our newest member, Karl.

Welcome. I don’t have a HAM license, but I should work on getting one. My wife’s family is in BC- maybe we could reach them

They'd have to be licensed and signed up with the SRG system. The coverage in bc is from about osoyoos to north Idaho. The reason for signing up is the tones required for access aren't public, to help keep the trouble makers out. Signing up is free but donations are gladly accepted and encouraged, there's quite a bit of expense involved in tower space and maintenance.
Even when you get licensed, you wouldn't be able to use the repeater since thers no Internet  access such as echolink, irlp, etc. so you have to be in the coverage area. 2 meters is line of sight with the exception of tropospheric ducting and that's not common or normally really long distance. The furthest tropo I've experienced was about 700 miles into Marin county California.