{"id":673770,"date":"2026-05-16T16:38:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T16:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/673770\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T16:38:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T16:38:16","slug":"7-reasons-why-i-chose-to-move-to-calgary-over-vancouver-and-i-do-not-regret-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/673770\/","title":{"rendered":"7 reasons why I chose to move to Calgary over Vancouver and I do not regret it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Please don’t come for me, Vancouver friends, Calgary just does it best<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ok, I will give you a bit of a background story before I dive in: My work contract was ending in early 2025, and I was living in Ottawa, Ontario. I needed a fresh start, so I started weighing out my options and decided I wanted to make my way out West, as many Ontarians do<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I had lived in Nanaimo, B.C. and White Rock, B.C., for short periods of time, so I definitely considered Vancouver, but at the end of the day I chose Calgary. <\/p>\n

There were several reasons why I moved to Calgary over Vancouver, but here are the seven most important points that helped seal the deal for me.<\/p>\n

I can wear PJ shorts out and not feel judged<\/p>\n

I do not have it in me to get all dolled up every time I leave the house. <\/p>\n

Vancouverites are so put together its scary. Girls will be in Alo head-to-toe and in a full beat, just to get a latte on a Tuesday morning. <\/p>\n

My mental health cannot deal with feeling judged any time I leave the house in boxer shorts. I am just a girl, and sometimes I just need to walk to my local ice cream shop across the street from me in my PJs and get my sweet treat fix.<\/p>\n

Calgary is WAY more affordable<\/p>\n

I will be the first to admit, I am nowhere near being able to afford buying a home \u2014 I’m just out here renting. But renting (let alone buying) in Vancouver seems impossible. <\/p>\n

Calgary is much more affordable, with one-bedrooms averaging $1,604 a month and two-bedrooms averaging $1,950, according to Zumper<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Over in Vancouver<\/a>, one-bedrooms are going for $2,350 on average and two-bedrooms for $3,300. That is a no from me, not in today’s economy.<\/p>\n

The mountains are actually easy to get to<\/p>\n

In Calgary, you can get to a decent hike anywhere within 40 minutes to an hour. I love its convenience, and traffic leaving the city is rarely an issue. Calgary rush hour within the city is a different story, but I’m talking about getting out of the city here.<\/p>\n

And yes, Vancouver has mountains \u2014 but they’re not so easy to get to in my experience. <\/p>\n

Vancouver traffic during rush hour, especially over that dang Lions Gate Bridge, is a nightmare. I feel like whenever I have wanted to go on a hike in or around Vancouver, it’s so far outside the city and the traffic to get there is horrible. <\/p>\n

Plus, it’s the same hikes everyone does, like The Chief. The sights from the top are beautiful, but it’s like you’re at a theme park to get there because it’s so busy.<\/p>\n

From Calgary, you quite literally have access to hundreds of hikes within a two-hour radius; something I will never take for granted.<\/p>\n

I cannot deal with the rain 24\/7<\/p>\n

Vancouver is so gloomy, it’s depressing. <\/p>\n

I know there are beautiful sights, but I cannot handle the rain most days of the year. I just don’t think I have it in me to live in a rainy city. <\/p>\n

Comparing that to sunny Calgary, with blue skies about 330 days of the year? Yes please. <\/p>\n

The sun is out the majority of the time, which helps make the cold winters a lot more bearable. The sun factor also just makes me get my butt outside most days. I am very weather-driven, and I need an incentive to get my steps in some days. <\/p>\n

The sun here is truly unmatched by any other Canadian city, let alone Rain-couver.<\/p>\n

I am a Vancouver 6<\/p>\n

Ok, I’m going to get a little vain here, perhaps, or maybe the opposite. <\/p>\n

Everyone in Vancouver is just way too hot for my liking. I have been out a few times downtown Vancouver, and I just feel so insecure when I am out in the bar scene there. <\/p>\n

Yes, this could potentially be a me thing and it may involve needing to work through some of my own insecurities \u2014 but in Vancouver, I would say I am a hard six, whereas in Calgary, I’d give myself a generous nine. <\/p>\n

The girls in Vancouver are simply too beautiful, and I just can’t keep up. I will stick to my tracksuit and athleisure wearing six days a week, because that is much more my speed.<\/p>\n

I am just a cowgirl and was made for Calgary<\/p>\n

This fact, of course, sealed the deal for me. <\/p>\n

I am a cowgirl through and through, and no other Canadian city does country-western better than Calgary. Mind you, I haven’t done much field research in Vancouver, but does the city even have a country bar? <\/p>\n

Of course, Calgary is filled with them, so that was a no-brainer. But the country music festival and event scene here is next level. <\/p>\n

I know I have already talked your ears off about the Calgary Stampede<\/a> in other articles, so I won’t beat a dead horse here (see what I did there?), but I simply live for the country-themed everything. Concerts, music festivals, bars, birthdays… I couldn’t live without a little yeehaw in my life, and Calgary just does it so effortlessly.<\/p>\n

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Narcity Media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Please don’t come for me, Vancouver friends, Calgary just does it best. Ok, I will give you a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49511,49,48,40109,202342,55],"class_list":["post-673770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-best-city-in-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-cities","tag-moving-to-alberta","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}