I met my boyfriend C. about a year ago. We fell for each other almost instantly, making the decision to jump into an inconvenient, unforeseen long-distance relationship a relative easy one — except for one little detail, a 13-pound one with a wagging tail, to be precise. Of crucial import to our relationship, and eventual closing of the interprovincial gap, would be my relationship with Gertrude, C.’s five-year-old pug and the light of his life. I’m decidedly a cat person and I haven’t spent much time around dogs, so I was nervous the first time I went to visit C. at his home in Calgary. Getting along with the original girl in his life, we both knew, was mandatory. Thankfully, it went better than either of us could have imagined.
I woke up that first morning nose to little black nose with Gertie, over the moon at having not one, but two humans to cuddle with. By night two, she was decidedly sleeping on my side of the bed and by Day 3, she and I were happily trotting off on morning walks and leaving the boyfriend behind. Gertie and I bonded in a way I’ve never experienced with an animal. She’d let me hold her like a baby, a sign of extreme trust and comfort, and clung to my side in a way that made C. and I independently draw same surprising conclusion: Gertie clearly needed a mom, and I was it. We were — we are — a family.
Fast-forward several months and Gertie and C. have picked up stakes to join me on the West Coast. And, like many Vancouver families, we’re having a hard time finding a home. The list of what we’re looking for is neither long nor extravagant but in this city it feels like we’re questing for the Holy Grail.
On our wish list: a place above ground (we’ve both put in as much time in dim basement suites as our mental health can take), newish appliances, and a bit of outdoor space to enjoy a cup of coffee on a summer’s day. Our musts are that the building allow pets, obviously, and that it doesn’t pose the threat of imminent death in an earthquake.
I hadn’t thought to include the latter point on our initial list until I discovered it’s almost mutually exclusive to former. The vast majority of pet-friendly listings in Vancouver, already a very small pool, are in the West End. As an East Van girl, I was excited at the excuse to explore a new neighbourhood, and the idea of living close to the beach made me feel better about swallowing the $200 to $300 rent premium levied against pet owners on our already inflated rents. But I wasn’t prepared to contend with living in a building that will one day — maybe soon, maybe far — almost certainly become a death trap.
To be fair, all of Vancouver is vastly underprepared for The Big One, or ones, as a recent podcast produced by the CBC explained in exquisite and terrifying detail. Faced with a crustal quake or a deep subduction zone shaker, much of the city’s homes will be rendered uninhabitable. But the concrete high rises in the West End, particularly those built before the 1970s, have been specifically cited by experts as prone to pancaking completely.
Having come across this factoid a number of times, I couldn’t help but feel like signing a lease on a suite in most of what’s available in our price range could also be signing a death warrant for my newly formed family. Even so, the scarcity of options almost had me ignore my gut and take a unit in a newly renovated building in the West End. But when I asked whether the building, originally built 1968, had undergone seismic upgrades in the retrofit I was told that it had only gone through seismic testing, the results of which were confidential. In the end I couldn’t do it. The thought of going to bed each night fearful I’d condemned us all to death, particularly if our family were to one day include a real baby as well as a fur one, was too much.
But in putting safety first, I’m now left to contend with the fact that we have an even smaller pool of suites that could possibly accommodate us. And we are the lucky ones. We are actually able to afford (barely) the near $2,000 a month that is now commanded for one-bedroom, or even smaller, apartments in Vancouver. Forget luxuries like in-suite laundry, a dishwasher, or — hope of hopes — a nice view that two working people in their 30s should be able to afford. We just want a place that’s safe and accepts us for the family that we are. If only such simple aims were equally simple to achieve.
