this is going to be a long post so please stay with me as I would appreciate thoughts/comments

Like most people on this site we applied for PR in Canada quite a while ago (AOR Aug 2004). I don't know what prompted most people to apply but for us it followed a few holidays. My partner had a trip to Vancouver 6 yrs ago and we went to Banff skiing two yrs running in 2003 and 2004. So we applied and we waited. We both work as accountants so figure that we need to be in reasonable sized cities to be able to get decent jobs (we are both mid 30's so no prospect of winding down workwise yet). So last summer we booked a trip out to Canada to check things out and we have just returned from that trip - having had a week in Vancouver and a week in Toronto.

Vancouver is a nice city - I would say that it is a city in a fantastic setting (mountains, water etc), but it is not a fantastic city, not architecturally inspiring, lots of the buildings look like 1970's grey concrete and going to the main shopping mall around Burnaby was not a great experience. And of course we got one day when it bucketed it down and two days when it was fairly grey. Stanley Park is great and some of the (expensive) suburbs were really nice, but I personally was not blown away by the city. My partner said he thought it has changed a lot in 6 yrs since he was last there, lots of building work and you can see the growing influence of China.

So after 5 days we moved onto Toronto. I really wanted to like Toronto as we thought it might be the place we would settle (lots of larger companies, some European based so would help us get work).

Say what you like about Heathrow but when you exit and get onto the M4 to go west you do see a lot of greenery and there are fields and it looks quite nice (I know you rapidly approach Slough). Leaving the airport at Toronto to go to the city you are met with concrete for as far as the eye can see. Toronto is not a great looking city, again lots of grey, drab buildings and very little older architecture seems to be remaining (sorry if I sound like Prince Charles (what is he for anyway?)) we went to places like Cabbagetown which i guess i would call shabby chic - so nice Victorian houses in a fairly run down area.

Getting out into the GTA was something else - I don't think I have ever seen that amount of concrete and vast, vast areas of offices, roads, housing estates - just concrete for as far as the eye could see. Yes there are some nice areas such as Oakville (again the best bits really expensive) and then lots of cookie cutter houses. The GTA was just depressing in a way that I don't think anywhere in the UK could be - hamsters caught in the wheel between massive housing estates and office blocks next to massive freeways.

The one thing I would say is that in our two weeks there we encountered nice people and I think a society more gentle than the UK and not with the antisocial behaviour that seems to be the norm here now.

So we came back quite chastened by the experience and maybe we were naive but we now need to consider carefully.

We are now going back to the area we really liked - Alberta and hence Calgary - though we are concerned that that also has changed a great deal and is in the process of such massive growth that it is or soon will be a place subject to great strain in terms of housing, services etc and maybe the beauty of Alberta will be spoiled.

So the idea is to have a trip to Calgary in the autumn and really think hard about the whole thing.

We have come down to earth with a bump I'm afraid and really don't know what to do for the best.

I have posted this to generate discussion and welcome all sensible comments.

chiefy

We have come down to earth with a bump I'm afraid and really don't know what to do for the best.

Well, I'd suggest you check whether your accounting qualifications are recognized in all the provinces you're considering, and if not, what you would need to do to find appropriate work. Only then start checking potential locations.

Hi

I hear what you're saying! Canadian architects must have a screw loose as most of the buildings and town planning that we have seen is gross in our opinion. When we arrived in London Ont two years ago I wanted to leave straight away. We were renting a small townhouse opposite some ugly tower blocks which probably wasn't a great inspiration but it was cheap!!

Anyway, we have come to the conclusion that most of the places with lovely scenery are difficult to find jobs in as many people need to live in or near a city for work. My hubbie is a CA so we also thought we needed a city. Ironically he found work in a little town outside London! I think it depends on what you are looking to achieve by moving to Canada. Canada has some gorgeous scenery and plenty of space that you can live in if you have the money/ability to be able to live in these places. If not then you have to find a compromise.

As you mentioned, the difference in culture might be what some people are looking for. This is also a double edged sword in my opinion. Laid back and friendly could also be translated as narrow minded, lacking in innovation and superficial friendliness. I found the culture difficult to adjust to in the beginning but now I have become more accepting of it although I still find it a bit anal!

For us the weather is a plus. We like the summers here and the ability to travel to the lake/beach at the weekend without getting caught in traffic. The winters are long but in our opinion we'd rather have snow and sun than rain. It is a bit of a trade off. In the UK, you can fly cheaply to other places and find better weather for a week or so. Here it is expensive to travel but during the summer you don't feel the need to escape to the sun as we have it almost everyday. Our kids went to so many pool parties last summer - they love it.

Our kids were a big part of our decision to move here. It is very family oriented and with loads of activities for kids. You often see whole families out rollerblading, walking or cycling in the summer evenings. My son is now a keen hockey player and a fantastic skater . I couldn't take him back to the UK now! I think the weather is a big influence on these activities and that's something Canadian architects can't mess up!

