I didn't even think it was realistic to get above 200k CAD in Canada, but now it's not even realistic to land a job. Strange time in this country. Beautiful summer here in BC though :)
There's a few companies offering good money, when hiring starts again.
There's the typical Amazon, Google, Uber who pay decently (though Google is only in Waterloo and no remote). Shopify was paying well because they wanted to grow quickly and outbid on top talent elsewhere, but that blew up in their face (I was in the 20% laid off in May).
2 years ago Instacart offered me a ridiculous total comp for remote Canada, but it was mostly paper money- pre-IPO stock that will be worth something, someday, maybe.
So that means you only put down 118,000 CAD and you were leveraged up
Your family wealth didn't increase by 72,000 CAD/year it increased by 135,000 CAD/year
but I see, you paid it off. you didn't have to, the option was to just make the minimum payments and sell, could have used your big income for other things but now I'm just reminded why its not interesting to listen to boring (your words) mortgage holders.
But we're a double STEM couple with no kids (at the time). We're also the most boring people you'll ever meet, so our expenses are low.
We saved up a 20% down payment after a few years together. And interest rates were 2.5% at the time, so the payments were manageable.
The long and short is "make lots of money and live like you don't".
(That said, a year ago I was a 300+ developer, which is part of how we paid off the rest of the mortgage in 7 years.)