By Jennifer Cockrall-King

I’ve never been much of a joiner. I have three generations of I’ll-go-my-own-way-thanks Alberta blood pulsing through my veins. But after two years of part-time residency in the Okanagan, maybe, just maybe, it’s time to ditch the Wild Rose Country license plates and screw some B.C. signage onto the old truck we leave there. Belonging has its advantages.

It’s not so I can be smug about being a Local instead of a Tourist. My husband and I already spend more than half our time annoying friends and family in Alberta with reports of watching snow melt in January and dining at a nearby winery “when we’re too tired to cook.”

But the rest of the year we’re in our noisy, downsized Edmonton condo. This apparently eradicates any street-cred amongst our B.C. brethren. I’m told it takes eight to 12 years to be embraced as a local.

Sheesh. Who cares? Do I? Well, kind of.

Even to casual observers, Albertans are taking over this place. We drive twice the speed of any British Columbian, keep dog-eared real estate guides on our dashboards and our BlackBerries glued to our hips. There will be a backlash. Sure, the Okanagan actively solicits (and relies on) Albertan tourists: it starts with the golfers in March, and by August it’s reasonable to worry whether anybody is east of the Rockies minding the store. Just because you invite people for dinner, it doesn’t mean you want them showing up with suitcases.

But we do bring suitcases, and wallets. We’re a “have” province, but the Okanagan has what many of us want: sun, lakes, wine and golf. From July 2005 to June 2006, nearly 10,000 Albertans traded six-month winters for peaches and beaches. But StatsCan only tracks people who relocate lot, stock (options) and barrel. Nobody knows how many are like my husband and I, not quite ready to forsake our PST-free, prosperity-cheque-issuing homeland.

As for the license plate switcheroo idea, it’s purely practical. We’ve embarked on a landscaping project at our B.C. house. After months of pleading with Bobcat operators and asphalt crews, I’ve clued into the quasi-tribal work culture and learned to not let even the slightest whiff of non-residency enter the equation. So we’re getting B.C. plates, a B.C. phone number, even a B.C. Safeway Club Card. Maybe, in a few years, when the spaces between the sage brush and yuccas in our yard have grown in, we’ll be considered locals. And then I’ll start whining about Albertans overrunning the place. U

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 9:35 am and is filed under Entrepreneurship, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.