Last weekend on election day, as I sat in the glow of a backyard campfire with some visiting comrades from Vancouver, I couldn't help but take notice of the things they were saying about our beloved Coast.
My interests were piqued because what they were discussing led me to think about other things I've heard while gently eavesdropping around home. Yes, such is the nature of the job.
It seems I can't last a day without hearing about the growing need for youth retention - and justifiably so. Statistics show the young adult population has declined to a third of what it was in 1990.
But why, gathered there around the fire pit, was I hearing from friends one year my junior about how spectacular a place this must be to live?
You know the answer - because it is. It really is.
Of my two visitors, one was born in Kamloops and the other in the Okanagan Valley, both incredible places in their own right. But as youth will, they left home to explore new avenues and find pieces of themselves in unlikely places.
In fact, at 24 years of age, I would say at least nine of 10 of my friends are from some place 'else'.
We're a migratory generation suffering from travel lust. It's a problem, we know, we're working on it.
But sooner or later most of us come to rest, whether it be back home where it's familiar and we can make like bandits with free meals from the family fridge, or some place else where we've grown roots.
Another thing that's caught my attention is the one that has surprised me the most: the number of people I've met born and raised in the Lower Mainland who, until my mention of them, had never even heard of places like Sechelt and Gibsons.
You have to stop and wonder, with all these young people flying around like confused birds looking for somewhere to land that can offer a job and a beer after 10 p.m., the Coast would seem a decently appealing nest.
Well, it is.
The day after the election, we went for a drive up the Coast, running a circuit of Gibsons to Egmont and back.
It feels like a road trip across your own back yard. Coming across snow piled up on the ground only minutes outside a sunny Sechelt makes you wonder if you've suddenly ventured some great distance into the North, that at any moment you'll have to trade in your Kia for a pack of snow dogs and cry 'mush!' to get home before nightfall.
The creeks, the trails, the abandoned relics of our past found floating and rusty in the harbours: there's a lot of adventure out here.
But many of my friends who've yet to visit are still convinced I live on some tiny island somewhere.
Maybe it's a secret worth keeping, that is, until you look at the worrisome statistics. Consider the impact of the many small businesses lacking a succession plan, or how the Sunshine Coast Regional District is home to the second-oldest regional district population in British Columbia.
It's a complex issue with no easy solution, but if there's one thing I can contribute to this important discourse, might it be a change in language?
The name of the game seems to be youth retention, but it would seem to me that youth attraction might be a more effective strategy, especially when there's such a big crowd of wayward young job seekers skinning each other alive for enough work to sustain themselves just south of here.
You never know, a slight change in focus could go a long way.
