YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → 12 Most HATED Towns in British Columbia, Number 2 Will Genuinely Shock You

12 Most HATED Towns in British Columbia, Number 2 Will Genuinely Shock You — Transcript

by British Columbia Backstory · 3,174 words · 513 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00British Columbia, on Canada's Pacific
0:02Coast, sells itself with three words:
0:05Super Natural [music]
0:07British Columbia. Mountains, ocean,
0:11rainforest. But Statistics Canada keeps
0:14a very different kind of postcard. On
0:17it, a city of 5,000 people, famous for
0:20more than 40 hand-carved totem poles,
0:23scores four and a half times the
0:25national crime average. A mill town at
0:27the end of a long ocean inlet still
0:30plans around one night in 1964 when the
0:33sea came up the river after midnight.
0:36And the city on the cover of half the
0:38tourism brochures in the province posts
0:40a higher crime score than the two metro
0:42areas Canada ranks worst in the entire
0:45[music] country. This is not a list of
0:47bad people. It's a list of towns with a
0:50reputation and the hard numbers behind
0:53each one. So, let's count them down.
0:55Number 12 takes us into the dry
0:58sagebrush hills of the Thompson, to
1:00Kamloops. Almost 98,000 people live
1:04where the North and South Thompson
1:05rivers meet, and the city calls itself
1:08the tournament capital of Canada with
1:10the sports complexes to back that up.
1:13Ask people on the coast about Kamloops
1:15though, and you'll hear about the summer
1:17heat and the smell from the pulp mill
1:19when the wind turns. [music] The numbers
1:21are harder to laugh off. In 2023, the
1:25Kamloops metro area had the highest
1:27crime severity index in Canada. [music]
1:30That's the Statistics Canada score that
1:32weighs how much crime is reported and
1:34how serious it is.
1:35>> [music]
1:35>> For reference, the national average in
1:372025 was 75. In 2023, Kamloops hit
1:43165.3.
1:44[music]
1:45It fell to 129.9
1:48in 2024, which [music] was still second
1:50in the country, and to 126.2
1:53in 2025, second again. The city on its
1:57own scored 134.0.
2:00It improved and [music] still finished
2:02ahead of every metro area in Canada
2:05except one. A typical single-family home
2:08in the city was assessed at 693,000
2:11Canadian dollars on BC Assessment's 2026
2:14roll.
2:15>> [music]
2:15>> Here's where I have to be straight with
2:17you. Kamloops has now held a top two
2:19spot three years in a row and no amount
2:22of tournament weekends changes that line
2:25in the national report. If Kamloops
2:27surprised you, the next town is a place
2:29Canadians have been driving to for
2:31summer holidays since their grandparents
2:33were kids. Number 11 brings us south
2:36into the Okanagan to Penticton, a city
2:39of about 37,000 squeezed between two
2:42lakes. Okanagan Lake on one side and
2:45Skaha Lake on the other. In July, people
2:48float the channel between them on inner
2:49tubes and the old [music] sternwheeler
2:51SS Sicamous sits on the beach as a
2:54museum. It's the kind of town people
2:56retire to on purpose. So, why does it
2:59keep showing up on lists like this one?
3:02In 2025, Penticton's crime severity
3:05index was 144.8,
3:07[music] almost double the national
3:09average and 25th among all Canadian
3:12cities. That wasn't a one-year spike.
3:15>> [music]
3:15>> Maclean's ranked Penticton 16th among
3:18Canada's most dangerous places in its
3:202017 [music] list and 19th in 2020 with
3:24a score of 146.
3:26>> [music]
3:27>> Most of what drives the number is
3:28property crime, the break-ins and thefts
3:31that hit downtown businesses and parked
3:33cars. [music] A typical single-family
3:35home there was assessed at 700,000
3:39Canadian dollars on the 2026 roll.
3:41[music]
3:42I want to be precise with you. Penticton
3:44isn't hated for its lakes. It's hated
3:47for the gap between the postcard and the
3:49police report and that gap has lasted at
3:52least 5 years. From a lake town to a
3:55town people mostly see through a
3:57windshield.
