In Canada's Pacific Northwest, coastal high-value rural communities face acute, conflicting challenges relating to housing supply and affordability, loss of agricultural land, and environmental change. On southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, grassroots organizations have formed around the ideas of preserving ‘rural character’ and maintaining ‘rural values’; concerns that can be defended fiercely when change is proposed. In this study I used mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how Metchosin and North Saanich residents perceived ‘rural character’ and ‘rural values’. My objective was to examine the relationship between participants’ definitions and respective place attachments, worldview, and socioeconomic demographics. Results revealed that perceptions of rural values and character vary widely among residents within the same community—often to conflicting degrees—revealing the relational and situated nature of both how landscape is perceived as well as how it is defined and valued.