Hi kate,schools definately don't shut kids still go to school rehardless of temp. They have putdoor recess upto minus 25 but the buses do stop running at minus 40 and below which this year was only a handful of times but last year was quite a few times. When I say stuck in its a feeling you get as the majority of time the winter last from oct/nov through to april/may we arrived april and there was still snow on the ground, the really cold weather is mainly dec to feb however I think its the length of time, you can't build snowmen as the airs so dry the snow doesn't stick, unless you cat the first snowfall then your snowman lasts 6 months my kids ar 7 and 3 now they where 1 and 5 when I came here. The windchill adds to the temp as usually it carries another minus 14 with it as its so flat here it doesn't get protected by anything. Areas I would recommend are definately warman however erindale seems nice too, silversprings etc if you send me some of the areas your interested in I canlet u know my opinions,however avoid alphabet blocks!they have a lot of natives who have gang issues going on zoe x

You may have been immediately isolated, but you were still likely a short drive away from 60 million people and all the cities, towns, and transportation networks and services that come with a small island nation of 60 million people. If you wanted to escape your tiny 1 shop town, you could probably do so on a whim and not spend much time or money doing so. If you needed a quick urban fix, I'm sure there were large cities within access.

Saskatoon is isolated, not in a 1 shop town sort of way, but in the way that if you got tired of Saskatoon, its scenery, its climate, the types of stores and restaurants and everything it offered, you were out of luck. You will have to spend hundreds of dollars and fly for several hours to escape it. There is nowhere nearby for thousands of miles that will offer a bigger city or different atmosphere or seaside or mountains or different types of food and shops. There are no quick trains to go, there are no larger cities nearby. You are going to be isolated at a continental scale that people who have only ever lived in Europe or the UK cannot even fathom.

The entire population of Saskatchewan is 1.13 million people. Saskatchewan is physically 3 times larger than the entirety of the UK. We're not talking a "region of Canada" like you speak about Devon or Yorkshire. We're talking a region of 1.19 million people spread out over the expanse of flatness 3 times larger than the entire UK! This is the type of isolation we're referring to.

Edmonton and Calgary are an hour away by plane, or a few hours by car.

Rockies aren't thousands of miles away. Even Vancouver is less than a thousand miles away, or a couple of hours by plane. If you want to swim closer than that, there are plenty of lakes.

Would it be my first choice of where to live if I was a multi-millionaire and didn't have to worry about finding work? No. But it's hardly the South Pole, either. If you want isolated, talk to my ex-colleague who worked down there for three years with about a dozen other people and one supply boat a year.

We often drive to Edmonton for a weekend, though going there and back in two days can be a bit gruelling if we don't take a day off to stay for three. It's not like driving the same distance in the UK around country roads; you get on the highway, put on the cruise control, there are about half a dozen slight bends and a few stop lights, then you're in Edmonton five or six hours later.

You could say the same for many people I know in the UK, who rarely venture far from where they live. Even a day trip to London seems like a major excursion for them.

About the only thing I would say is that many bands who play elsewhere in Canada don't come here. But a lot of biggish names still do (I think the last show we went to was Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie).

One thing to remember is that most of Saskatoon is indoors. The big malls are all enclosed, and most people drive there, so you go out of your house, into the garage, drive for a few minutes, walk thirty seconds to the mall, do what you're doing, then drive home, and walk back from the garage. You're not outside for long, if you don't want to be, even in the summer... in fact, if you have an attached garage, and drive to the malls with underground parking, you don't have to go outside at all.

Twenty or thirty years ago, they even talked about building a dome over downtown, so you could walk outside in the winter without thinking you were Scott of the Antarctic. They should really build one over the entire city.

Any of the newer areas should be fine. Many of the older areas are too. You can find crime maps online at the Saskatoon police site; most of ours appear to be people stealing construction supplies from the building sites.

see 6 hours drive is nothing to us, when we visit family in france, once we get off the ferry in france, its a 13 hour drive to her house, we travel 5 hours to go to a centre parcs we like

The real downside on the travel front is the relatively limited amount of holiday time in most jobs over here. We keep talking about how we should go to the Rockies again, or go somewhere we haven't been in Canada, then we have to find a week that we can both take off, and I only get three, and some days have to be taken at times that match the company schedule, and I have to go England for a week to visit relatives and my girlfriend has to go to Alberta to visit relatives and... oh, we don't have any holiday time left. I really saw more of Canada when I was living in the UK!

I agree very much with the observations of Markham. Many of my family rarely venture outside their comfort zone geographically. If you're happy with you environment maybe you don't want to travel thousands of miles to somewhere else on a regular basis. We live on an island and we don't need to go to the mainland on a weekly or even monthly basis. Maybe this is an adventure and a means of experiencing at least some of Canada. It may lead to other things and opportunities in other provinces.

My sentiments exactly.
You've got 3 kids, if you want an adventure for a year or so, then give it a go, but I would suggest maybe a reccy trip if you have permanence in mind.

I wouldn't recommend it as a place to live permanently, unless you're used to rural towns in the UK: I'm coming up to eight years now, and starting to think about moving on. But I have no regrets.

Of course, a large part of that is because I ended up with just about the closest thing to a perfect job that I was likely to find on the Prairies. If I was working at Tim Hortons' I might not feel the same way.

But that was your choice and you did it for the joy, because you could have flown + you went to France (different culture/scenery).

That would be 6 hours of driving through or around towns with things to see on the way, the Prairie Provinces are not like that. It doesn't take long for a drive to become old and stale. And for anything remotely like a Centre Parcs? Maybe Great Wolf Lodge in Ontario????

Sorry if I'm being negative but we've been here 10 years now and I just want to go back to living and not existing.

Perhaps a Google Street View virtual drive will reveal the reality?

Do they have Street View all the way to Edmonton or Calgary?

To be fair, in the long term it doesn't really matter, because in twenty years we'll just rent a drone wherever we want to 'visit' and plug it into our brains. You'll be in Thailand in the morning, Antarctica in the afternoon, and orbiting in space in the evening, all without leaving your sofa.

lol, markg.

That is very true.

We are looking foward to the adventure, and if it doesnt work out, then at least we can say we gave it a shot.