Cj Heavey has lived in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco and most recently Edmonton. She has also travelled extensively visiting cities around the world. Last March, she decided to come to Vancouver Island on holiday. Her primary goal was to visit Victoria and Tofino.

She chose to start in Nanaimo because we are so centrally located; flew from Vancouver by float plane, landed in our harbour and never left our down town - She'll visit Victoria and Tofino another time. Like most tourists that see the heart of our city for the first time, she fell in love with it, and like many, soon found a realtor and started looking for a place to live.

By June she had wrapped up her life in Edmonton, bought her downtown Nanaimo condo and moved in. She hasn't stopped smiling since.

A week or so ago, you may have read her letter to the editor in the Nanaimo Daily News where she responded to all the recent media coverage about Nanaimo residents who say they are afraid to come down town.

She simply doesn't understand that fear. Instead she focuses on the friendly, welcoming people she meets (including the street people), the wide variety of "cool little shops and restaurants," the unique homes and the gorgeous views.

Before committing to live here, she could see we had challenges with homelessness and drugs, but they were small compared to other places she has lived. In her view, downtown Nanaimo had obviously had some good work done recently, still had some challenges, was a little "edgy" but "hadn't been Botoxed."

When I read her letter to the editor, I immediately tried to contact her but was unsuccessful. I had hoped to write a column based on her view of us. You might call it a follow up to the column I wrote a few weeks ago about Paul Demers, the Squamish columnist who because he wanted to check out the new ferry, found his way downtown and was "blown away" by what he saw.

Unable to contact her, I left her letter to the editor lying on my desk and went on about my business. Then I dropped in to a community picnic at Deverall Park last Monday that was organized by the South End Community Association. Guess who I met there?

Cj (that's the correct spelling) has only been living here a month but she's already looking to learn more about our downtown communities and ready to help any way she can.

And we almost lost her because of all the negative comments, written by Nanaimo residents, that she read on an Internet forum while researching her vacation. In fact they scared her enough that for the first time in her life, she called the RCMP to see if it was safe for her to visit here.

Imagine this place that seemed so scary when she read those comments on the Internet has now become her dream home. Why can't more of us who live here learn to see Nanaimo's downtown as tourists and newcomers do? I suspect their view is more accurate than ours.