Victoria is nice, but it is a small city and being on the island it's pretty isolated. While you do have direct access to the said island, there's a limit to h

Victoria is nice, but it is a small city and being on the island it's pretty isolated. While you do have direct access to the said island, there's a limit to how much "nature" activities one can do. Diversity Nanaimo (another city) is utterly unremarkable. Tofino is very nice, but it's 4-hour drive away. Everything else is even farther and unremarkable. Getting to anywhere outside of the island is a major hassle. Victoria International Airport provides fine selection of international flights, though to Seattle only. Ferries are slow and expensive. Floating plane taxis tend to crash now and then, so that's not very good either. So, yes, in theory you can get off the island on a whim, in practice though it's so much hassle that more often than not you simply won't bother. Hence the "isolated" remark. YMMV, but my experience was that outside of work things get very boring very quickly.