For readers east of the Rockies and unfamiliar with the B.C. scene: take some of the good Dr.'s maunderings on these pages with a generous helping of salt.

For instance, "Within three hundred miles of Vancouver...a dose of overseas money to boot."

Two out of three (low interest rates, bad past mortgage policies) isn't bad.  But grinding that "overseas money" axe doesn't cut anything in Abbotsford or Chilliwack, B.C.--scarcely 100 miles out of "mile zero" for home prices--where you'll seldom see an empty house of any kind (Empty Homes: we all know what THAT means, don't we?) or a Chinese person on streets or stores. One and a half hours out by ferry, it's the same on Vancouver Island, which still has--tradition lives on, Doctor!--more people of Anglo-Saxon heritage than perhaps region in the province. Prices are sky-rocketing, sure...but mighty few overseas bucks in the Valley--Fraser or Alberni.

Talk about "tradition": BC has another one, once called fear of the "Yellow Peril."