Hi All

But Jaycee the thing about your part of "Cheshire" is it also happens to be part of Tameside which is going down the pan fast - so don't you have any silly thought about coming back to here

Gay
x

Hey Gay.....NOOOO chance of that happenin', you can be assured of that!! Wild horses couldn't drag me back there! As Paul Brandt says in the song......."and I'll be Alberta bound until I die............"

Hi all,
We are just starting the process to emigrate and can't really understand where your going with this and why you started it?

"On balance I am still happy to be in Canada (just as well as I couldnt afford to move back), but the UK is far from the decaying cesspool of humanity its sometimes portrayed as by the media...if you have the means to live in a reasonable area.[/QUOTE]"

Why did you move to Canada in the first place, what were your main reasons?

Uk is ok, if you are well paid, not many are. New cars as already said, company cars and credit, house prices, bloody mad, if you are a first time buyer now, watch out weather can be good, good for the farmer, lots of places to visit, but cost a fortune, so if you have not got a well paid job, hard luck. then there is taxes, petrol prices,healthcare, schools and the threat of the yob society (when you have young kids growing up) and there bindge drinking ways. Which does go on, if you take a look around all the major cities later at night.

We live in Birmingham, and it's ok, we want to move out, if it means emigrating or moving to a different part of the country. My wife is in the education system and what she tells me, does not sound very promising for our kids future and that's a big push for us to get out and try somewhere totally different and new. we would like to settle in Calgary, cold in the winter and warm in the summer. Not like here, we do get some brillaint weather, but on a whole, raining and cold. Also it's what other posts have said, it's the adventure. We are going to give it at least 3 years, get our citizenship, then we have the option and the means to come back

Cheers all,
carl

I'm sorry to hear about your mum Iain - my deepest sympathies....

I agree with a lot of what you said in your original message but I do also agree with the possibility that it's seeing things with fresh eyes but visitors ones...

Britain is probably one of the most lovely places to visit in the world, it's also a pretty darn good place to live too, so green, so much history and fantastic quirks but we wanted a change - we needed to get out and see if we could live out our dream of moving to Canada and we are so happy we have.

We lived in a beautiful area, had lots of friends, two good jobs and a nice house BUT we had itchy feet, also my hubby's job meant he had to work 50+ hours a week every week, debt more or less seems inevitable in Britain unfortuantely (or, yes, unless you don't want to go on the slightly bigger holiday or have a newer car or whatever, which is usually personal choice) but the move to Canada is not utopia either and that's the realistic outlook we had to put on our move to make sure it worked for us - and fingers crossed, so far it has.

Canada is not an escape but a new adventure for us, I am sure when we go back to visit we will be sorry to leave the UK behind again but mostlly it will be because we will have packed in so much in and seen so many people that the visit will be emotionally charging but we know in our hearts that, to quote Fatboy Slim, right here, right now, it is right for us.

Hi Carl

Please don't think I am having a go at you particularly but .....

Ditto for Calgary


Ditto for Calgary


Very few places to visit are free in and around Calgary. If you are talking purely about trips to the Rockies - then the cost of gas involved in doing so is not insignificant

Canada has taxes as well, petrol prices have gone up nearly 25% in the 3 months that we have been here, healthcare isn't cheap (particularly prescriptions, locals in Calgary are begining to complain about schooling (lack of financial investment arising from the recent budget where the politicians backtracked on previous pledges - politicians the world over are the same:curse: )


We like it here and can't see ourselves returning to Blighty, but never say never and all that.

Exactly.............I think if you come to Canada thinking it doesn't have problems then you are in for a big reality check. We came with eyes wide open, have absolutley loved some aspects of living here, and not liked others. There are pro's and cons for both countries, and living away from the UK has made us realise just how many pro's we had in our part of pretty Cheshire. (South Cheshire btw Jaycee, Alsager/Sandbach area to be exact, but I grew up in beautiful Tarporley)

Canada has been really good to us, coming here WAS the big adventure we craved for whilst sitting in day to day UK life, and it broke us out of the little rut we had gotten ourselves into.

