KAMLOOPS — MoneySense is basically trolling us at this point.
The magazine known best – or known only – for its rankings of the best places to live in Canada has released this year’s list.
Kamloops was down at number 121 last year, a hilariously dismal spot by any stretch of the imagination.
This year, we are at 117 out of 219 Canadian cities.
Up a whole four spots, which doesn’t mean much, especially when you consider there were a number of cities added to consideration this year.
But what really chaps our hides up here in Kamloops isn’t that we’re on the lower half of the list when we should be in the top 10.
It’s not that we’re behind such sparkling destinations as Weyburn, Saskatchewan and Barrie, Ontario.
What really gets our goat is that we’re tied for number 117.
And who are we paired up with?
Kelowna.
Kelowna!
That waste of a perfectly good lake.
The strip mall capital of BC.
Kelowna!
The only place in Canada where tourism pamphlets devote entire sections to dealing with traffic gridlock.
Kelowna.
Where neck tattoos are offered for free with the purchase of a case of wine.
Pairing Kamloops with Kelowna is the ultimate indignity.
They say no one from Kelowna ever visits Kamloops, but that’s not true.
They do visit us, but instead of staying in hotels, they stay in Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre.
For decades, our cities have played the Hatfields and McCoys, if the Hatfields owned jacked up Dodge Ram 3500s for no apparent reason.
While Kelowna attracted Alberta oil money and ballooned to an unsustainable size, Kamloops quietly diversified, grew, and is now the obvious choice for where someone would want to put down roots.
These rankings are hilarious.
MoneySense Magazine may know money, but it has a ways to go when it comes to sense.
