We went to Vancouver Island in December 2022 - for the first few days, we stayed in Parksville at The Beach Club. I think it's timeshares but you can book like a hotel, which we did. One BR with a kitchen and laundry was CAD258/night (just checked my emails because I couldn't remember if we went in Dec or Jan ;-) It was perfect for what we wanted - we could drive around and do things, but we also could walk to stuff in town (so we could have a bottle of wine with dinner etc) and we could sit in the room with the fire on watching the seals play in the harbor. Walk the boardwalk through flurries. Perfect! (we spent another 3 nights in Victoria and 2 nights in Vancouver before heading home from YVR)

There is someone here who has good Parksville info - helped me too - probably my thread around somewhere ;-)