Thirty-six years ago today I became a Canadian citizen. perhaps the proudest and most satisfying day of my life. In about two months from now, I will have lived in Canada, in Vancouver, for forty-three years — much more than half my life.
These lengths of time seem strangely enormous to me looking back because I had had a quite long and interesting life (with wives and children and a career) in England and Europe before I ever came here. And that previous life — during the fascinating 1950s, 60s and 70s — now seems like a necessary and irreplaceable prologue to what my life became afterwards.
There were seriously important people and things that I left behind; but I don’t believe in regrets because they have no value. Even if I did, I cannot imagine that my life was anything but greatly enhanced by moving to Vancouver. I am still a proud Brit, an unreconstructed Welsh Londoner, but I am prouder still of being — by choice — a Vancouverite, of being Canadian.
Jak's View of Vancouver v.3 