Apples74

my hubby is Canadian 57 yo and ready to retire. I’m on the other hand 46 yo and British. We came to live n feel Halifax ns in late 2018 but it was more of a holiday for 3 months rather than to live. We both love it very much. We’re planning to move and still trying for over 18 months. But we tend to keep having a ‘what ifs’ moments. Yes we’ve got it kushy here.
He is retired and I work part time. I would need an admin job. I’ve looked and been advised it’s quite hard and jobs are scarce. Apparently they are reluctant to employ me over a local haligonian. I thought the British thing would be ok over other countries foreign workers. That’s disheartening but some agencies say they can give me a basic data input job but only for $11 ph. I’m not fussed as to get in the job market I’m happy to try but are there any company that would sponsor at my age? I’m not specialised in any area.
we’ve looked at car n insurance which is high. I’m scared we’ve not counted all our hurdles and any finance before making the actual leap.
Ive got sleep apnoea and I’m diabetic but would like to know if there are restrictions for health as I can’t find anything written re residency and medical fitness.
Truthfully I’ve even picked my house in Eastern Passage so near the water. Any advice I’m grateful. Would love to make the change. Miss ns so much.

christmasoompa

Hi, welcome to BE. I'm going to move your post in to a thread of your own. Hopefully those in NS will then be able to help, they may miss your questions when they're tacked on to the end of somebody else's thread.

Where are you now, UK or NS? Do you have your Canadian PR sorted?

Apples74

we’re in the U.K. and not started the PR process. All I know is that I’ll go over on a Spousal visa and work permit as a PR.

christmasoompa

Ah, I see. Yes, your husband will sponsor you and you'll get Permanent Residency, it's not too onerous, just paperwork and then takes about a year to get. There is loads of good info on the process in the Wiki and lots of helpful people in the immi section of the forum that will be able to help with that side of things. https://britishexpats.com/wiki/Spous...lication_Forms

I'm sure those in NS will be along to help with your job questions later, best of luck to you.

scilly

If you are thinking of applying for a job from overseas, then yes, many employers will not look at you as they have to prove that they have looked very carefully for a Canadian but not managed to find a person with the job skills required, then the employer could apply for a permit to hire you ............. but that comes at a cost of $1,000 to them plus the cost of widespread advertising and interviewing applicants (if any). The whole process could take 6 months or more.

The length of time for an applicant to get here and start work may also be off-putting, as
many employers want someone who start very quickly.

However, it is not as if you need the job offer to get a visa as you are coming on a spousal visa.

If you are applying from within the country, and already have PR, then it is a very different matter. So it might be better to wait until you are here, and then apply once you are in the country and could say "I can start on Monday (or Monday week)".

I would also warn you, I think, that being British doesn't always give you an advantage over a Canadian, whether native-born or naturalized. 50 + years here has taught me that! There is no reason for that to be so ........... Canada is no longer a dependency on Britain, we have our own Constitution, laws, etc. You will find much different, including the much fewer vacation days that you get per year.

Did you experience a winter in NS? January, February and March can be brutal. We visit my daughter there regularly every Christmas, so far weather changes have meant that we now miss the Christmas snowstorm and nor'easter, although we had a few of those in earlier years. That weather arrives in late January/February. She lives very close to Halifax, and they also had snow on April 28 this year, later in April than usual. We do get the black ice, ice storms, freezing winds straight off the Atlantic while we are there ....... and they can be brutal!!

On the other hand, my daughter now loves it there after 20 years, though she and her husband (a Nova Scotian) spent a lot of years hoping to get back to this side of the country. She did find it some what hard to assimilate into circles other than his family and her work for at least the first 5 or 6 years. She spent 4 years at university there on a change of career, and has one good friend from that time, vs the large number from her years at a university on this side.

It isn't that the NS people are unfriendly, but they don't make close friends quickly.

yakkiebush

Can’t believe some people still think that being British is a god given right for jobs etc,
live seen Brits the most ignorant and thick heads the world has ever seen.and would be the last people on earth to be hired.sad really.
Them days are long gone .
sorry may the best candidate get the job never mind nationaliy.
just saying like and get of you’re high horse .😳

dbd33

Being British does confer an advantage over many job applicants. If one is British one speaks the language and can, indeed, explain it to those who have always lived in Canada.

yakkiebush

oh really 99 percent of the people I know speak English.oh and I’ve also known quit a few Brits out of work.
in my 33 yrs here in construction.

anyway my point still stands about the British entitlement statement .them days are long gone and thank goodness and let the best candidate get the job regardless of ones background👍

MillieF

...and evidently regardless of spelling and grammar...

yakkiebush

ok you win.happy now

Tumbling_Dice

I live in Halifax and my question would be why do you want to give up a nice sounding situation to move here? Could you not consider periodically taking a longer trip here?

