CanadaRat

Hi All,

its been a long while since my last post but I am pleased to say that my partner and myself are finally in possession of our PR cards and are hoping to make the move in April 2024 or there abouts - likely targeting the wider suburbs of Toronto.

The reason for my posting is that we are starting to compile a list of things that we need to consider, and there are so many things its like being lost in the woods for the trees. Some of the obvious things are coming up repeatedly on websites or threads such as;

• Sorting out SID on arrival
• Bank account
• Mobile phone & contract
• Medicare card (when eligible)

however, I would really appreciate it if anyone could offer any advice or feedback to any of the following points based on new comers from the UK arriving in Canada;

1. Getting a car - what is the typical best way to go about leasing a car or securing a set of wheels on arrival? I appreciate obtaining a financial lease is going to be near impossible without Canadian credit history
2. Credit score - Is there a means to transfer credit scores/ratings from the UK to Canada via a partnered bank or account that anyone has had experience with?
3. Bank account - What is the best means to setting up a bank account, getting a credit card early, building credit?
4. Relator and renting - We are looking to do the typical AirBnB first, transferring into a rental as soon as possible. What is the typical means of getting yourself a relator, and how easy is it to secure a rental property without a Canadian credit history? Are rental contracts quite protected in that you couldn't suddenly find yourself with only a month to find a new place to live?
5. General advice on arriving - Any general advice on first things you should do on arrival?

It is a little daunting to think about everything at the moment, but plenty of people have done it before us and survived! But any advice and support people are able to offer, general recommendations, or things we might not have considered, would be really appreciated.

Thank you all

christmasoompa

This may help -

https://britishexpats.com/wiki/Arriv...Do_List-Canada

Good luck.

CanadaRat

Thanks Christmasommpa for the link! I have been perusing the wiki this evening and hadn't happened across this page yet. Very useful.

christmasoompa

Glad it helped. I'd make the most of it, the Wiki is apparently being closed next week. Tons of work went in to it from various forum members and it contains a heck of a lot of useful info, so do read quickly and get the info you need before it goes!

CanadaRat

Thanks again for the info. That is absolutely a life saving bit of info as I have been busily making links this evening to useful threads which will soon be dead!

Robert M

FYI: the Wiki pages can still be found on the Internet Archive.

tweed_wearer

What a shame they deleted the wiki when so much work went into it! Did they give any reason?

christmasoompa

Because it was out of date apparently. Never mind that the Canada section was kept up to date and contained an absolute ton of useful info that we referred newbies to repeatedly. Sigh.

Phaedru5

My personal experience was that absolutely nothing beats simply ASKING for help.

I didnt have a problem buying a car on finance at all, only had to prove an income and i had a job offer letter and a further letter from the employer stating they believed i would be successful etc and total annual expected earnings (helpful in a role with bonus/commission payments as your annual will be higher than base salary) - this helped a LOT for various things where I needed to prove income.

As for realtor/housing, start browsing properties online before you go and email some of the realtors and explain your situation. Some will ignore you, some may respond, and you may find one who is super helpful. We found one who was even willing to visit properties for us and facetime with us before even landed! We emailed back and forth a few times before we even left england. She is the first person I went to meet on my first day upon landing and she took us around all the properties in our target area/price range. A good realtor will also have contacts at the banks, lawyers, inspections, etc everything else you need for buying a house, I entrusted her with everything and she set us up with meetings with everyone and everything we needed, including banking. Dont bother chasing someone who isnt being helpful. We actually ended up living in the same neighborhood as she recommended it being the best, and 6yrs later I can say she was right we love it here! She drops off flowers at our house every christmas still.

Same with a tax accountant, I did my research online, read reviews then emailed what looked like the best 3 in town before we arrived; 2 of them never bothered getting back to me, one replied with a ton of info and invited to meet and help us navigate everything.

So I reiterate ; simply find people willing to help! Dont think you have to do this all alone, there are loads of immigrants to Canada especially somewhere like Toronto so will be professionals in every business who have dealt with a new lander before - make the most of their experience.

Good luck!

ncoe

Hi,
Is there any way of finding this so i could have a read through?

Thanks,
Nic

Dorothy

It's the second post in this thread. Simply scroll up and the link is there.

christmasoompa

The link doesn’t work any longer, the Wiki has been closed down - see the posts above.

ncoe

HI,
Yeah thr link no longer works. I did see they could be found in archived, however I've not managed to find that.

Thanks

christmasoompa

You need to search the internet and see if you can find a cached version, that's what's meant by 'archived'.

Robert M

Hi,

Regarding the old Wiki, everything is still there in the Internet Archive. I first mentioned this back in November, but I see now that others have not understood this. If you want to understand how to use the Internet Archive, then read on....

