Energy. It was the most vibrant group of happy, spending, go get ‘em types I’ve seen in over a decade.
I’ll go get some data to back up my observation.
"We expect British Columbia’s economy to be successful in overcoming the drag generated by the downturn of its housing market and more extensive public- sector restraint in 2013. Improving demand from the United States and stronger non-residential investment will provide solid support for the province’s economic growth to maintain a fairly steady course. We project British Columbia’s real GDP to grow by 2.3% in 2013, only slightly faster than the 2.1% that we forecast for 2012 (both rates will nearly match the national averages). Our initial take on the 2014 outlook keeps the course almost unaltered, as we project a growth rate of 2.6% that year."
In the midst of a housing bust, they're still growing faster than we are. Our most recent Quarter was 0.1% YOY Growth, and the Commerce Dept. had to engineer that (increasing from initial estimates of -0.1%).
http://www.rbc.com/economics/market/pdf/provfcst.pdf