I lived in Vancouver for 5-6 years in the early 90s, and now it's hard for me to imagine a better place to live. Stunning natural beauty, diverse population, great music and arts, friendly fun people, just everything, it's unforgettable. It's all an unbelievable dream to me now, did that paradise actually exist, or am I imagining it?
The healthcare was superb, I paid around $40 per month, and everything was covered 100%, no waiting.
And yep there was pot, you could buy it from naked peddlers any time on Wreck beach, at least before the RCMP tried to clean it up. My colleagues would wink and nod and sneak up to the office rooftop to have a few tokes and check out the view.
A lot of folks didn't like the GST though, and this was a time when everybody crossed down to the U.S. border towns all weekend long to buy gas and other stuff to save on the GST and other taxes and the exchange rate. There were lines and lines of gas stations all along the border on the U.S. side, filled to max all weekend, and customers were 90% Canadian there and in most stores on the U.S. side, all the way down to Bellingham WA. It was a funny economic culture.
Gotta love those folks and that priceless natural beauty up there. It's often in my reveries
