1. Yes

2. Smog is a problem in Southern Ontario during the summer months, particularly in Toronto/Hamilton. However that doesn't necessarily extend to the rest of Ontario! Ontario is a big place.

Hi

Maybe somewhere in the Okanagan might be suitable as we have very little traffic to speak off and the atomosphere is dry due to us being semi desert. We don't have that damp atmosphere that can sometimes trigger attacks etc.
I know my parents who are in their 70's love the climate here when they come to visit as all their aches and pains etc disappear, I guess that is why we have a lot of people retiring here.

JJ

Very true and living in Alberta I tend to forget it.

Northern Ontario = same latitude as Sweden

Southern Ontario = same latitude as Italy

Toronto is at the same latitude as Rome.

For comparison, Calgary just south of London.

One piece of advise is don't expect the doctors here to be any better than the UK..
Canada's left with all the 2nd's as the good ones are south of the border earning US dollars.. and some out of town areas curently have shortages of medical staff....

Sounds just like home.....

Yes does sound like the NHS
Better throw those rose tinted glasses away!
This site is great for hearing all the nitty gritty stuff that you just wouldn't here about anywhere else
Cheers

This is not our experience. So far the Canadian health system has been much better than the NHS. Doctors actually treat the patient instead of the government budget!

Referrals have been fast - to the extent we drove from the walk in clinic to the specialist. In the UK it would have been at least six months.

X-rays were taken at the local xray/test clinic next door to the paediatrician's office - no treck to the hospital and waiting for a few hours. Instead we were on our way within 30 minutes.

Quite possibly its simply a case of you get what you pay for!

We have nothing but praise for the Alberta health service.

Mrs G

I wish it was "you get what you pay for" I have a very comprehensive corporate medical cover... but some thing you just can’t buy….

But could we find a decent doctor when my wife was pregnant... In Toronto...

We arrived in October.. and we kept on looking for a decent knowledgeable doctor right up until march 11 for one who knew about complex breeches... the baby was c-sectioned march 12 as an emergency... if we had not gone on a long search and ended up e-mailing the head of the Canadian research team on breech births and got her input… we would have been left at the mercy of a bunch of second rate doctors…in the local hospital who main concern was booking a set time in theatre because the ultra sounds weren’t clear and the baby would have been born probably malnourished about 3 weeks later…

For those that care the waiting time for midwifes in Ontario is currently in excess of nine months in places… get that logic… yep you need to find your midwife before your pregnant or your stuck with your GP who in our experience is about 20 years behind the UK in the approach to pregnancies.. and its worth remembering in this country the medical plan is “if in doubt C-Section� natural birth is not top of the list in a Canadian hospital anymore…..

And I should add in that its normal for some doctors to multiple book appointments to maximize the money they get from the government.. yep this means you can end up sitting for up to 4 to 5 hours just awaiting for the appointment you turned up on time for...
so here always book the first slot in the morning or be prepared to wait..

I’m not saying this is the case across Canada, but here in Brampton, a major part of the Greater Toronto area.. and this is one of the better area’s this is the best they can offer… frankly just as bad as the worst NHS…

I shall have to pass that on to my sister in law, who works as a paediatric nursing administrative type person in Brampton.

Similar experience in BC I have to say. I have just had to fight tooth and nail to get a routine prenatal test done at BC Women's (the so-called cutting edge hospital in the West). They refused me over and over and even denied they offered the test (CVS) until I went to the head of the dept and demonstrated that I knew more about genetics than their dozy counsellors. Some things are good - like the accessibility of walk-in clinics, but pregnancies here are a nightmare. I do have experience of both the NHS and here in that regard.

Ahhhhh! Now I understand. You have hit the one situation that I would not want to experience in Canada. [We had our children in the UK]

I have heard some hairy stories about pregnancy in Calgary. It is elective after all so its all our own fault......

The whole idea of having to find a delivery doctor is wierd - the UK system of delivery midwives seemed to work just fine. I would rather have someone who delivers babies all day every day than someone who only did it part time. Plus who wants a doctor who gets a phone call in the middle of the night to deal with it - night shift midwives seem safer.

My comment on getting what you pay for was not directed to you but was a comparison of the NHS and Alberta - just in case you were offended!

I trust your baby is well - hopefully you will both get over the trauma of the whole process in time.

Mrs G

[QUOTE=Glaswegian]Very true and living in Alberta I tend to forget it.

Very funny!

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=255401

I think this link deals very well with the differences between UK & US healthcare.

My husband gets asthma in the UK, after we moved to the US it stopped, we obviously assumed his symptoms were caused by UK living conditions. However unfortunately it has since come back. Today we visited our doctor and he said that what can happen is that in your own country you can build intollerances to certain things and subequently develope asthma. When you move the asthma can go because you are removed from those hazzards but then you slowly built up intollerances to things in your new country hence the asthma comes back. So unfortunately for us he is not cured by our move and this clearly suggests to us the UK was not the direct cause of his condition.

There is no such thing as a Canadian health system - that is constitutionally prohibited. Constitutionally, all health care -- like education -- is a provincial matter. And it does vary from province to province, tremendously. From what I can gather, Ontario is about the most awful, whilst Alberta is one of the better ones.

I could tell you some horror stories about Ontario health care. My mother-in-law works at a genetics lab in the US that does the analysis for a lot of Ontario samples (NAFTA at work). Pretty terrible stories: they routinely get samples that are 6 months old and of no use, having been sat in Ontario gathering dust, and these are samples that are supposed to be tested for cancer. They get samples where the patient died months ago of the disease they are supposed to be testing for...yeah, I wouldn't want to get an illness in Ontario.

Hi everyone!

Glad I found this thread.

My asthma was virtually non existent. Having spent six weeks in Oz last year, I even stopped taking my meds and had no symptoms.

Flew to Vancouver 3 weeks ago and about 3 hours into the flight (Zoom Airlines), my asthma became really bad.

It was awful it really was. It was as though there was no oxygen on the plane. I have done much longer flights than 11 hours, but have never had this.

Arrived in Vancouver (Burnaby) and it got even worse with the mist. I felt really compromised.

Kept a video diary for a pal, and when I listen to it now, I cant believe how bad I sounded.

The only time it disappeared was when we went to Cypress Mountains, and then i was normal again.

On the flight home, it worsened. Now im not scared of my asthma, I live with it, but it was the longest 11 hours of my life.

And it took me a week to get over it.

When I thought it would be better once in BC, I was wrong about that too.

But strangely enough, the air didnt seem too bad there, so I dont know what it was, but I am wary of going back.

Was thinking about Toronto next time, but if anyone has any other ideas, then I would be grateful.

Asthma back to normal now, got the lung capacity of a normal person now. But wasnt that strange?

Perhaps that plane just had bad air.