3:59>> [music]
3:59>> At number 10, we're in Hope, about 150
4:02km, roughly 93 mi, east of Vancouver,
4:06where the Fraser Valley runs out and the
4:08mountains start. [music] Hope has around
4:106,700 people and one very famous claim.
4:14>> [music]
4:15>> From November 1981 to April 1982,
4:18Sylvester Stallone filmed First [music]
4:20Blood, the first Rambo movie, almost
4:23entirely in and around town. The bridge
4:26from the movie was replaced in 2011, but
4:29the visitor center still hands out a
4:31self-guided Rambo tour, and chainsaw
4:33carvings of eagles and prospectors line
4:36the downtown park. Hope also sits at the
4:39junction of three major highways,
4:41including the Coquihalla, which opened
4:43in 1986,
4:45and that's part of its problem. A small
4:48town absorbs the traffic of half the
4:50province. According to the provincial
4:52report, police resources in British
4:54Columbia, Hope recorded 217
4:58criminal code offenses per thousand
5:00residents in 2024, one of the highest
5:03rates in BC. A typical single-family
5:05home was assessed at 628,000
5:08Canadian dollars in 2026. [music]
5:11Here's the honest part. The mountains
5:13around Hope are not gentle. On January
5:169, 1965,
5:18the [music] Hope Slide brought down
5:20about 47 million cubic meters of rock,
5:24buried Highway 3 under roughly 45 m of
5:27rubble, and killed [music] four people.
5:29And in November 2021, floods cut the
5:32highways around town. Hope is the
5:34gateway, and gateways take the wear.
5:37[music]
5:38Quick pause before we keep going. Every
5:40town on this list comes from public
5:42data, [music] and that takes real hours
5:44to dig up. If you want the British
5:46Columbia the brochures leave out,
5:48subscribe now because there's a lot more
5:51of it coming. Back to the countdown.
5:54Number nine takes us to the west side of
5:56Vancouver Island to Port Alberni. About
5:5918,000 people [music] at the head of a
6:01narrow inlet that runs roughly 40 km in
6:04from the open Pacific. Picture logging
6:07trucks, a working mill, and a waterfront
6:09that looks out at mountains on every
6:11side. That inlet is the reason Port
6:14Alberni has a tsunami siren.
6:16>> [music]
6:17>> On March 27th, 1964, the Great Alaska
6:20earthquake sent waves down the coast
6:23[music] and the inlet funneled them
6:24straight into town. The first wave
6:27arrived just after midnight [music]
6:29and a second, close to 5 m high, hit
6:32about an hour later. Cars were tossed
6:35into the streets like toys. [music]
6:3755 homes were washed away and hundreds
6:40more were damaged and nobody died, which
6:43locals still call a miracle. The
6:46disaster pushed the twin cities of
6:48Alberni and Port Alberni to merge
6:50[music] in 1967.
6:52Today, the numbers are the problem.
6:55Statistics Canada put Port Alberni's
6:572025 crime severity index at [music]
7:00206,
7:02among the 15 highest in the province.
7:05Maclean's had [music] it in Canada's top
7:0720 in both 2017 and 2020 when its score
7:11was 148.
7:13It has climbed by more than 50 points
7:15since. A typical single-family home was
7:18assessed at 485,000
7:21Canadian dollars in 2026.
7:24I want to be straight with you. A
7:25forestry economy that depends on one
7:28industry has rough years and a town in a
7:31tsunami zone never gets [music] to
7:32forget it.
7:34From the end of an inlet to the start of
7:36a highway.
7:37>> [music]
7:37>> At number eight, we're in the Peace
7:39River country in Dawson Creek. About
7:4112,000 people and one of the most
7:44photographed signposts in Canada. This
7:47is Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway,
7:50built in 1942 by the US Army as a
7:53wartime supply road to Alaska. Tourists
7:56still pose under the Mile Zero marker
7:58downtown before heading north. The city
8:01is affordable in a way almost nothing
8:03else in British Columbia is. A typical
8:06single-family home was assessed at just
8:08291,000
8:10Canadian dollars on the 2026 roll, among
8:13the lowest of any city in the province.
8:16But, here's the trade.
