There is always (your) life cycles. Both myself and my brother Waterloo grads in the 90s. He is in the sv and I stayed in Toronto. My company sent me down to the valley to "help" for a few months (ie living and food all expensed) when I was still fresh. Hated it.. there is nothing at night. So I never have the urge to move there afterwards.

Then once you have multiple kids, single income doesn't take you far in the valley even with Google scale salary and mortgage. Plus Amazon has dev centre in downtown Toronto that pays well (not silicon valley well, but Seattle well). (Yes, startups don't pay well in Toronto, but then there are lots of small and profitable sw firms that pays decently).

Or just convince google to move that Kitchener office to Toronto, when so many people are commuting anyway..

And then, Vancouver is always a retirement city..