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Back home & loving every minute.

Back home & loving every minute.

Old Aug 8th 2014, 5:27 pm
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Default Back home & loving every minute.

Hello everyone,

I wanted to post an update on our move back to the UK from Canada. We have had permanent residency in Canada for 12 years. But with my older child attending university in the UK we decided to move home base to the UK.

We wanted to move back home, close to family and what we know. Our second child has just finished grade 10 in Canada and will be doing her A levels. We are very fortunate that our children are exceedingly high achieving students, but to make sure, we had some A level material sent home so that our daughter could be tested. Her 4 A level subjects are French (she is fluent so no problem here), Law, History & English Literature. Everything is fine except the history. Growing up in Western Canada and having no history meant she has a lot of catching up to do. Unfortunately, Canadian Prime Ministers and First Nations do not make up much of the British A Level for some reason. Her school is a top rated school and we were very pleased to get her in there. One of the deputy heads used to go to school with my wife & me. I’m not saying that had anything to do with it but………..every bit helps.

Both children have settled really well & due to the powers of technology they still keep in touch with friends in Canada. However, both have been introduced to other students in their respective learning establishments via technology programs run by both institutions. In my son’s case he has already spoken with the other people in his halls of residence. My daughter has been on a couple of outings with other girls from her school and they got along fine. (We checked with the deputy head on the girls as they came through the lower school years, and she informed us that they were all good girls and students from good & decent families). I believe these proactive steps by the relevant institutions have enabled my children to integrate so much easier.

Lifestyle – well it’s just fantastic. So far this summer we have had great weather. We have traveled to Liverpool to see the giants, gone trampolining underground in an old mine in North Wales and have been tourists all over the place. It’s great to be with family and old friends and to be able to go to the rugby club and socialize.

Financial – Barclays Bank have been nothing but fantastic. We bought our car privately. Car insurance was dirt-cheap, food shopping is cheap and fantastic, clothes, furniture, and travel etc is so much better & cheaper. (And I love reclamation yards). Appliances are more expensive though.

Housing – I politely asked my wife not to go through an agency for our rental property. However, she must have heard that that is the only way. Now the nightmare begins. I am self-employed. My company is an oil & gas company & works around the world but is headquartered out of Houston where we have to be due to the oil & gas industry. However, we have two offices in the UK. This seems ABSOLUTELY unbelievable, impossible & incomprehensible to the estate agents. Hey Science & Research, stop testing on innocent animals, I know a range of subjects you can use!!!!!!!!!! I am a reasonable person normally, but these horrible useless people really know how to push a button. So we turned to the local paper, found a private advert for a rental. It was not for us but the landlord had friends in the business with a property that we wanted. One week later, we moved in. No problem, no credit check, no estate agents, no fees, no person prying into my private business, just adults conducting business in a reasonable mature fashion.

Shipping – we sold everything so this was not a real concern for us apart from some personal items. We used excess baggage.com for this and they were great. However, our pets are a different story. We have two large (165lbs & 120lbs) & expensive dogs. We were informed by another person (shipping agent), who has placed herself in the process (just like estate agents, seems that anyone with agent in their job title should be avoided like the plague), that it would cost over $10,000 to send our dogs to the UK. But they could not insure them due to their value. So we did it ourselves. I had two crates made for them to airline specifications. Organized the vet documents, injections etc and used Air Canada cargo. The dogs arrived safely in the UK with no issues. Total cost was a little over $1800. The people at Defra, the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) & the airlines were fantastic. They gave us step-by-step instructions and it went smooth. I must also give a great thanks to Animal Reception Centre at Manchester Airport. Manchester ARC contact details:

Email [email protected]
Tel 0161 489 8220
Web Site: Pets on Jets home

Overall, it has been nothing but amazing. It feels we have never been away. Home is home and that is why we came back. Everyone’s reason will be different but we knew our reason and it has been everything we wanted.
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Old Aug 11th 2014, 12:48 am
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Hi Tribec - Congratulations to you and your family! Those of us that are in limbo hang on to all these positive updates.

Quick question. I was also thinking of obtaining some educational material for my kids to use and hopefully catch up too. They will start school in the UK in September 2015 but school finishes for them here in May. Leaving a nice gap for them to do some work. Where or how did you get the school material? I did a brief Google search before and found basic curriculum descriptions.
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Old Aug 11th 2014, 10:03 am
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Great post Tribec, one thing thought try not to be too enthusiastic as some see that as a bad thing. Seriously though glad it is working out and like us you are loving being back. I do look for the negatives but the positives just outweight them by such a margin they are barely worth talking about it.
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Old Aug 11th 2014, 6:34 pm
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Let me clarify, you shipped two dogs (doing all that vet legwork yourself) for 1800$ from Canada to Manchester? Are we allowed to ship to Manchester? I thought the DEFRA thing says they NEED to go to London. Also, THANK YOU! This is a most excellent post, I really really needed to read this today. Excessbaggage is good for out of Canada? What we're doing sounds really similar, selling everything, shipping only the special things.
Did you find a place before heading over (from the papers) and if so, how? Because we have our Lucy (dog) we are worried as a LOT of agencies are so up in arms about dogs... do you find the landlords feel likewise? I always heard that the UK loves it's dogs. It's been one of the baffling aspects of planning this move.
I'm super happy to hear your children have adjusted so well, we homeschool and plan to continue to do so at least till the following school year would start (not fair starting a child mid-year, imho) and may not put them in at all till A levels. But we are following the CIMT maths program (UK, Portsmouth, I believe...) and are focusing on British History for the next year or two to get them caught up. Yes, I agree... Canadian Prime Ministers are prolly less important over there... Kings and Queens it is!
Blessings and thank you again!
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Old Aug 11th 2014, 6:56 pm
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Sounds amazing, glad to see another positive update!