8:17>> [music]
8:18>> Dawson Creek's 2025 crime severity index
8:21was 215.2,
8:24almost [music] three times the national
8:26average and ninth among all Canadian
8:28cities of its size. Maclean's put it in
8:31Canada's top 20 most dangerous places in
8:34both 2017 and 2020, when its score was
8:38166.
8:40Five years later, it's 215.
8:43And it's a long way from anywhere, more
8:46than 1,000 km by road to Vancouver. The
8:49catch is the one locals will tell you
8:51first. Winters [music] regularly drop
8:54below minus 30, and a cheap house
8:56doesn't heat itself.
8:58From the far north back down to the farm
9:01country closest to Vancouver. Let me ask
9:03you something before number seven. Every
9:06town has one place nearby that the
9:08grown-ups always warned you about. Which
9:10British Columbia town carried that
9:12reputation where you grew up? And do you
9:15think it was fair? Tell me in the
9:16comments. I read them. Back to [music]
9:18it. Number seven is Chilliwack in the
9:21eastern Fraser Valley, and it's the
9:24fastest growing town on this list. The
9:26city says it added roughly 11,700
9:30people between 2020 and 2025, [music]
9:33and it now counts around 112,000,
9:36including First Nations communities.
9:38Corn stands, dairy farms, and a mountain
9:41wall on the horizon. Young families
9:44moved here because Vancouver was out of
9:46reach. And then, the numbers arrived.
9:48[music] In the 2024 data, the Chilliwack
9:51metro area had the highest crime
9:53severity index in Canada.
9:55>> [music]
9:55>> In 2025, it did it again at 134.3.
9:59[music]
10:00And this isn't new. Maclean's already
10:03had Chilliwack 18th in the country back
10:05in 2017. Its police reported crime rate
10:08was 11,455
10:11incidents per 100,000 people, more than
10:13double the Canadian rate of 5,585,
10:17and the highest crime rate of any metro
10:19in the country, ahead of Kamloops, Red
10:22Deer, and Nanaimo. Mostly property
10:24crime, according to the reporting, plus
10:27assaults. A typical single-family home
10:30was assessed at 902,000
10:33Canadian dollars in 2026.
10:36Here's the honest catch. Number one in
10:38Canada two years running is not a
10:41rounding error. And the commute to
10:42Vancouver, about 100 km, eats the
10:46savings that brought people here. From a
10:48town that keeps growing to one that had
10:50to leave entirely. At number six, we're
10:53in Merritt in the Nicola Valley, about
10:56200 km northeast of Vancouver. A city of
10:59about 7,000 that calls itself the
11:02country music capital of Canada. Drive
11:05through and you'll see murals of country
11:06stars painted on the sides of downtown
11:08buildings. On November 15th, 2021, the
11:12Coldwater River flooded the city and
11:14knocked out the wastewater treatment
11:16plant. Officials ordered every single
11:19resident out, all 7,000.
11:22One bridge span collapsed into the
11:24river, and for a while, none of the
11:26three bridges across it could be used.
11:28People with odd-numbered addresses were
11:30sent to Kamloops, even-numbered
11:32addresses to Kelowna, and the city
11:34issued a do not flush order before they
11:37left. That same summer, wildfires had
11:40already put the whole town on evacuation
11:42alert. On crime, the provincial report
11:45police resources in British Columbia put
11:48Merritt at 226 criminal code offenses
11:51per thousand residents in 2024, among
11:54the three highest rates in the province.
11:57A typical single-family home was
11:59assessed at 450,000
12:01Canadian dollars in 2026.
12:04I'll be straight with you. Merritt sits
12:06on a river that has already emptied the
12:08town once, and flood protection is a
12:11long, expensive job.
12:14Next, a city at the heart of cowboy
12:16country. Number five takes us up Highway
12:1997 into the Cariboo to Williams Lake,
12:22about 11,000 people and home to the
12:25Williams Lake Stampede, one of the
12:27oldest rodeos in Canada.