The Internet Archive is not the same as webpage caches saved by search engines like Google. The Internet Archive is a non-profit organisation that has archived 838 billion webpages dating back to 1996. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive . Its search engines crawl the internet and save versions of webpages as these change over time. There are usually multiple snapshots of the same webpage taken over many years, letting you see how a webpage has evolved. If a webpage is taken down permanently, the previous snapshot versions of it remain available in the Internet Archive.

If you want to find the Internet Archive, then Google "Internet Archive" - it's the first hit in the listed results: the URL is https://archive.org/ . So far, so easy, but it can be a bit tricky to use.

A long time ago, the Internet Archive used to be called the Wayback Machine. On their main page you will see that there are two places in which you can enter the URL (i.e. the web address) that you want to find. Both work, but I always use the Search box near the top of the webpage, which is next to the words "Wayback Machine", as it is the easiest one to use. Copy and paste the URL you want to locate into the Search box and click on the Search icon.

The second search box lower down on the main page can trip you up, because (assuming you are searching for a URL) you must also remember to click the Radio Button for the option "Search archived web sites". This second search box is more powerful, because it lets you search for archived webpages in different ways (like a search engine) when you do not know the URL, and so the default setting (the top Radio Button) is "Search metadata". I don't often do this. Usually, I am trying to find the archived webpage for a URL I already know. If you enter a URL and search on it as if it were metadata, you won't get any results. I don't use the Internet Archive very often, and when I did, I always forgot to change the Radio Button, which got annoying. So now, I just remember to use the top search box when I already know the URL.

The URL that people in this thread have been trying, without success, and for many months, to locate is the one stated in second message in this thread as being:

https://britishexpats.com/wiki/Arriv...Do_List-Canada

This URL is blue-shaded and underlined, to show that there is a hyperlink behind the text for this URL. Obviously, the hyperlink is not working because the webpage has been taken down, but it is still a hyperlink.

For some reason to do with the way this webforum works, the text of the URL is not complete; it has been automatically shortened with the three dots in the middle. If you highlight this URL with your mouse and then simply copy it (Control C or RightClick Copy), then you will copy it as TEXT, including the three dots. That's not the text of a valid URL !

What you must do is highlight this URL with your mouse (i.e. click, hold-down and swipe), then RightClick the mouse on the highlighted URL, and select Copy Link , not Copy. Windows PCs don't group Copy and Copy Link next to one another, but look for it and you will find it in the list of available options. Copy Link copies the hyperlink, not the text. The text for the correct Link is: "https://britishexpats.com/wiki/Arrival_To_Do_List-Canada" . I have added the quotes to stop this from being automatically shorted with the three dots.

You can either copy and past the correct text for the URL, as I have given it above (omitting the quotation marks), or copy the correct Link directly from https://britishexpats.com/wiki/Arriv...Do_List-Canada by using: mouse highlight, RightClick and Copy Link as explained above.

You can then Paste (Control V or RightClick Paste) the correct URL text, or the Link, directly into the Internet Archive Search box, which will then give you the results. These are displayed graphically, as a timeline bar divided horizontally into years, and with vertical black lines representing the point(s) in each year for which the archive stores a snapshot of the webpage. There are many snapshots of this webpage, the most recent of which was in early 2023; the oldest ones are back in 2008. You can use the Internet Archive to see how the content of a webpage has changed over time. But here, we want just the most up-to-date version. The steps to use the Internet Archive search results are:

i) Click anywhere inside the segment of the timeline for the year 2023. This opens up a calendar for 2023, and you will see that the date 6 February is highlighted with a blue dot. This means that a snapshot of the webpage was taken on that day. If there was more than one snapshot taken in a year, then multiple dates will be highlighted blue.

ii) Point the cursor (not click) at the highlighted date. This opens up a small window below the date with some Blue Text, which is the time the snapshot was taken, and in this case it was taken at 08:48:49 on that day.

iii) Click on the time, i.e. click on the blue highlighted time 08:48:49. This then opens up the archived version of the webpage that people have been seeking, which is at "https://web.archive.org/web/20230206084849/britishexpats.com/wiki/Arrival_To_Do_List-Canada" (if you want to copy this URL, remove the quotes)

From this archived webpage, there is a link to the old Wiki homepage. The Internet Archive modifies the link so that it points to the archived version of the webpage, and in this case it is "https://web.archive.org/web/20230207101700/https://britishexpats.com/wiki/Main_Page" (remove quotes). From there, you can browse everything on the old Wiki, as if it were still Live.

For example, from the old Wiki homepage, it is only a couple of clicks before you find the home page for Moving and Logistics for Canada: "https://web.archive.org/web/20210307185007/https://britishexpats.com/wiki/Category:Moving_Logistics-Canada" (remove quotes)

I hope these explanations are helpful. Everyone should know how to use the Internet Archive; it's one of the most useful tools on the Internet.

Good luck!

Robert