In July 1997, I drove from the San Francisco Bay Area to Vancouver with a friend. Our plan was to spend three days in Vancouver and then continue east to the prairies and then drive south back into the US and return home to Berkeley, California.

That was the plan, but that’s not what happened because I couldn’t leave Vancouver. Three days stretched into three weeks and would have stretched on indefinitely had we not been two people and two dogs in the small house of a friend. Only when we had worn out our welcome did we, reluctantly, leave.

Once back in California, I vowed that some day I would figure out a way to move to Vancouver. The opportunity came sooner than I expected.

In August I had to start thinking about the new semester. I was teaching at a community college in the Silicon Valley and had to prepare for the impending fall semester.

On my first day back to work, I had a meeting with my boss. It wasn’t a happy event, and I left the meeting wondering how I would ever make it through the year.

I was depressed for the rest of the day and evening, and I went to bed very unhappy.

The moment I awoke the following morning, I knew I was moving to Vancouver, and I knew I was doing it immediately.

It took about three weeks to rent my house, sell my convertible, find a house in West Vancouver and make arrangements to work half time designing and building an online learning environment for the college, something I could do remotely.

The move was an unqualified success. I designed the online learning environment and then used it for two and a half years to teach my students in the Silicon Valley from West and then North Vancouver. After that, I quit my job and devoted myself to promoting my adopted city by starting and growing the BCPassport web site into what we hope is the best Vancouver information and booking service. Our goal is to make you love the city and the surrounding area, and we’ll do pretty much whatever it takes to make your Vancouver visit wonderful.

We want to provide travel experiences that combine quality and value and capture the essence of Vancouver, Victoria, British Columbia and the Canadian Rockies. We believe these are healthy, happy, revitalizing places, and we want to share their beauty and benefits with the world.