There are only two cities worth living in in Canada — Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver. And of the two, Toronto’s better.

I’ve lived in both cities. There’s something definitely unique about the West Coast (Vancouver, perched on the Pacific). But unique in a bad way. It’s a left-wing paradise where the rain never stops falling. (Except in summer.) You’re either very poor in Vancouver or very rich, it seems. East Vancouver is the place where all the bums gather. On a stretch of East Hastings Street, the SRO (single room occupancy) buildings and shoddy convenience stores predominate. Meanwhile, downtown and near the ocean, near Sunset Beach say and on Burrard, the yuppies live. They have a good life, but they’ve earned it. In this world, if you have money (unless you inherited it) you tend to have done something to deserve it.

By contrast, Toronto is cold in the winter but at least it isn’t raining all the damn time. Toronto has a more balanced, politically centrist culture. It’s large. It has like six major league sports teams, all of which are sold out all the time. There is a sense of a literary culture here. There’s a film experience with the Toronto International Film Festival.

Greater Toronto is sprawling. It encompasses Barrie, Mississauga, Burlington, Oakville, Hamilton (some would debate that, but it’s part of the sprawl), Markham, Brampton, more… Greater Toronto is also called The Golden Horseshoe, because it’s always been economically prosperous and because it curves around like a sideways U around the shores of Lake Ontario. If you want a job, you’re liable to find one in the Greater Toronto area, and rare jobs like nuclear engineer are possible here because the economy is so wide and diversified.

When comparing Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver, something to be borne in mind is that Toronto’s a hundred years older and more entrenched. During the War of 1812, Toronto was burned down by the Americans. It has a sense of history.

Vancouver has the Pacific Ocean as its neighbor. Toronto has Lake Ontario. The one thing Toronto is missing is the mountains.

Both cities have good-looking women, but there’s more of them in Toronto because it’s a much larger city. Vancouver is more expensive to live in, because it’s reached the limits of its easy suburban expansion, whereas Greater Toronto has room to grow.

I have a deep-down antipathy for Vancouver. I think it’s wrong for a lot of people. It’s just more limited in so many ways. You have to be a certain kind of person, with a certain kind of income, to thrive there.

I have an actual liking for Greater Toronto. I consider it home. There are problems to be sure, but this is the case with any large metropolitan area. Unlike Vancouver, Toronto is an Alpha City on the world stage, with all that comes with that. And yet there are pockets of small towns and rural areas in Ontario (the province of which Toronto is a part) where you can live if that suits you more. You have the best of both worlds.

I always felt like a stranger in Vancouver, a foreigner, but having grown up in Greater Toronto and lived there most of my life, it’s second-nature to me. And that counts for a lot.