Hi Arrie
I live in the Vancouver BC area. Vancouver is a big city with the usual outlying suburbs and smaller towns. Vancouver is completely surrounded by geographic features that limit the amount of room for growth. There are mountains to the north and east, the ocean to the west and the Canada-US border to the south. Sure, there is farm country for about 50 miles eastward before you hit the mountain wall, but all of that is accounted for and full. So when someone wants to build a new house here, they have to compete for a plot from a very limited availability. This competition drives up the cost. The competition seems to be strong now and has been since the city was established in the late 1880's but has become more intense since 1988. There are several drivers for this competition. First of all, we are in Canada which is a very peaceful place. We could argue about the government and politics and the public systems, but things seem to go ok most of the time here. Then there is the weather. Vancouver and nearby cities have much better weather than anywhere else in Canada. That is, if you consider temperatures the main thing. If you consider sunshine the main thing, then well, maybe we are not in first place. But the fact is that in winter it might snow for a week or less here, it might go below 0 (Celcius of course, not F) 5 or 10 days out of the year, and it is not uncommon to suffer grey days and light rain for many many days in a row during November to April. In the summer, people are complaining about the heat if it goes above 27 deg C which it doesn't do more than a few days. Anyway, my point is the weather is very good, for being in Canada.
As for the cost of living, well, housing is the big thing. If you don't mind living in a close suburb of Vancouver, then count on a house costing about $400K at the bottom end for something simple on a standard city lot (about 7000 sq ft lot) and a reasonably nice new house might go for about $550K and up.
http://www.mls.ca/map.aspx?AreaID=1048
In the city proper, count on $500K as the cheaper old-timer needing a lot of repairs, while the range goes a long ways upward from there depending on the neighborhood.
Here are some examples of food cost from my shopping this week:
4 litres milk $3.39
1.2 Kg roasted coffee beans $10.99
2.6 litre grape juice $6.99
1 litre applie juice $1.69
breakfast for two at local family restaurant $27.00
regular gasoline for car $1.47/litre
shop rate for local auto repair shop $84/hour
fancy sourdough bread, loaf $2.39
grapes kg $5.05
english cucumber, fresh$.99
whole white onions $2.18/kg
whole tomato $3.29/kg
carton of 6x0.33 litre Stella Artois beer $12.35
typical 0.75 litre wine $16
montly telephone bill about $40 (phone only)
regular whole wheat bread $1.39/loaf
roasting chicken $16.00
box of cheerios breakfast cereal $5.98/370gr
men's haircut $15.00
Our income taxes, usually taken off a paycheque by the employer are summarized well here:
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2008/09/bc_personal_tax_rate.pdf
If you own a typical house, expect to pay about $2500/ yr provincial property tax. Usually water charges and garbage pickup charges are separate at a couple of hundred a year.
Car insurance is about $1200/year but varies a lot depending on car and person and coverage.
Heating and electricity costs are usually about $300 per month, very roughly estimated.
Hospital and doctor visits are paid by the gov't so nothing out of pocket for an emergency visit or doctor visit or surgery. Many employers also provide extended coverage insurance to buy the extras like private rooms, home equipment, all sorts of things that gov't won't cover (more unusual stuff).
One thing I want to say about BC. The mountains dictate where people can live, so it feels like a few roads and a few small cities and lots and lots of wilderness. The road network through the province is actually fairly small because it costs a fortune to knock a road through these mountains. On the other hand, living in Vancouver, we are well connected to points south like Seattle and Portland and many travel this way.