• Chris Ouellet, 40, and his partner moved from Portland, Oregon, to Victoria, British Columbia, in 2020.
• In Canada, he feels safer and thinks the government looks out for people.
• Ouellet wanted to leave the US because of his experiences with gun violence and the opioid epidemic.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Chris Ouellet, 40, about his and his partner's decision to move from the US to Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

It seems like in the US, a lot of people are on edge. They have a lot to be on edge about.

Canada was our backup plan when the pandemic started. We had just gotten back from a three-week trip in New Zealand with our family. We took the pandemic as a way to start over, a fresh start. So we were like, "Let's move to New Zealand."

A couple of months later, after we had given our notices at work, after the house was already being sold, the New Zealand borders closed because of COVID-19 and we stayed in Portland, Oregon.

We stayed in the city for eight months just waiting for the borders to open, and they never did. So we said, "We love the Pacific Northwest, and Canada is not far up the road."

British Columbia has very similar weather and a lot of the things that we were looking for in New Zealand, a lower cost of education, socialized healthcare, and politics that weren't so incredibly polarizing.

With the Trump presidency and how inflammatory it's made people toward each other in the US, and the way that the government is not really working for the people, it's very much our side versus their side. And if you're not on our side, we don't like you.

In Canada, I'm seeing things in the news more often about the government trying to proactively make life better for its citizens, rather than focusing on the theatrics of the politics of the day.

There were just a lot of things that British Columbia had in common with New Zealand. So British Columbia was our backup plan, but it's been a very good backup.

Surprisingly, the food is a lot different

We miss our friends and family. The first couple of years of the pandemic were not great for growing a social circle.

I also miss the food in the US. We're on an island, and there's some diversity in food. But before Portland, we lived in Chicago, where you could get any type of food and it was world class. So living on a small island has led us to cook a lot more.

When you go to a grocery store in the US, the produce is picture-perfect, no blemishes. Everything looks like it's ready for a commercial. Here, the produce is a little rougher-looking. It's fine — perfectly usable. But that was one of the things we noticed when we moved here. We were like, "Oh, the produce is a little dirtier," like it was freshly taken out of the ground because some of it was local.

Another thing was that in the US, you might have 50 options for shampoo, deodorant, and foodstuff. There are just so many brands for all the same products. Here, there are three to five options: You've got the no-name item, a name brand, and an off-brand. There may be something else, but that's about it.

We wanted to escape gun violence and the opioid crisis

Years ago, when living in Chicago, we took public transport everywhere. We did that until we started seeing people flashing guns on the subway and the train cars turning into a mad rush to get out because people were afraid that someone was going to get shot.

There was one day when I was in a grocery store and we got locked in because people were shooting at each other in the parking lot. I had to wait an hour for the police to tell everybody it was OK to leave.

We heard gun pops pretty often, and it was getting worse and worse. That, combined with terrible snow, is what made us move to Portland.

In British Columbia, the regulations for gun ownership are extremely tight. Because there are so many barriers to people having guns, there aren't very many.

When you're out in public and you hear a noise, no one runs, no one checks over their shoulder, and no one thinks that it could be gun violence. Here, everybody just walks like it's nothing because it's fireworks or kids playing with toys or whatever. The gun culture here is extremely different from that in the US.

Portland's a beautiful city, and I enjoyed living there, but there's an opioid epidemic. There's also an opioid problem in British Columbia — like there is in a lot of places.

In Portland, we would see syringes on the ground in parks, in trash, and in the woods, pretty much all over the place. In Victoria, where we live, there are sharps containers everywhere — every bathroom you go into, every public place, out on the streets.

In three years of living in Victoria, I've seen one syringe.

British Columbia is not perfect, but it seems like it's trying.

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