Sorry for rambling - I'm just thinking out loud really! I think the gist of what I'm saying is that Canada isn't for everyone and it isn't perfect. Whether it is right for you depends on what you want to achieve by moving here. We are happy with our decision and our kids love it but there are ups and downs to wherever you live. It just depends on what works for you.

I hope you get on well in Calgary and you are not alone in your feelings.

Chris

I think your assessment of Toronto to be reasonably accurate though you don't give the core area of the city enough credit for enjoyable multiculturalism; it is nice to have access to every type of ethnic neighbourhood. The suburbs, say out from the 401/DVP/427/Lake box to Major Mac, Oshawa and Hamilton, I find to be a wasteland.

I thought Calgary was rather like Mississauga, nice if you like that sort of thing, but I don't.

Chiefy, I don't know how long your trip will be, so I don't know how much you'll be able to fit in. It would be ideal, if you had the time, to look not only at Calgary, but also at Edmonton, which is 3 hours to the north of Calgary (and very similar in size to Calgary). It also would be very beneficial to check out smaller cities, like Red Deer (exactly half way between Calgary and Edmonton) and Lethbridge (2.5 hours south of Calgary). If I were doing a recce trip, I also would want to have a very serious look at smaller cities in the interior of British Columbia. The two I'm thinking of in particular are Kamloops and Kelowna.

I suggest you do word searches on all of those names here at BE and read everything you can about them. Of course reading is not the same as visiting a place, but it's a start.

If you do a word search for Red Deer, you may read negative comments that I made quite some time ago. When I made those comments, I'd only driven through Red Deer a few times, and I knew a handful of people from Red Deer who were real jerks. They were guys who had started out working on the oil rigs, had had entrepreneurial talents, and had made heaps of money. By the time I met them they had become awful examples of newly rich people. I confess that coloured my view of Red Deer. Since then I have met some nice people from Red Deer, and I've come to believe, from what those people have told me, that the town has a good quality of life. It seems to care about incorporating facilities for children into its planning and stuff like that.

Although I don't remember ever writing negative comments about it here, another town about which I have changed my mind is Kamloops. To the extent that I thought about it at all, I had a neutral opinion of it. I used to think of it as a truck stop on the way to Vancouver. However, Airseir's posts on this forum got me thinking about it. More recently my son moved out to Vancouver, spent a couple of weekends snowboarding at Sun Peaks outside of Kamloops, and absolutely raved about it. So Airseir and my son convinced me that there was more to Kamloops than I had realised.

I moved to Calgary in the latter half of the 1970s, when the city was booming. I then lived through the bust of the early 1980s. Having grown up in Southern Africa, where there are ghost towns in places where mineral resources have been exhausted, I already was aware of the boom and bust nature of resource-based economies, but going through Calgary's crash in the early 1980s showed me what it was like first hand. We had unemployed friends who sold their houses for $1 because their mortgages exceeded the value of their houses, and they moved back to their parents in Newfoundland and other places from which they had come.

People say this boom is going to be much more sustained than the last one was, because the world's supply of energy either has peaked or soon will peak while China's and India's needs for energy are increasing. Maybe that will prove to be the case. But I never place my trust in a resource-based economy. I always assume that a previously unanticipated factor could enter the picture and change the dynamics. So I try to have a Plan B.

You might ask what I'm doing in Calgary if that's my opinion. The reason is that my husband is an engineer who has built his career in the oil industry. He loves working in that industry, and he loves living in Calgary. He's in a good position at the moment, because the industry is short of engineers with relevant experience. He may as well cash in on the situation while he can, something that causes him no hardship since he in any case enjoys the industry and the city.

But my husband also is conscious of boom and bust cycles. We feel that we're reasonably well placed to ride the wave even if a sort of worst case scenario were to unfold. We're mortgage-free, and we have some savings. Our children are young adults. We still have one year's worth of university fees to pay for our younger son, and then we'll be empty nesters. We would like to build up our investments some more before we retired. However, if worst came to worst and Calgary's economy reversed itself tomorrow, we believe we're in a position to respond to that.

If I was younger and not married to someone who was so fond of working in the oil industry, I would seriously consider a town whose growth was not quite as spectacular as Calgary's is but that was growing nonetheless and that had the prospect of maintaining a reasonably healthy economy over the long haul. I would do more research on Kamloops.

If I had skills, such as carpentry, that lent themselves to running a small business that catered to the many retirees who are flocking to Vancouver Island, I would be very tempted to move there.

As Chris (Tom Masters) has indicated, you also might be able to find something suitable in Ontario outside of the Greater Toronto Area. And then of course there are Canada's other provinces too, several of which have satisfied representatives on this forum.

However, I think it's a bit confusing to think of the whole of Canada at this point. You've already been to Vancouver and Toronto, and you've chosen Calgary as your destination for your next recce. What I'm suggesting is that you expand that trip to include other cities within a certain radius of Calgary.

Hope that helps.

