92 TRAVEL+LEISURE | OCTOBER 2019
I
WAS NIBBLING on a Belgian waffle at
Nero, a café in Vancouver’s buzzy
Yaletown neighborhood, trying to look
inconspicuous while eavesdropping on the
couple at the next table who were chatting about
the city’s casinos. I glared at my friends Victoria
and Jeanne as they chattered away. “I heard there
were people bringing in hockey bags full of cash,
buying chips, and laundering the money,” said the
man. It was a startling thing to hear about this
traditionally raffish, almost beachy city, ringed by
water on three sides, interwoven with lush green
spaces, and presided over by the slopes of the
North Shore Mountains.
Still, the idea that money was being laundered
in Vancouver wasn’t totally shocking. Over the
course of a few recent visits, I had become
fascinated by the way this beautiful metropolis is
being transformed by foreign cash, which has
flooded Canada’s superstar cities just as
aggressively as it has New York and London. High-
rises filled with empty condominiums owned by
Chinese billionaires eager to safeguard their capital
have become the stuff of legend. Seattle, where
Jeanne and Victoria and I live, has been
experiencing its own dizzyingly rapid expansion,
but Vancouver has outstripped even Seattle’s
vertiginous cost of living, securing its status as the
least affordable city in North America, according to
a recent study. San Francisco and New York City
might have more expensive real estate, but at least
that’s matched by higher pay—not so in Vancouver.
Like Seattle and San Francisco, Vancouver has
a long-standing connection with Asia. Its streets
are crowded with izakayas, and locals trade tips
on where to find the best dim sum. The cross-
Pacific connection has been felt all the more
keenly since the U.K.’s 1997 handover of Hong
Kong to the People’s Republic of China, when
many Hong Kong Chinese relocated to the