Some things I have observed in my time here, in no particular order, to be taken into consideration:

1). jobs: this is a "who you know" type of place, which means competence does not aways win through. Even getting an admin job can be tricky, and I would forget about it from abroad. Most agencies will only look at you when you are here. My experience is that you need to get in front of a human being, which means you can likely connect with them on LinkedIn and thus you have someone in your network. Job fairs tend to be good for that, but you may need to resort to hitting the pavements and the phone for a while. And heaven only knows what things will be like now in a C-19 world

2). car insurance is pricey compared to the UK, although there is at least competition in the NS market. However, brokers may not be "whole of market", instead being what we would call "multi-tied" in the UK. Again, you may need to hit the phones and speak to a few

3). If you have health issues that requries regular interaction with a doctor, this will be a royal pain here. There is a shortage of family doctors: we languished on the waiting list for almost 3 years before we got appointed a doctor, who ironically was also newly arrived from the UK. There are walk-in clinics but I seem to hear that this can prove annoying when trying to renew prescriptions, if you need such

4). the driving here is truly, truly abysmal

5). the weather can be a bit nuts. This winter just passed there was a lot more snow cover, and more gentle snow, whereas the previous winter it was stormy snow, ice, freezing rain, melt during temperature rise to 10 degrees, then plummet to 20 and all moisture freeze causing black ice. Not so bad when it happens in winter time, but it can drag on. Spring is virtually non existent, and then you suddenly are sweltering in humidity. But, the summer is pretty good, and autumn can be warm and pleasant up until mid / end October. For me at least, I did not think I would struggle so much with the lack of spring.

6). Halifax / Dartmouth are great places with increasingly vibrant food and drinks scene, pretty good live music, and all the shops you could possibly need. There does seem to at least be agreement that Halifax needs to develop in order to compete, but many ructions over how to do that. Forward thinking and dynamic this place is not.

7). If you regularly take short breaks that require flying (again with the current situation in mind, I merely assume it will return to normal in time), you won't be doing that from here. This is when Halifax does feel far away from everything, and it is comparitively pricey (for obvious reasons).

So, I would really focus on why on earth you would want to move and suggest they need to be solid reasons for moving to Halifax and from the UK. You would need to have some pre-planned red lines / timescales which would trigger a return. Good luck with the musings.

Apples74

Thank you All for your comments. It’s been a really interesting read. Yes ive considered that I dont know anyone at all, Which can be daunting especially for me. Moving to Halifax will always be on the cards for us. We’re not too bothered about the weather as the Uk is not too different. We are concerned about the doctor issue. We get an appointment within a fortnight and sooner if it’s an emergency here. We’re not getting any younger either!

Tumbling_Dice

Glad you have found it helpful. I quoted this part of your message because I want to emphasise that this is not the case at all. By the time warm weather comes around here, the UK has usually had two or three decent spells of warm weather, and the flowers are blooming etc. It might just be me but I find this a little harder to cope with that the cold winters. That being said, Halifax is pretty much dead in winter - it is not at all like the UK. It is regularly too bitterly cold to consider, as a sane person, going out. It does not turn into a winter wonderland, with snow lying for weeks on it. Freeze thaw is the pattern of weather here.

If weather is not important to you then this post is irrelevant. But if it is even a little bit, in an ideal world you would pop over in late March, take a look, and consider that late May is when what you experience will change. We have been lucky this year in that there has been a lot of sunshine, even if mostly cool to cold, but the other few "springs" I have been here were cold, with grey / white skies and rain for weeks on end. It took me aback how much this affected me, after a fairly long cold winter.

scilly

Please do not disregard what Tumbling Dice and myself have said about the weather in Halifax.

It is in no way similar to the UK!

The usual saying by Nova Scotians, and Haligonians in particular, is that you can get all 4 seasons in one day.

I don't think Tumbling Dice or other recent arrivals in Halifax have ever seen the snowfalls that we saw in the early 2000s .......... the question was always are we going to be able to go home as booked or are we stuck here. Late January/early February now seem worse than December.

Not to be forgotten also is that NS is at the northern end of the hurricane alley ........... if a hurricane takes the "wrong" turn, the tail end hits NS, NFLD and sometimes NB. "Tail end" can be Hurricane Level 1 or 2, or Tropical Storm. One hit last summer.

I strongly suggest that you take your time, and use that time to visit at every time of the year.

Remember also that the older you get the harder it is to make new friends. We know 2 or 3 people who live in and around Halifax from other periods of our life and see them almost every Christmas, but have not made new friends during our many visits there. Some of daughter's in-laws and friends are really friendly, but there is only one that we insist on visiting every year "weather permitting" ............. a lovely much older lady who lives over an hour's drive away. Friendly people, yes, but not friends.

MillieF

I didn’t think that the weather was going to be a real issue for me either, and I threw myself into my first winter with gusto, tried cross country skiing, snow shoeing...the lot, I shoveled with the best of them...but after my first year I had a horrible light bulb moment when I thought ‘oh God, it’s going to snow next winter too’. In Atlantic Canada it’s always a matter of when, not if. It’s snowing fit to bust right now, which is, thankfully, unusual in May. But winter can start in October and you don’t see the ground again till late April and my neighbours swear you can’t plant anything till 1st June.

That can affect the psyche, it’s just non stop, relentless. I think I am coping with it better now, but there was a three year period when I was severely depressed and anxious whenever it snowed...which was practically every other day for six months. Whilst we are all more home bound, watch Fargo, both the film and the serial if you can, I think it portrays the daily bleakness that is the reality of this weather system. I’m not being negative, I like living here now, as a family it has been good to us. It’s just that the weather is not a bit like anything English - this place is weather on steroids and it can adversely affect you, even when you least suspect it.

Best of luck