On July 24, 2023, I arrived in Coquitlam, BC. Moving from Winnipeg wasn’t just a change of city — almost everything reset: the job, the neighbourhood, the cost of living, the pace of construction work. It was, in many ways, starting over again.
Coquitlam — The Reality of Rent
The first shock was rent. Our last place in Winnipeg — a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment — was $1,570/month. Our first place in Coquitlam: $3,000. Nearly double. If salary had scaled proportionally, that would be manageable. It didn’t. Rent now takes more than half of my monthly income, which means there’s almost nothing left over for savings. I’ve thought about starting a side income, but haven’t figured out what makes sense yet. Whether we’ve made the right call staying in BC is something I still think about.
A Good PM Makes All the Difference
My first project at the new company was a $100M Capital Infrastructure build — a scale I hadn’t touched before. Compared to the small QSR tenant improvements I’d been running in Winnipeg, everything about it was bigger and more complex.
I was fortunate to work under a genuinely good PM. That made the adjustment far less painful than it could have been. I put in a lot of overtime early on — not because it was required, but because I wanted to get up to speed faster. Looking back, some of that was probably unnecessary. But that’s how I operate when I’m learning something new.
BC Construction Is a Different Level of Demanding
The project itself was nothing like what I’d handled in Winnipeg. This one involved structural work, civil scope — foundation, slab — a three-storey building with stairs, office space and an open workshop under one roof, plus four TIs running concurrently. The complexity was genuinely different.
BC also has requirements I’d never encountered before. Chlorine testing, for example — I had never done it in Winnipeg or Calgary, and had certainly never submitted it to an engineer. It’s possible I simply hadn’t been exposed to it, but in BC it was standard procedure. Fireproofing and firestopping were also new territory for me at that scale. There was a lot to absorb, and it took time.
Family Life — School and the Work Question
My wife hasn’t gone back to work here. The constraint is practical: she can only work during the hours our child is at school, and almost no employers accommodate that narrow window. It’s not a choice so much as a structural problem.
School has been fine, though it depends a lot on which teacher your child gets — same as anywhere. One thing that’s different from Winnipeg: Coquitlam doesn’t have school buses. Parents do the drop-off and pickup themselves, which is another reason my wife’s schedule is so constrained.
Senior PC — and Then a Move to Assistant PM
In the fall of 2025, the company gave me a Senior PC title. They brought it up — I didn’t ask. That meant something.
Shortly after, I applied for an Assistant PM role at another company and made the move. My current project is a $150M Residential build — Modified Design-Build, which means design and construction are running in parallel. It’s a complicated structure to manage, with more variables in motion at any given time than a conventional project. It’s not easy work, but it’s exactly the kind of complexity I came to BC to find.
The Question That Doesn’t Go Away
I thought getting PR would settle things. It didn’t. The shape of the uncertainty just changed.
With rent consuming most of my income, the question of whether BC is the right place long-term keeps coming back. Moving to a cheaper province would reduce the pressure, but it also means rebuilding from scratch again — new networks, new professional relationships, new everything. And our child is approaching secondary school age, where education decisions start to carry more weight. There’s no clean answer. I’m still working through it.
I also find myself wondering sometimes: if I had known I’d be starting completely over anyway, would I have chosen a higher-earning field? Construction wasn’t a wrong choice. But I’m not sure I fully explored the alternatives before committing to it.
What Makes It Worth It
After all of that — the costs, the uncertainty, the open questions — there are things that are simply good.
My child loves Canada. They’ve adapted well, made friends, and seem genuinely at home here. That matters more than I can explain. And despite everything, we’re together as a family. That was the whole point of this. Some days that’s enough to put the rest of it into perspective.
Immigration doesn’t end when you arrive. It doesn’t end when you get PR. The questions change shape, but they keep coming. I think that’s just what it means to build a life somewhere new — you’re always figuring out the next part.
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