We are in our early 40's David is a Project Manager and I was an executive assistant. We have two daughters ages 16 and 18, originally from Nottingham but for the last 9 years we had been living in Woking Surrey and David was commuting into central London. We chose Canada and New Brunswick because it is relatively close to the UK and we wanted visitors, plus we fell in love with the area after our 3 week research visit in the summer of 2003.

After a seemingly endless two years of waiting we finally received our visa on the 25th August 2005, its a good job really as we already had our house on the market and David had resigned from his job, (I wouldn't advise this) and our final weeks were spent selling our junk, and  other possessions. We organised the removals with Atlantic International Movers. They did a great job and a 20 foot container cost about 4500 GBP (ouch).

Our flight from Heathrow landed first at St John's in Newfoundland (where it was snowing) so we passed through immigration there and then when we arrived at Halifax Nova Scotia we brought our flight to Fredericton forward. We had allowed four hours at Halifax to pass through immigration. The plane from Halifax to Fredericton (flight time of 50 minutes) was a 18 seater propeller job and the co-pilot acted as the steward too. When we arrived in Fredericton we found (or didn't as it goes) that 5 of our 8 suitcases were missing. They were pretty laid back about and assured us they would turn up on the next flight. Anyway we left in our rented 8 seater GMC Envoy (17MPG), rented solely for the purpose of carrying 8 suitcases! (the suitcases were delivered into our cottage the next morning while we were out).

We have become permanent residents. On the monday we exchanged our old paper driving licences for new shiny new Canadian one's, and registered for New Brunswicks Medicare (there is a 3 month waiting period so you will need insurance $760 for a family of four). We then rushed to the Social Security office and applied for our  Social Insurance Numbers (there is something nice about asking for a SIN number). You must have a SIN before you can start work and they prioritised David's getting one allocated within 48 hours!

David had applied for a job with the Department of Health after receiving the visa and they had conducted an initial telephone interview. In our experience no one will pay attention to your job applications unless you have a visa already. He had already visited several companies during our research visit in the summer of 2003. He had two interviews scheduled for the 8 th of November 3 days before we left England.  Both interviews went well and on the 10th he secured a job as a senior project manager for a large IT Consultancy.  He started work on the 21st November (no rest for the wicked). Dress is business casual with dress down on Fridays? Benefits include 3 weeks paid holiday, retirement savings pension plan, bonus scheme and free coffee all week plus free donuts and muffins on Friday afternoons (oh no not more temptation).

As soon as we had the job offer accepted we began a frantic round of house hunting, mortgage arranging and car buying. We had no trouble arranging finance from Ford for two cars (I think all US car makers are suffering so this shouldn't be a problem). We are made an offer on a Cape Cod style house on the 15th of November with an impressive asking price of $239,900 or £116,456. This house is in the Island View district of Fredericton about 10 minutes drive to the city / town centre. They accepted and we moved in on the 17th Dec... faster and much less stressful than the UK.

Things that we would do differently:

1. Bring letters of reference from utility companies saying you are a good payer. We brought a credit report and no one was interested in it. So they have all asked for security deposits of 2 months payment (ouch again)
2. Bring proof of no claims (we did but still got stung on motor insurance, it was like being 21 again)
3. Get GCSE, AS level and other college certificates evaluated before arriving so you can take them to the university. We have ended up paying for Kathryn to study at the Community College and at $700 per month it is more expensive than university!
4. Track down the Newcomers club earlier and email Welcome Wagon they will introduce you to a whole host of offers for newcomers
5. Go to church to meet people immediately. We are not great church goers, your typical weddings, christenings, funerals and the christmas carols with the odd sunday thrown in. The church is a great place to meet your neighbours and widen your circle of friends. This stops you feeling alone.

Things are more expensive than we thought and David's salary doesn't go as far as we thought it would, so control your initial urge to buy wide screen TV's, air hockey tables, new computers and the best appliances money can buy. The only benefit to this is they will last for a long time. I think, we will be fine the winter has been mild and the spring is beautiful already. We love the house and have more friends now than we had in Woking.

Our next steps are for me to get a job, grow our circle of friends wider and gain that work / life balance that had eluded us in the UK. I just have to get David to start some hobbies. So far we have been enjoying all the extra time we get because of a 15 minute commute!

I hope this helps others coming to Canada.