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Illustration by Drew Shannon
When I moved to Vancouver from the U.K., I expected the postcard city where the sea meets the mountains. I expected the endless rain. I even expected to feel a bit lonely – Vancouver does have a reputation for being cold in more ways than one.
What I didn’t expect was that an old-fashioned roadside motel would become the place where I felt most at home.
We were in Penticton for an outrigger canoe race. By then, I had thrown myself into Vancouver’s outrigger canoe scene with the False Creek Racing Canoe Club. The days on the water were exhilarating: long races on Skaha Lake, battered by wind and waves, with teammates who cheered as loudly for last place as they did for first. But the real memory of that weekend wasn’t the competition. It was the motel.
The place looked like it hadn’t changed since the 1970s. The carpet was covered in a geometric pattern that might once have been trendy, the curtains were heavy enough to block out a nuclear blast and the neon sign out front hummed faintly through the night. The furniture was wobbly, the air faintly smelled of chlorine and in one of the bedrooms – as if dropped from the sky by some eccentric designer – sat a full-sized hot tub. Not tucked away in the bathroom, but right there in the corner of the room, next to the bed.
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At first, I couldn’t stop laughing. It felt like a set piece from a film – part retro, part ridiculous. Who puts a hot tub in a bedroom? But that strangeness turned into opportunity. It started with one teammate – always the curious one – who poked their head into their room and announced to the others down the hallway, “You’ve got to see this.”
Within minutes, footsteps echoed on the worn motel carpet, doors opened and people started drifting in, curious and grinning. Before long, a half-dozen of us were perched around the edge of the tub, shoes off and legs in the water, passing around plastic cups of wine and beer, replaying every stroke of the day’s races.
Later, we migrated outside to the motel patio. It was nothing fancy – a scattering of plastic lawn chairs, a chipped picnic table, the faint smell of someone else’s barbecue drifting over from a nearby unit. But in that moment, it felt perfect.
We laid out a makeshift spread: chocolate bars, crisps, bottles of local rosé bought during an overzealous wine-tasting tour earlier in the afternoon. The conversation turned from paddling technique to travel stories, family back home and what first drew each of us to the water. The line between teammate and friend blurred so quickly it was hard to remember we’d only known each other for months, in some cases days.
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What struck me was how that motel gave us something most “proper” hotels never could. In a modern tower hotel, you check in and disappear to your room. Maybe you see each other briefly in a polished bar before retreating behind identical doors. It is efficient, but keeps people apart. At the motel, by contrast, everything pushed us together. The patio was unavoidable – you stepped outside your room and you were already in it. The hot tub was ridiculous, but it was also irresistible – a shared joke that became a shared space. What began as kitsch turned into connection.
It reminded me of what I’d been discovering on the water in Vancouver: Community is built in the unlikeliest of spaces. In an outrigger canoe, the auntie with 20 years of experience and the newcomer with only 20 minutes are pulling together in rhythm. At the motel, it didn’t matter who was a seasoned racer or who was trying their first regatta. We were all crammed onto plastic chairs, sipping wine from paper cups, equal and at ease.
When I think back now, I don’t remember who won the races that weekend, or even the results sheet. What I remember is the joy rising from that bedroom hot tub, the mismatched cups on a rickety patio table and the easy laughter of people who just days before had been strangers. It turns out you don’t always need luxury to feel a sense of belonging. Sometimes, all it takes is a cheap motel, a hot tub in the wrong room and the kind of patio where conversations last well past midnight.
Matthew Seah now lives in Coventry, England.