I think if people leave the UK after slagging the place off, they could have to eat some serious humble pie, if the new chosen country doesn't turn out to be everything you 'imagine' it to be.

You can never account for feelings.
Don't get me wrong, I have loved living here and would have happily stayed for a few more years, but forever is a very long time, and we just couldn't see that happening. Hubby's homesickness is the main reason for our return, but ageing parents with a few health problems is another big facet.

We are sooooo glad to have done it though. Good luck to everyone starting out on their big adventure. Have to have a few, to stop life being boring i always say !

R2D2

You had better swot up on your Polish then. my sister lives in Haslington and most of the road signs are now written in Polish first with the English beneath.
The Asda in Crewe makes you feel like your on your hols cos your the only one speaking English.
I'm by no way racist but i am English and would like to be able to ask for something i can't find in my own language.....in England.

jo

but you'll be happy to point and gesture in Canada?

One thing I really enjoy about England, and I'm talking Brent here not Virginia Water, is that ordinary people usually do speak passable English. I can go for days in Toronto without meeting anyone who speaks any English (or French) at all.

(I cheerfully admit the implied racism, btw, it's nothing like as racist as my opinion of drivers in Canada).

I must have travelled around the UK in January with an automatic translation facility programmed in. There were a few more Eastern European languages floating around, but I evidently missed the tsunami of Poles everyone else is bothered by. I saw no major road signs in Polish - anywhere. If foreigners speaking their own language and road signs in the local ethnic languages is an issue for you, you are not going to like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal.... Actually, after Dwayne/Dwaynetta F***wit Redneck says "pardon me?" to you for the twentieth time when you know damn well you spoke erm...English....you might want to consider rethinking xenophobia as an emigration strategy.

LOL you wouldn't like Vancouver then when lots of the store signs are in Chinese and Korean!! You've got to open your mind a bit. I've loved the Asian feel of Vancouver, that part I will miss.

Yessssss!!!! I'm bloody good I am!! I was looking at all the lovely parts of Cheshire today (because I'm nosey and have been dying to know where you could come from ) and for some reason I was drawn to Tarporley....that is so weird, but true! Had to ask OH where abouts it really was though and he says its in the Lymm/Knutsford vicinity??? We were both even looking at property and prices in Tarporley on rightmove.co.uk and I didn't even know that's where you were from. Well good on you R2D2 for going back there with more you came out with.....hope you find a lovely property and it works out just great for you all!! I can definitely understand why you miss that part of the UK now

My bessie friend lives in Tarporley...lovely part of Cheshire. We were looking at property in that area earlier in the year.

You knocked the nail on the head with that one dingbat! It's become a bit of an embarrassment for me sometimes when I have to repeat what I say a few times, no matter how slow and clearly I say it! I mean, I'm talking ENGLISH for goodness sake but they just look at me and go "Uh?" I'm sorry but I refuse to round my accent off to sound more Canadian (well not just yet anyway!!!) and I still pronounce my "t's" that way rather than said as a "d".

Sorry, but tell hubby he's a lttle off the mark there.
Tarporley is actually not that far from Chester. If you are going from Nantwich to Chester, Tarporley is roughly in the middle.

Its very lovely, but comes at a lovely price too, so can't afford Jack s**t back there. Thats why, when we got married, we had to buy elsewhere.

We have lived in Middlewich ,Alsager and Sandbach and are looking to move back to Alsager.

Deb xx

Thats the thing isn't it. It all depends on what you had and where you came from, as to how you draw the comparisons of life over here.

We spent our whole lives surrounded by rolling green countryside, so when you don't see that any more on a daily basis, it takes some adjusting too. We just miss the little things that made us who we are.

Canada is great, but the great things don't make up for the things we no longer have in our lives. Not at this moment in time anyway.

I guess I'll have to see for myself if I'm falling over Polish folk at every turn Funny, all my family and friends don't mention 'the invasion'.