At the beginning of a new year it’s always important to try and start it off on a positive note. I like to do this by stopping for a moment to appreciate and give thanks for the everyday things that we here in Squamish might take for granted. One of those things being how genuinely friendly our town is.
As a community TV producer, I’ve lived in quite a few cities in B.C including Nelson, Merritt, Kamloops, Kelowna, Abbotsford, Vancouver, and now Squamish. And I have to say in all my travels, I’ve never encountered a town as friendly as Squamish.
It was while flipping my condo this past summer that my Dad initially brought it to my attention, saying he’d never been to a friendlier town. Just earlier in the day, while loading up on supplies at Home Depot, our cashier not only wanted to know how our day was going but was genuinely interested in hearing our step-by step renovation plans. Later that evening, not only did our Pepe and Gringo’s server go beyond the standard “What can I get you?” and ask my parents where they were from (Cloverdale), but she went on to recommend a laundry list of things they had to try while in town. I soon realized my father was right. People really are happy in Squamish – or at least extremely friendly in the public sector, which is more than a lot of small towns and cities can say. From the smiling Tim Hortons crew that serves me my coffee every morning, a mortgage broker who asked me to go biking and a Save-On-Foods cashier who happily held up the line to tell me about her squash recipe, the number of people who have made me feel welcome in the past 10 months, in a town where it can “take a while” to make friends, has been overwhelming.
This has been a bad year in the news, but let’s keep the good going in Squamish.
Vanessa Ybarra
Squamish
