Originally Posted by Auld Yin

When one walks the Danforth , Bloor Village West, The Junction and many more areas there's countless mothers walking young children in strollers with dogs on leashes so I would say that Toronto proper is quite family friendly

Originally Posted by Kathryn2010

I'm new to this - hello. I moved over to Canada with my husband and two young children at the end of December and today is our six month anniversary. I feel a wee bit of a cheat as my husband is Canadian and his family is here so I think this should be easy for me but it's harder than I expected.

Briefly I studied in Canada for a year while at Uni, met my husband, did the whole long distance thing for 5 years, decided to get married, he moved to Scotland and we lived there happily for 8 years during which time we had two children. We'd both always wanted to bring up our kids in Canada and so living in the UK was never a permanent idea. So I've been back and forth to Canada tonnes and figured it would be an easy transition right? Not quite so easy.

I have been so incredibly lucky! In our first 2 weeks I managed to get a job in the Government here (worked in Government back home), managed to find good daycare for the kids, managed to lease a good house (although not so sure about Mississauga) and we moved in. My husband managed to get a transfer with his employer and had a week between finishing work in Edinburgh and starting here in Toronto. I started work in February and we've just been getting on with life.

I'm finding it much more different than I thought. Maybe I was naive to think it would be ok? It didn't really occur to me that I'd be leaving my friends behind, that the culture of the work place would be so different (so so so much slower), that we'd be commuting 1 1/2 hours morning and night, that I'd have a rushed commute home to get to the nursery before 6pm. I don't mean to sound ungrateful we've been really lucky but it's quite hard. Aside from working in Toronto, I've had one social event there in 6 months - that's really quite pathetic.

For those of you who have been here for a while, when does it get easier and when do you begin to feel more settled? Also I think we're working our fingers to the bone here - is it better living in Toronto?

Kathryn