Lottie69

Hi

I am doing some reading up and research on Nova Scotia and New Brunswick

I get the basic feel for both of them and intend visiting both next August for a few weeks.....

could any current residents or people who have visited would be kind enough to attempt to tell me the major differences as they see it.... culture, weather, work, housing

I thank anybody who replies

thedignans

NB is the only bi-lingual province in Canada, meaning you basically need to speak french if you want to settle there....also northern NB gets REALLY BAD WINTERS.....NS (where we are) is generally a slightly more relaxed and warmer place to live...apart from a bit of snow last winter!
both have pretty much everything you would need in amenities and services
and they are both beautiful places to live..(i am biased towards the maritimes!)
there is a very short comparison...
hope this helps

mike

BristolUK

Huh?
That's news to me and all the others here who only speak English.
There are certainly some communities where French speakers will be in the majority, although the chances are most will also speak English.

Of the 5 daily newspapers in NB, 4 are English language to 1 French.

NB's pop is around 715,000. According to this site nearly 407,000 have English only, while French only number 66,000. Speakers of both languages number over 245,000.

Even if all the bilingual residents of NB were French, the English are still the majority.

Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton are overwhelmingly majority English speaking cities.

House prices seem very similar in both provinces if you ignore Halifax.

Perhaps the biggest difference is in Prescription costs. If you don't work (or do, but no medical benefits) and for whatever reason (pre-existing condition?) medical insurance is not practical, in NB you will have to pay the full costs unless you are on 'welfare' or at that sort of level after the costs. If you own your own home, you get penalised and will have to pay full costs. That could be hundreds of $$ each month.

In NS you can be on an otherwise perfectly manageable income (mortgage free) and only have to pay 20% of the costs. Perhaps contributing a couple of hundred $$ each year.

Last winter we were hit with bills of over $400 a month. Fortunately they then fell back considerably. But in NS, the most we'd have been required to pay would have been $80.

Airports. Halifax has direct flights to the UK. Fredericton has just started them, I believe, but I don't imagine there will be as many.

Tangram

Sorry.... total bull.

thedignans

I AM SORRY FOR MIS-INFORMING YOU ABOUT THE FRENCH SPEAKING PART OF NB, but i kinda thought if i was gonna move to somewhere where a significant part of the population speak french, i would like to think i would learn at least a basic understanding of the language in case i ended up working in dieppe or somewhere where the language was spoken...who knows where you might end up when you move to a new country...you gotta go where your job takes you..

benjy25

How does this work? We (my partner and I) will have medical cover via my University plan for the 1st year and hopefully work-based cover there after, but what is the likelihood of having to pay full costs for a prescription?

Surely most people have some form of private medical cover?

Thanks, Ben

[Q
Perhaps the biggest difference is in Prescription costs. If you don't work (or do, but no medical benefits) and for whatever reason (pre-existing condition?) medical insurance is not practical, in NB you will have to pay the full costs unless you are on 'welfare' or at that sort of level after the costs. If you own your own home, you get penalised and will have to pay full costs. That could be hundreds of $$ each month.

thedignans

if you were going to move to the costa brava or costa del sol in spain....would you learn spanish???? there are thousands of english/british people living there, but i am sure in there day to day lives they come across some spaniards!! it seems to me, only polite to learn a wee bit of french....on the off chance you may meet someone that speaks french!!

BristolUK

See my PM shortly.

benjy25

I'm sorry, but this is an entirely spurious analogy! To compare the insular enclaves of cockney Brits in southern Spain and the prospective immigrants to a province of 70% or so English speakers is absurd.

Evidently, the VAST majority of Spaniards speak Spanish (or Catalan) as their 1st language and it would be an absolute necessity to learn fluent Spanish in order to integrate properly.

In NB it would be helpful to learn French if you want to work for the provincial Government or live in Edmunston, Moncton etc. Even then you are not required to be bilingual for many jobs advertised.

Otherwise it is largely pointless. I know lots of people from southern NB who have no need to speak French whatsoever. It should not be of the remotest concern to anybody considering moving to the province unless they want to live in a predominantly French city, information found on Wikipedia and municpal websites.

NS is lovely though, I can certainly agree there :-)

thedignans

"To compare the insular enclaves of cockney Brits in southern Spain and the prospective immigrants to a province of 70% or so English speakers is absurd."
i disagree....
what you are saying is wee bit of a cliche!!! there is SO MUCH MORE TO THE COSTAS THAN THE BEACHES!!

Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton are overwhelmingly majority English speaking cities.

In NB it would be helpful to learn French if you want to work for the provincial Government or live in Edmunston, Moncton etc
(2 slightly different statements....)

also 70% leaves 30%, or around one third of the population.!

not looking for a big debate, but all i am saying is....why would you move to a province knowing it is bi-lingual and NOT LEARN BOTH LANGUAGES, even just a little?????? its not to a difficult language and wouldn't do your resume any harm either....thats my point...
and NOTHING IS EVER POINTLESS!!!

dbd33

Doesn't a province being bi-lingual mean that you can live in either language; not that you have to speak both?

benjy25

It was your analogy, not mine!

You compared the language skills of Expats in the costas with the potential issues of UK nationals and English speakers moving to NB. Not quite sure where I stated that the Costas consist only of beaches either...

Anyway, I agree, it would be helpful to learn some French in the future but it should NOT be a major concern of somebody considering moving to NB. I will learn French at some point, but at the moment (we move to Fredericton a week Tuesday) it is not important to our integration.

Paradisefound

I live on the North Shore of Nova Scotia which is 2hrs from Moncton. In the 3yrs we have been here we have been into New Brunswick quite often. The furthest north would be to cross the border in to America above Fredericton. I will always remember our first trip to Moncton and stopping at a large DIY store to ask directions. Everyone around me was speaking french and I could not hear an english being spoken at all. At the desk I just ask for the directions in english but was considering asking in french, but they answered in english. The rest of the day was spent with a mix of both languages. We noticed that the sales staff were less friendly and the drivers less curtious. In fact an old neighbor told us that if you are over taken here it will always be a driver with a NB plate and he was right, they are the ones speeding around. There is one place I like in NB (St Andrews) it is quite unique, the problem is I don't like anywhere else on the NB side so if we lived there we would probably spend a lot of time over the border in America. Even a friend of mind admits that her home town of St Stephen is not that nice and she prefers to live here and just visit. I want to explore more of the coastal areas above the bridge to PEI.

Climate wise I know NB can tend to get worse weather than we do, because we will get a storm warning and it will hit NB, but miss us most of the time. They suffered with quite bad floods and had to have some areas evacuated a few weeks ago.

I know nothing about the work situation in NB, but the 3 counties that I live and work in are all doing very well.
Housing now that is my area and from what I have seen NB is slightly less expensive than NS. Being close to the border I keep an eye on the housing market there too.

We do not have private medical insurance. We did at first because we had it in the UK, but then cancelled it. The cost of around $230 a month with Blue Cross was just not worth it. Even though I was paying less for prescriptions, I could often find an alternative that was a simular price.

We just love it where we are, 9 miles out at the end of a peninsular with a micro climate and only 90mins from the airport.

dormy

I can agree with you in part here, on a recent trip to fredricton my wife and I had the misfortune of visiting a hotel restaurant where the server would not talk to us in English, she claimed she did not speak english, my pigeon french got us through but the discomfort & embarrassment would have been spared if I spoke some more french. When i complained to management about the rudeness they simply gave me the same attitude, "your in a bi lingual province, you should speak both languages!"

Tangram

Wondered how long it would be before you arrived. I cannot believe you have the gall to diss a whole Province in favour of your Utopia.