After lurking for a while, we're back ... and still in Calgary.

We decided that the negative points about the GTA were:
1) Too many bad air days - Calgary doesn't ever have any
2) Over-expensive housing, even in comparison to Calgary
3) Just too many people ...
4) ... which follows on with comparatively too few jobs with too many people competing for them
5) The nuclear power plants in Pickering just outside Toronto ... considering how much they leak, I'm surprised Lake Ontario doesn't glow.
6) Not very impressive health or education systems in comparison to Alberta

After drawing that little list up, there wasn't enough positive left to balance it out.

Calgary isn't perfect: we get crappy, unpredictable weather and a long, crappy unpredictable winter, but we decided we prefered it to the GTA.

Nuff said .....

hi there we are moving to calgary next week as cannot get a job in vancouver, can you maybe give me some idea what calgary is like as a whole thanks

bev

PM me with specific questions and I'll do my best to answer ...

whats the job market like, best places to live and worse areas to avoid anyhthing that you expereicend, are the people freindly

Hard to break into depending on what you do, but it gets easier with Canadian experience - I had over 10 years IT experience when I got here and it took me 4 months to get a low level IT job

I live in the deep SW, I know people who like the NW, we almost moved to the SE, so it's okay too ... avoid the NE and anywhere around Forest Lawn

They're not unfriendly and they're polite ... depends on what you're comparing them to ... the more Canadian your attitudes are, the friendlier people are towards you ... the less verbal comparisons you make, the longer your conversations will last :-)

so are u from the uk as well, i am from lancashire orginally maybe we could meet up if you want to , how old are you have you got kids etc

thanks
bevjohn

The closest I get to other posters from the forum is a PM ... top right of your screen if you haven't used them already :-)

Yeah, the rest of you are all nutters!

im deeply offended by that comment!

Some posters (present company excepted) would benefit from taking their medication on a more regular basis

I find a bar of chocolate a day helps...

Welcome back Glas, the place hasn't been the same without you....

I thought Seniors collected the new boys from the airport and showed them around.

I am sure I saw it on 'Get a New Life'

Well at least the GTA won't get more crowded

I hear it's almost standing room only already

I've lived in Toronto for 14 years and came from London.

Which city you choose in Canada has a great deal to do with where you've come from and what you're looking for.

When I first came here, I was struck by how everyone in Toronto kept going on about how crowded it was which I found simply laughable after London. To me, Toronto felt like a very multicultural, medium-sized city but with many of the same facilities you'd expect in London, good theatre, restaurants etc. It felt spacious and open, for a biggish city.

But over the past three years or so, I've noticed it REALLY getting crowded. There always used to be lull times on the TTC (local public transport) and now it seems to be crowded all the time. The economy has been booming for ten years now, so more and more people just keep on coming. It's starting to develop big city gruffness too, which, (despite what other Canadians say) I generally have not experienced here. Indeed I used to describe Toronto to British friends as a big city with the friendliness of a smaller town. I still think it's basically true but it's being eroded fast.

And it's true about the smog days in the summer. There never used to be any.

Where you choose to live boils down to what you want and what a city can do for you. People flock to Toronto for much the same reasons people do to London. It's the centre of the country's commerce, media and the GTA is the hub of the car industry and Canadian manufacturing.

Calgary is a beautiful city that has been booming for about ten years. The province has a surplus it doesn't know how to spend and can't build houses quickly enough to accommodate people migrating there.

But it's a boom driven mainly by oil and natural resources. There are loads of trickle down industries for that. You're at the foot of the Rockies. It's beautiful. It's fantastic place. But it's not going to be much good if you're an actor or working in corporate finance.

Each place has it's own culture too and Calgary is known for it's social conservatism, which is something to consider (just as Toronto has a reputation for being a load of cappuccino-swilling liberals). There's certainly more of a range of jobs here.

Me, I'm interested in moving to Ottawa, because I'm a journalist, so it's ideal in that sense. It's a nice little city. But I'd miss the cosmopolitan flavour of Toronto for sure.

We live in a very pleasant, civilised neighbourhood in Toronto (Broadview and Danforth), with great restaurants and great little shops, a gorgeous park at our doorstep and we pay very reasonable rent (less than half I'd pay in London) for a nice 2-bedroom apartment. But it would all be very different if we had a family and needed to buy a house.

Its a little Know fact is that the lake does glow.. but you have to remove all the other polutants to see it....



Up side to Toronto.... the rest of canada revolves around it....