Immigration Journal

The story of two people who emigrated from the UK to Ontario, Canada July 2006.

Canadian ice and taxes

Last week we experienced our first freezing rain in Canada. The weather forecast has said we would be getting a storm and we certainly did, although again not as bad as many other places in Ontario.

It started off in the evening with snow and winds and then during the night changed to freezing rain. Both of us were kept awake during the night by the constant pounding of ice on the bedroom windows. It was really loud and in the morning when we got up all the windows on one side of the house looked like frosted glass you have in bathrooms. It was really quite amazing, although I’m not sure we want to experience it too often. The following day we had a combination of snow and ice rain and it was generally pretty horrible.

Since then the snow in the garden has been polished by the winds and is like a sheet of ice and it shines beautifully in the sunlight, although it is like a skating rink, so very slippery. They are saying we are going to get temps of +6C next week, so maybe some of the snow will vanish. It will be nice to see grass again instead of sheets of ice and snow!

The squirrels in our garden seem to be multiplying and getting frisky. We have twelve individuals now and they are constantly chasing each other around the garden and up and down the trees. Hopefully we will have lots of squirrel babies in the spring. The other night we actually had a raccoon in the garden up the tree. We had accepted that they were hibernating, but this one obviously got hungry and decided to come out for the night. The deer on the other had have not been in the garden for several days. But hopefully they will come back soon.

Yesterday I did all our Canadian tax returns, which was a bit daunting. I had always done my husband’s business tax when in the UK, but here in Canada you have to submit tax returns for personal as well as business tax. I studied all the literature and managed to get my head round it eventually. Once I understood the terminology, it wasn’t too bad. The trouble is they say “use info from form XYZ”, but they don’t tell you how you get this form or if it applies to you. Got there eventually though and posted it all off today, hopefully we won’t get a knock on the door later in the year!!!

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