12:30In July 2017, wildfire forced the
12:33evacuation of the entire city, and for
12:35years, it carried a heavier label. In
12:38Maclean's ranking of Canada's most
12:40dangerous places, released in 2017,
12:43Williams Lake ranked fourth in the
12:45country and first in British Columbia. A
12:48year later, it topped the BC rankings
12:52for overall crime, violent crime, and
12:54homicide. In 2025, its crime severity
12:58index was 220.4,
13:01almost three times the national average,
13:04even after a 23% drop the year before,
13:07when the mayor told local reporters that
13:09everything was down. In June 2025, the
13:13province sent extra police resources to
13:15deal with disturbances downtown, and the
13:17city discussed declaring a state of
13:19local emergency. A typical single-family
13:22home was assessed at 440,000
13:25Canadian dollars in 2026. To be fair to
13:28the city, Williams Lake is the service
13:31hub for a huge thinly populated region.
13:34So, a lot of people who don't live there
13:36show up in its numbers, but the people
13:38who do live there still deal with every
13:40one of those incidents. Next stop is
13:43just up the highway and it's worse. At
13:46number four, we're in Quesnel, about
13:4810,000 people where the Quesnel River
13:50meets the Fraser. This is gold rush
13:53country. In the 1860s, Quesnel was the
13:56supply town for the road to Barkerville
13:59and the gold rush still decorates the
14:01downtown. Then came the mills. Cariboo
14:04Pulp and Paper has run here since 1972
14:07with a workforce of about 400. And when
14:10the Canfor sawmill closed in 2014 after
14:1355 years, more than 200 jobs went with
14:17it. In 2023, the pulp mill itself was
14:21shut down for two separate months
14:23because there weren't enough wood chips
14:24to feed it. Now the numbers. Statistics
14:28Canada put Quesnel's 2025 crime severity
14:31index at 253.7,
14:34the highest of any British Columbia city
14:37with 10,000 people or more on that
14:39ranking. Across all of Canada, only five
14:42cities that size scored higher and every
14:45one of them is on the prairies. Back in
14:472020, Maclean's ranked it the third most
14:50dangerous place in all of Canada. And
14:53the provincial report put its 2024 crime
14:55rate at 271 offenses per thousand
14:59residents, the highest in BC. A typical
15:02single-family home was assessed at
15:04352,000
15:06Canadian dollars in 2026.
15:08No sugarcoating this one. The mill keeps
15:11the lights on, the town rises and falls
15:14with the forest, and when the wind
15:16turns, everyone in town knows it.
15:19We head south now to the smallest city
15:21in the country. Number three is Duncan
15:24in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver
15:26Island. Officially, Duncan is the
15:29smallest city in Canada by area, just
15:32over 2 square kilometers, about 0.8
15:35square miles, with roughly 5,000
15:37residents. It sits on the traditional
15:40territory of the Quw'utsun people, the
15:42Cowichan tribes, and since 1985, it has
15:45called itself the city of totems. A
15:48century ago, it had another label, the
15:50most English town in Canada. And during
15:53the First World War, it was said to have
15:55sent more soldiers per capita than any
15:58other community in the country. More
16:00than 40 poles carved by Quw'utsun and
16:03other indigenous artists stand along the
16:05downtown streets. And yellow footprints
16:08painted on the sidewalk lead you from
16:10one to the next. Counting the poles
16:13along the highway, there are close to
16:1580. It's genuinely one of the most
16:17striking walks on the island. And yet,
16:20in the 2025 data, Duncan had the highest
16:24crime severity index in British Columbia
16:26at 336.
16:29That's four and a half times the
16:30national average. The reason the number
16:33is so extreme is the same reason Duncan
16:36matters. A city of 5,000 is the
16:39shopping, court, and service center for
16:41the whole valley. A typical
16:43single-family home was assessed at
16:45592,000
16:47Canadian dollars in 2026.
16:50And here's what the math can't fix.
16:52Explaining it doesn't make a downtown
16:54feel safer. And the region also lost the
16:57Crofton pulp mill and about 350 jobs in
17:012025.
