Ruairí Doyle had no intention of moving from Ireland again after a three-year spell working for Google in London. With a background in software engineering and digital media, he felt ready to settle back in Ireland when the opportunity came up to establish the Dublin office of Press Reader in 2017.
The Canadian-headquartered firm, which provides readers with digital access to a wide variety of international publications, quickly promoted the Rathnew native, bringing him to Vancouver two years later and subsequently appointing him chief executive in 2022.
Press Reader is a 25-year-old privately owned business, headquartered in the Canadian city with operations in the Philippines and Dublin. It employs more than 460 people worldwide.
It provides digital aggregation of many of the world’s leading newspapers and magazines, ebooks and, shortly, audio books from more than 120 different countries in 60 languages, with clients including libraries, hotels, corporate and private customers, airlines and cruise ships, among others.
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Meeting his Quebec-born wife, Kim, has sealed the deal on living and working in Canada, and the couple are now happily raising their two sons and enjoying the outdoor lifestyle in the thriving west-coast port city in British Columbia.
“It’s an Irish-Canadian-French household – the kids are bilingual. And I’m finally getting some return on that higher level Leaving Cert French I was pushed towards.
“It can be challenging at times, with me being from Ireland and Kim being from Quebec. We don’t have the support network of grandparents around. We do our best to instil a bit of Ireland and a bit of Quebec into the boys. We have hurleys and sliotars in the garden and maple syrup and cretons in the fridge.”
The couple share a love of the outdoors, including snowboarding, kayaking, paddleboarding and camping, activities that are well catered for in the area.
Doyle says he and his wife miss the cultural side of life they would have known growing up. Quebec and the east of Canada is much more established and familiar, with influences from French and Irish settlers, among others. There is a rich indigenous culture in the British Columbia region, however, which he says they are becoming increasingly appreciative of as they live there.
We make friends with other parents and then, all of a sudden, they are shipping out as it is so expensive, so it can be quite a transient place
Vancouver has a population of 662,000 – with the highest population density in Canada at more than 5,700 inhabitants per square kilometre – and its hinterland swells this figure to more than three million.
There’s a big tech scene in the region, with Seattle, home of Microsoft and Boeing, just over two hours away. There’s a strong tech presence in Vancouver itself, with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Salesforce, Meta and Amazon, among others, having operations in the area. There is also as a strong start-up community.
It’s no surprise, then, that the city is a magnet for young migrant professionals. “It could be compared to Melbourne with a great lifestyle combined with good career choices but there’s also a healthy mix of established types with more credit in the bank.”
The downside of this popularity is a housing crisis not dissimilar to that being experienced now in Dublin and many other European cities.
Vancouver has consistently ranked among the most expensive cities in the world, with median house prices more than nine times median household incomes, according to one study. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $3,480 Canadian dollars (€2,224).
“It’s a hard city from an affordability point of view. We make friends with other parents and then, all of a sudden, they are shipping out as it is so expensive to get on the property ladder, so it can be quite a transient place.
“The challenge with Vancouver is physical. It’s an attractive place to live with a limited supply of land and building. It’s bounded by mountains, the sea, and the border with the US. Within 25 minutes you can be on the top of a ski hill; within two hours you can be in Whistler, one of the world’s best ski destinations, so it attracts everyone who wants to dip into that lifestyle and that pushes up the property prices for everybody else.”
Canada has found itself in the eye of an economic storm since the re-election of Donald Trump, and Doyle acknowledges the widespread concern about the economy now, with a lot of uncertainty about how a US-Canadian trade war will play out in the months and years ahead.
“We are starting to see the impact of tariffs on certain industries, not so much here, but in the east, in Quebec and Ontario, among steel workers and the automobile industry. People are feeling a strong sense of uncertainty, however, and businesses are preparing contingency plans for what might come.”
