inn in Tukwila, right across from Sea-Tac and a block behind Pacific Highway South. I don't know if it's still there anymore. I remember on Friday that we went to the Denny's on Pac Highway just north of our hotel, a Denny's I've been to before since I've flown out of Sea-Tac a few times. I still remember what I ate, a Lumberjack Slam I split with my dad, and a hot fudge brownie a la mode. The first thing I noticed was that the portions were huge. The second thing I noticed, and it was something I hadn't noticed until then, was that compared to Vancouver, Seattle had a major obesity problem. A large number of patrons in that Denny's were overweight or obese. In perhaps the fittest city in the US, no less.

I don't want to be unfair here. Suburban Tukwila in South King County should not be seen as the hallmark of healthy lifestyles. All the same, I guess I wasn't expecting such acute and widespread obesity this far north and west in the US. :/ It wouldn't be until I became older and learned about the issues in America's political system--food deserts, low pay, social safety net in tatters--that I realized how bad the poor in America really had it. Most of these concepts were foreign or semi-foreign to me, as a Canadian citizen, and especially as a resident of BC and Vancouver, where governments actually listen to public health authorities instead of pulling the "socialism/free market" card all the time.

/r/vancouver Thread