Nanaimo is the only city in Canada with a dessert named after it, and it has built a self-guided trail of more than forty stops around that fact. Traditional bars, gluten-free versions, a milkshake, a gelato, a macaron, and one made with spent brewery grain in place of the coconut. …

The question people ask before moving from a larger city is whether there is anything going on here. The answer is more than expected, concentrated in a smaller number of places, and heavily weighted toward summer.

Nanaimo has an 800-seat waterfront theatre that is home to a professional symphony, a …

The growing season on this part of the coast runs long, and the food culture follows it. There is farm country fifteen minutes south of Nanaimo, a market season that stretches well past where it ends in most of the country, and a night market that takes over a downtown …

Nanaimo's food scene does not sit on one strip. It is spread across a few distinct pockets, which is why people who arrive and drive the main highway come away thinking there is nothing here but chains.

There is considerably more than that, but you have to know where to …

The practical advantage of Nanaimo is position. It sits roughly in the middle of the east coast of Vancouver Island, which means the beaches, the wine country, the old-growth forest, the ski hill, and the open Pacific coast are all reachable and back in a day.

People who move here …

The reason people golf here rather than somewhere else is the calendar. The season on this coast runs long past where it ends in Alberta or the interior, and in a mild year there are very few weeks you genuinely cannot play.

Within the city there are a handful of …