About Us

We are in our early -- mid thirties. Tom is a chartered accountant and I am a primary teacher. We have two children aged 5 and 4 and a newly acquired puppy! Although from Ireland and Scotland originally, we had been living in Reading, Berkshire for the last 6 years. Prior to that we had lived in Kuwait so we knew what it was like to live away from home and live in another culture.

Why Canada?

We had visited Canada on honeymoon 8 years ago -- Calgary, the Rockies, Vancouver, Toronto, Niagara etc. with the intention of immigrating at that time. I got cold feet however, and wanted to be in the UK for a while after having just lived abroad. Two kids later, we started getting itchy feet again and rethought moving to Canada and decided to go for it! It wasn't that we didn't like the UK. Reading gets fairly good weather as far as the UK is concerned and lots of our friends were from other parts of the UK so we fitted in well and felt part of the place. With the kids about to start school though, we thought that maybe Canada would be able to offer them and us something more -- cheaper housing, extremes of weather leading to more outdoor activities, less crowded roads -- I have a phobia about traffic jams and completely freak out in them!! The romantic notion of sunny summers by the lake and snowy winters at Christmas definitely appealed! The adventure of it all also felt good.

We had read about the problems people had getting jobs, but rather naively thought we would be ok with our savings (well, equity on the house anyway!) and at least Tom would probably get a job within a few months. We thought that even if he went down a level, that would be fine until he got the all-important Canadian experience.

We chose London because of it's proximity to lake Huron, distance from Toronto (and the traffic) and the fact that it is twice the population size of Reading making it more easy to find work than the more rural areas. I think I would have chosen to live somewhere smaller and closer to water, but we thought there would be absolutely no chance of jobs there!

All in all it took us 2 years from deciding to go, to actually going. During that time we researched extensively on the net, on forums, talking to people who had done it etc. Tom did a research trip. I didn't go because I also hate flying! This was probably our first mistake, which I will explain...

London was what Tom had expected having recently visited so he was fine with it. I hated it! There was a lot more tower blocks than I was expecting and it didn't look anything like the photos on the internet! In fairness though, there were pretty areas too -- tree lined streets, lovely large houses etc. but for some reason they didn't do it for me. I had been excited about going to Canada for two years and had bored my friends senseless about it. I was expecting to feel really happy about finally being there but that feeling didn't come!

We looked around other areas in Ontario but they didn't do it either. Eventually we decided it was probably just me being homesick and that those feelings would come in time -- not to mention the fact that we had just sold our house and all our possessions were half way across the Atlantic by that time!

We decided to think positively and go ahead with our plans to buy a house, get a dog etc. as we had been living in limbo for the last two years and just wanted to settle down, get the kids in to school etc.