17:02Which brings us to the one I promised
17:04would shock you. At number two, we're in
17:07Victoria, the capital of British
17:09Columbia since 1868, and the city on the
17:12cover of every tourism brochure. Hanging
17:15flower baskets, the Parliament buildings
17:18lit up at night, the Inner Harbour full
17:20of float planes, about 92,000 people,
17:24and a nickname the rest of the province
17:26never lets go of. The newlywed and the
17:29nearly dead. Nobody expects Victoria on
17:32a list like this, but Statistics
17:34Canada's 2025 Crime Severity Index for
17:37the city of Victoria was 161.2.
17:42That's more than double the national
17:43average and well above British
17:45Columbia's own provincial score of 92.4.
17:49It's higher than the city of Chilliwack
17:51at 134.4
17:54and the city of Kamloops at 134.0,
17:58the two places that anchor Canada's
18:00worst metro areas.
18:02Read that again. Meanwhile, Oak Bay,
18:05right next door, scored around 26 and
18:08Saanich around 40. Same island, same
18:11weather, a completely different number.
18:14Victoria also has the highest home price
18:17on this list. A typical single-family
18:19home was assessed at 1,128,000
18:23Canadian dollars on the 2026 roll.
18:26I want to be fair with you here. The
18:28city of Victoria is the downtown for a
18:30region of roughly 400,000 people. So, it
18:34carries the nightlife, the social
18:36services, and the crowds for everyone.
18:39But that is exactly the point. You can
18:42pay over a million dollars for a house
18:44and still live with a crime score that
18:46most of Canada never sees. And that
18:49leads us to the town at the top of the
18:51list. And the most hated town in British
18:54Columbia, the one with the longest
18:56record and the biggest reputation, is
18:59the self-declared capital of the north,
19:02Prince George. About 77,000 people live
19:05where the Fraser and the Nechako rivers
19:07meet, surrounded by spruce forest and
19:10pulp mills. It's the biggest city in
19:12northern BC, about 780 km north of
19:16Vancouver by road, and it has the
19:18region's university and its main
19:20referral hospital. Here's why it's
19:22number one. An analysis of Statistics
19:25Canada data from 1998 to 2021 found that
19:29Prince George had the highest average
19:31crime severity index of British
19:33Columbia's 20 largest municipalities at
19:36191.36
19:38with every single one of those 24 years
19:41above the national baseline. Its best
19:44year in that stretch was 2014 at 129.4,
19:48[music] and even that was well above the
19:50baseline. Its worst was 2019 at 250.26.
19:57Maclean's ranked it 10th in Canada in
19:592019 and 14th in 2020. In 2025, the
20:03score was 193.75,
20:07down from 200.69
20:09the year before with violent crime
20:11severity falling by about 7%. That's the
20:14lowest the city had posted since 2018,
20:17and still more than two and a half times
20:19the national average. Locals call the
20:22smell from the mills the smell of money,
20:24and outsiders make the jokes. A typical
20:27single-family home was assessed at
20:29459,000
20:31Canadian dollars in 2026, half of what
20:34Chilliwack costs. Here's the last honest
20:37catch of the night. A quarter century of
20:39numbers is not a bad year. It's a
20:41pattern, and Prince George has only just
20:44started to bend that line downward.
20:47That's the list. What it really shows is
20:49that in British Columbia, a town's
20:52reputation is usually built on three
20:54things. First, small cities doing a big
20:58city's job. Duncan, Williams Lake,
21:01Quesnel, and Victoria all serve far more
21:04people than live inside their limits,
21:06[music] and the per capita math punishes
21:08them for it. Second, one-industry towns.
21:11Port Alberni, Canim Lake, [music] and
21:13Prince George rose with the mills, and
21:16they feel every bad year in the forest.
21:19And third, geography that doesn't
21:21forgive. Hope's highways, Merritt's
21:24river, and Port Alberni's inlet have
21:26each turned an ordinary town into a
21:29headline. Subscribe, because next week
21:32we go back to the 1920s, when the docks
21:34of Vancouver and Victoria [music]
21:36supplied half the West Coast with
21:38illegal liquor. And that video is right
21:41here. I'll see you in the next one.

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of 12 Most HATED Towns in British Columbia, Number 2 Will Genuinely Shock You by British Columbia Backstory, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 3,174 words across 513 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.