In the case of Alberta, at least, you would be able to find accounting jobs even if you did not have the relevant Alberta certifications. The jobs most likely would be more junior than you would consider to be ideal, and they would pay less than you might like, but they would be jobs nonetheless. If you upgraded your qualifications by studying and taking exams, you could improve your situation. I'm guessing it would be at least a couple of years before you had enough credits under your belt that you could command a better salary. That's what I've seen with immigrants whom I know who are accountants.

You have a obviously done extensive research but there are a few practical considerations.

One is that you're unlikely to find the ideal job in the ideal location. if your priority is location then you may have to settle for a less than satisfactory job, at least at the beginning. If your priority is work then you may have to settle for less than satisfactory location. If you work for a larger company then you may be transferred fairly frequently to various locations around north America and just hve cope with the relocation.

Second thing to consider is that your skills may give you entry into another career so don't expect a horizontal arabesque.

Canada is very diverse when it comes to both scenery and lifestyle. Sure there are some grungy places but there also some terrific locations as there are in England .

If you want greenery certainly look to live in smaller towns around the GTA and commute in ..we do have alot of urban sprawl but that is the N American way - since land is realatively cheap and lots of newcomers to house lets keep building outwards. Actually is you see some of the condominum projects they are builing across the GTA i think they look very impressive (IMO).

Very sensible comment made earlier to see if your quals will be recognised here.

I think as others have said or implied, that it really depends on what you want. Canada is huge and you can find somewhere that suits almost any set of needs but you can't drive around and check out 10 places in a week.

For example, Kelowna has been mentioned. I was there yesterday for the day and wouldn't live there if you paid me but then I don't have to work for a living. I live in the middle of wine country in a small town of about 4,000 people. One thing that has struck me is how many people when first met have genuinely said, 'welcome'. If you go into a shop 3 times, they know you by first name. That isn't likely to happen in a big city. We have hiking, biking, canoeing, wine tasting all literally at our doorstep. So from a lifestyle point of view, we love where we are.

But if we were accountants, what would 2 of us do in a town of 4,000 even assuming we had acceptable qualifications? So it may well be that the place you would like to live is not within reasonable commuting distance of where you could find work. For example using Kelowna again, you might find work there but discover that Westbank where many people commute from is a suburban bedroom sprawl that you hate. To move to where I am you would be looking at a 2 hour commute each way.

So really Canada's size is both a blessing and a problem. No where is perfect and in Canada's case, what you have to look at is the long term gain rather than the short term pain. I think too much is sometimes made on here about short term annoyances and the bigger picture forgotten.

Job wise, it might make sense to look at the bigger picture as well. What is the fastest growing segment of the population and what are their accounting needs? Answer: retirees and income/estate management. We have just bought a condo in a new building and the majority of owners are retired and own outright. Many have downsized and have a few dollars to invest. How many specialist in helping them do you think are in our little town? Answer: none that I've heard of so far.

My point is that there are opportunites that could get you the perfect location as well as a job opportunity but you have to MAKE that happen, not look for an employer already providing it. Could you work towards that by spending the time you still have to wait, in getting Canadian qualifications, researching investment and estate planning in Canada, etc. In today's world, it's pretty easy to start a business from your home.

I've rambled a bit but what I am trying to say is that Canada can provide any opportunity you want. You just need to start thinking outside the box. Coming to Canada to become an accountant at Peat Marwick in Calgary is not exactly my idea of exciting or innovative. Do you want to start a new life or immitate your old one?

I concur....London centre and downtown ain't pretty. But you either go where the work is or go for the beauty and starve. Ok a slight exageration but you get my point.

great post judy !

You have sort of hit the nail on the head though, even if you were joking somewhat.

This was exactly the dilemma we were faced with when we moved to Ontario. We looked at some lovely farms around the Aurora area but neither my husband nor I could have lived somewhere so built up (relatively speaking).

We then looked at some equally lovely farms in The Kawarthas, however this area was at the opposite end of the spectrum - too remote for daily living.

Then we found the Northumberland Hills; location is just outside a decent little town, midway between two far larger towns/cities. This was perfect for us. We were always aware of the lower earning potential in this area, however it was a sacrifice we were not only willing to make, but happy to make and we are so glad we did.

However unlike the OP, we were looking for a laid-back life and we aren't here to make vast amounts of money........good job too, LOL!!

UK CIMA qualifications are recognised in BC BUT you need to sit 2 exams (tax and law) to get full accreditation equivalent to the BC CMA designation.

You then have a 'Canadian Accountancy Qualification'.

Don't know the cost, but 2 papers should be fairly straightforward in terms of studying.

Don't know about any of the other provinces 'though.

I think if you want the green rolling fields then Alberta only gives you that May to Oct, but then it all turns a bit brown i'm afraid. Which came as a bit of a shock to us, as we'd only seen it in the summer before we moved here.

There is so much growth here at the moment, and as Alberta has only just celebrated her 100th birthday, I think expansion will continue for a while to come too. The planners do seem to be putting a little more thought into the new projects they are building around the cities. Calgary has some pretty fancy apartment buildings in the downtown and Edmonton is trying to follow suit, with an expansion of the downtown area near Jasper ave.

Yup...the GTA sucks! Big time!