Re Shipping dogs we have shipped dogs from England to Canada, back to England and back to Canada. We plan on doing it again all ourselves back to England, have never used an agent. We did go in to Heathrow though so would plan on that again.

Dogs were always fine.
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Old Aug 11th 2014, 6:57 pm
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Guess I need to look into all the kids and school catch up having four of them!! Was worried also about mid year starting, but will take what we can get time wise...
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Old Aug 11th 2014, 7:56 pm
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Pondhopper - the cost with Air Canada freight out of Calgary was $1055. The cost of the crates was $400. Bragg Creek vets did the rabies, meds and microchips for $330 and it cost $40 ($20 each) to have the 12 page document signed by a CFIA Animal Health vet in Calgary. As I still work in Fort Mac & Texas, I still fly in and out so my wife and children went back just before me and stayed with family. I can't handle bureaucrats in any way shape or form, and my wife conforms all the time. So in the time she was back here without me, she looked for rentals through the agents and did what was asked of her. It got her nowhere. In our local paper, the ads for rentals are listed by landlords privately, no agents. So we contacted one and he helped us out. The second house he showed us was what we wanted. He was ok about the dogs, he took a bit of convincing but I promised we would steam the carpets etc on a regular basis etc and he relented and let them stay.

Daisy, Pondhopper & Bnet - in reference to the schooling, we lived in Okotoks just outside of Calgary. Our children are both 90%+ grades in all subjects and also complete their schooling in French. My son is fine, he is off to university and he loves calculus etc. My daughter however, elected for the history A level. My wife did history at A level and I just remembered it being really heavy work. So the school she is attending put some work and booklets together for DD and she went through it and sat a little test. This gave the school a baseline for her and then they gave us reading lists, online materials etc and said if she was comfortable by the time school starts in September that she should be ok. They will test her again the first week of term and then monitor as needed.
An important factor in this was determining where we wanted our daughter schooled. With moving back to where we grew up, we knew the school we wanted. Having a daughter with high marks also helps as having an old school friend as deputy head does. But in the end, it came down to the schools reputation and Ofsted marks. They know they are getting a good student who is there to work as her marks show. They like that. And to keep the school's good name up, they are doing what they can to assimilate my daughter at the right level. She can do the work, she just doesn't know who Queen Elizabeth the first is etc.

So far, in our experiences, be it with flying the dogs, schooling or rentals, there is a deal to be done. If both parties can agree on that, then it usually gets done.
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Old Aug 11th 2014, 11:56 pm
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Glad to hear you're home and all is well. Out of curiosity, you say you had PR in Canada for 12 years. You never went for citizenship? Have the kids at least got citizenship?
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Old Aug 12th 2014, 12:07 am
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Hi Gozit - yes we have had our PR status for 12 years. We haven't always lived in Canada for those 12 years though. Canada is a great place to raise a family but it was never going to be home. The children are 16 & 18 now and as things stand, and who knows what will change in the future, the Canadian part of their adventure has come to a close. One is hoping for a career as an engineer and one as lawyer in Europe. With those qualifications they go back there pretty easily should they so desire.
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Old Aug 12th 2014, 12:17 am
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Thanks Tribec! According to my research on curriculums my boys should be ok with Maths and science but of course History, social science type of subjects are very much centered on America here so I will take your advice and as soon as we know which area and schools I will be in touch with the schools before the end of the year.
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Old Aug 12th 2014, 1:12 pm
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Great post with some great info. So glad to hear things have been positive for you. We're heading back somewhere between Feb and June in the Spring and we're just about to list our house and have made lots of other good progress. It's always good to hear the good and the bad from others in the same boat. The whole process seems insurmountable when you first make the decision to try and go home again. I've been in the USA since 1988 so I'll have some adjusting to do but I cannot wait.

Good luck to you and your family and congrats for making the seemingly impossible happen!! I hope it's inspirational to many others!!
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Old Aug 15th 2014, 8:15 am
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You could have put both dogs on the same form for the CFIA and it would have only cost you $20.
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Old Aug 15th 2014, 10:34 pm
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Hi Editha,

yeah I missed that one. Didn't realise until after the fact. Both dogs were seen by the vets on two separate appointments, so we did the paperwork twice. Only on the second visit did the official say we could have put them both on the same form. Should have used a lawyer!!!!
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Old Aug 16th 2014, 6:51 pm
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Tribec, I may be confusing you with someone else but weren't you a runner at some point?
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Old Aug 16th 2014, 7:11 pm
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Default Re: Back home & loving every minute.

Fulwood - I think I tried to run once. The experience was horrific! So I decided on a car instead. :-)

I apologise, unfortunately it isn't me that you are thinking of.
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