Having It All

I couldn’t afford to stay home from work. Finding childcare for my son in B.C. cost me a lot more than money.

- Theodora Jean

IN 2015, MY HUSBAND and I moved from Ottawa to Vancouver, where he'd landed his dream job with the federal government. We loved the weather, the mountains and the ocean, and we could envision raising our future kids on the West Coast. I got a job at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and a year after we moved, our first child was born.

I went on maternity leave for a year, and then I managed to get our son a spot at a home daycare. We paid $1,850 a month-it was expensive, but we made it work thanks to the savings we accumulated in Ottawa, where the cost of living was much cheaper. With my son taken care of, I was able to start working again.

In August of 2019, my husband was transferred to Squamish, a all town north of Vancouver. I was working remotely for the government-and doing some public-relations consulting on the side-so I didn't have to get a new job once we moved. We found a preschool for our then three-year-old son close to our new home, which cost us $1,150 a month. We were lucky: I heard from other preschool parents and through Facebook groups that there were long waitlists and few daycare spots in the area.