Sorry for my ignorance but is Labrador an Eastern Province or one of the Maritimes ? I don't hear it getting a mention...whats is like ? Anyone live there ?

Labrador is a large chunk of mainland Canada that forms part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It's sparsely poplulated and the most exciting thing about it is that planes to/from Europe fly over it.

Squidlet,

I can give you the gen on Newfoundland. Others can better comment re. PEI/NS/NB. I've visited all three, would love to live on PEI but little industry and can see us living in NS (Halifax area) at some point in the future.

Anyway, Newfoundland. Beautiful, wild, windy, isolated (even more after Sept4th when AC stop flying LHR/St Johns), deprived, dynamic, booming, collapsing, lots of snow, fantastic seascapes at every turn, excellent sailing, best ski resort in Atlantic Canada, St John's has more bars per capita than anywhere else in North America, highest provincial taxation of any province, and the best people in Canada. (I'm married to one.) As I've said before the rum is dark, the people are friendly and they have a town called Dildo. What more can you ask for?

Some more helpful information....

St John's and the Northeast Avalon area are booming with over 50% of the population of the island living here. (thats only 250k people). Largely due to oil and gas offshore but with a burgeoning marine tech sector, a bit of manufacturing, conventions and conferences, call centres & Memorial University. Rest of Newfoundland, pretty much in crisis. Fishery is in dire straits. Overfishing (not simply by Newfoundlanders, its way more complex than that), high fuel, low prices for shrimp & crab (staple fishery) and intense competition from lower cost processing countries. As the fishery goes so does rural Newfoundland. Outmigration, especially to Alberta is rife. Its a big deal here on the news nightly although truth to tell its the same thing that is happening in other rural areas all over the world. People move to where the work is.

Rural Newfoundland is beautiful and tourism is an increasingly important industry. (and still very much untapped IMHO). Opportunities to run a hostel or B&B? Sure, but reall need to be linked to popular place such as Trinity or the East Coast trail (world class hiking trails), whalewatching etc etc.

Cheap Housing? For sure compared to the rest of Canada but prices in the St John's area are on the up and have been for a while. Subdivision surburbia can be had from $160k upwards, downtown victorian places from $100 to $500k and 3-4beds in an acre anywhere from $250k upwards. Outside the Avalon apart from hotspots like Humber Valley & Trinity you can pick up houses for $20k upwards. For $20k you get an older house in a dwindling community some hours from St Johns with few services around.

Job opportunities? Yes absolutely in St Johns. Its a small job market, who you know and time served are important BUT if you can bring in skills that are not widely available locally you can do well. In 18mths I've worked in the Fish business at a senior mgmt level and now am back in manufacturing. Getting a job as a car salesman should be possible (2 dealers advertising in this weekends paper) but its a tough life of 100% commission. Arts admin? Well St John's has a well established arts/music/theatre scene so yes opportunitites exist I'd say but of course pay is probably crap. If you are a musician then most bars downtown have live music pretty much any night of the week. However you need to be in the folk/celtic genre to really succeed here!

Hopefully this thumbnail sketch is of some help. If you need more drop me a PM.

AX

And the fact that it contains vast deposits of Iron Ore & other minerals and more importantly the potential for xty million gigawatts of hydro power from the lower churchill river. The Upper churchill project already generates yty gigawatts but due to a spectacularly badly negotiated deal by the govt of the day, Quebec Hydro makes millions on the deal whilst Newfoundland and Labrador doesnt.

In St John's you'll see quite a few Lexus SUV's and the people driving them very much do care. As a sign of the times last weeks paper sought expressions of interest in opening a BMW dealership. (Something heretofore NL has survived without). Its that black gold baby.

Thanks very much for all your info Atlantic, I am not sure how to PM yet as I am relatively new here....will get back once I have figured it out.

Squidlet

Click on my username in one of my posts and you get a drop down menu. Select 'send private message' and Bobs your mothers brother.

Sorry for my mis-speak (is that a word?). Last time I was in St. John's was a few years ago. But, I have to say the Newfies are probably the friendliest people anywhere on earth. To give you an example, I belong to a committee that meets once a year in a different city across Canada. In 2000 we were in Ottawa and in 2001 St. John's. In Ottawa, my friend and I ran into a guy from St. John's who we had only ever met before in passing. As a joke, we said we would have to come to his house for a cod supper when we got down there for the confrence. Of course he said sure; see you then. The next year at the conference in St. John's he found us and gave us a royal tongue lashing for not getting in touch so we could come for the dinner he had promised! Wonderful people and fantastic scenery.

Here's another useful website about jobs on PEI with links to the PEI job bank where you can search for vacant posts and links to some of the major employers too, you can e-mail a CV to many of them.

http://www.peiinfo.com/pei_jobs.php

This one for government and health jobs:

www.gov.pe.ca/jobs/

and one that covers all the maritimes:

www.careerbeacon.com/

This one is a PEI chat board where the locals will usually help with advice and you could ask specifically about the type of work you are looking for and also find out a bit more about the island.

http://www.peiinfo.com/forums/index.php

About 1% of global reserves, actually. And I can't find myself getting terribly excited about haematite/magnetite.

Thanks a lot for all the useful info folks.....

I know it may sound far-fetched but when we got out the maps the one thing that kinda stares me in the face is how uncomfortably close that whole area is to New York, a place an awful lot of people seem to want to nuke these days !! Do concerns like that ever bother anyone over your way ?

We also wondered how come rich Americans haven't bought the beautiful NS coastline up with their holiday homes ?

On the topic of buying homes.....a few of you mentioned hoards of people leaving for jobs out West...do you have a sense of whether the economy over there in the East will look up in some way ? Just wondering if one buys a house there and then needs to move on if one might find oneself stuck...

Many thanks everyone, its very interesting to hear what you all have to say.

Oh for gawd sake are you serious? Even NS/NB is what 1000kms from New York. Safe from any fallout I'd say. (As any nuclear attack is likely to be a small suitcase IED not a 2 megaton nuke) Are you really so paranoid that you are scared to live that close to the US? If so most of Canada is probably not for you given that 80% or so of the population lives within a few hundred Kms of the US border. Iqualuit should be good and safe though except when they start fighting over the Arctic resource.

They are doing so. (Leastways in NL). So are 'rich' Brits, Germans and even Canadians.

Well put it this way, when the Alberta boom turns into bust.............. IMHO property growth in Eastern Canada is more gradual and hopefully sustainable in the longer term.

Beat me to it. I don't think anyone has yet developed nukes with a 500-mile blast radius.

[QUOTE=Atlantic Xpat]Oh for gawd sake are you serious? Even NS/NB is what 1000kms from New York. Safe from any fallout I'd say. (As any nuclear attack is likely to be a small suitcase IED not a 2 megaton nuke) Are you really so paranoid that you are scared to live that close to the US? If so most of Canada is probably not for you given that 80% or so of the population lives within a few hundred Kms of the US border. Iqualuit should be good and safe though except when they start fighting over the Arctic resource.


No we aren't that paranoid, it was just something we noticed and we wondered if it was a topic of conversation out your way.....seems like not eh ?!

Anyways thanks for the advice so far and the links you sent Bethan, I will chek them out...