Our Story
It felt like an eternity waiting for the call for medicals. We were very fortunate in having enough points and so didn’t have to worry that, we just had to wait…and wait...and wait. When the small A5 size brown envelope hit the doormat one Saturday morning, June 2004, with a red maple leaf stamp on the top right hand corner, I felt like I imagined Charlie would have when he found the golden ticket for Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory! We were so happy; it was all together a very exciting day, time to get the house on the market!

The house sale had a promising start, we found a buyer quickly but then they dropped out right before exchange. Another buyer swooped in and, getting whiff of our predicament, wanted to slash ten thousand pounds off the asking price. After much hassle we only moved him up by 4K.

In the midst of the house sale problems I got a call to say my grandmother had suffered a stroke and was in a coma. I left the kids at home with Dad and drove 120 miles to my Grandparents home in Essex. I took my Grandad to the hospital along with my Mum, then shortly after we left the hospital we got a call to go back, she had passed away. Seeing my Grandfather say goodbye to the wife he had adored and cherished for 65 years was truly heartbreaking.

Our last goodbyes were tougher than I had ever imagined. I cried as I said farewell to family and dear friends. It’s still hard to think about it all three years on. All in all it was a truly traumatic time. Then in September 2004 with all our worldly possessions fitting neatly into 5 suitcases, we boarded the plane with one way tickets to Vancouver! Our then 4 and 2 year old were so excited they wouldn’t sleep on the plane at all, we arrived with 2 completely exhausted children to see a huge queue at the passport desk. And then we had a lovely surprise, a very nice Canadian customs officer ushered us to a desk with no –one waiting and we were though in minutes. After that though it took about an hour to get through the immigration part, the kids alternating between falling asleep and going hyper. When we finally put our children in the car they were asleep instantly.

We got to the basement suite we had arranged to rent and although it was only 6pm local time we had been up for 23 hours and needed to sleep. We woke up very hungry in the early hours with no food. My husband volunteered to go out to find food, a long time later he returned. We opened the fast food bag with eagerness to find one chicken burger and one portion of fries! He had thought he’d asked for more! We split it between the kids and by the time the supermarket opened it felt to us like 4 in the afternoon, we were HUNGRY!

Well, fast forward a few years …now we have a real little Canadian in the family and whenever he sees the boys out in the street playing hockey he gets so excited he wiggles! Must be a Canadian! We all love Canada, we are here for good. Getting here turned out to be a much bigger adventure than we’d bargained for, but it was worth it. There are many things I miss about England, but we’d never go back to live there.

Emigrating will be an adventure, there may be unexpected problems, but I think if you keep your eye on the goal and keep going you won’t be disappointed.

©Angela Seanor