First of all, the information provided at Goods To Follow-Canada : British Expat Wiki is great, thank you to the contributors.

However, having never declared before, I do have a few questions, some specific to my own situation.

1. If flying to Ottowa via Toronto (from NY), is the goods to follow declaration made in Toronto or Ottowa? The goods will ultimately be shipping via Toronto.

2. My spouse (Canadian citizen) will be going back to Canada a little before me, to find an apartment, so we have somewhere to ship to. Some of the items are specifically mine, but she will be declaring everything as her own. Is that fine? I'd assume being married everything we own is considered joint property.

3. We have door to door shipping booked (Pickfords). How does it work with the stamped goods to follow form received? Is a trip to Toronto still required to accept the goods, or does the shipper somehow arrange this step? If going to Toronto, do they expect you to get there immediately, or give you notice and a set time?

4. The goods to follow examples show the list can be surprisingly vague e.g. 2 boxes of books, assorted tools. Has anybody done this recently and can confirm no problem with this? I was going to count all my books, DVDs etc, but it would be a pleasant time saver to not have to quantify them. I realise more distinctive/valuable items e.g. laptop computer should be described in more detail (including serial numbers).

5. Related to the above, does each item/collection need to be packed individually? So for the boxes of books example, can I put some clothes in there too? I have loads of large boxes already, and want to fill them to the brim with assorted goods.

6. For estimating value of items, is this in it's current used state, or to buy new? What about items that do not exist for sale anymore? e.g. for a laptop, is it how much I originally paid for it, how much it's worth now its been used for a few years, or the price for the latest model of the same line?

1. Goods are declared at the airport where you clear Customs i.e. Toronto.

2. As long as she informs CBSA when making the declaration that some goods are yours it will be fine.

3. You will be able to clear the goods in Ottawa I believe its this address
Local Address:
140 Thad Johnson Private
Ottawa ON K1V 0R4
The shipper will notify you when the goods have arrived and give you the shipping manifest to clear your goods.

4. Descriptions like boxes 1 to 4 Books, 5 to 9 kitchen utensils etc etc. You can mix and match boxes.

5. Estimated values for Customs purposes are what the goods are worth now as opposed to replacement value for insurance purposes.

So following on from 3., the procedure is to go to the customs office (unlikely to be Ottawa though, my wife is just visiting, we'll actually be in Belleville initially) once requested for clearance, and only then can the shipper continue onwards to deliver to the address given?

And from 4., I should clearly label my boxes in some way? How about the ones that Pickfords will pack themselves? They insist on handling the packing of insured items.

Let Pickfords do as much of the packing and labelling as possible. It's so much easier. They are more efficient and more knowledgeable. Plus then it's all on them for insured items, as you said.

When our shippers packed our boxes, they just stuck numbers on each box, so we could see clearly boxes 1 through 31. They filled out a manifest that was super generic. Box 1-6: Kitchen implements. Box 7-8: dishes. Box 9-11: linens. Box 12-15: Books. Box 16-20: Clothes. And so on. It's totally fine.

The wiki has a link to how we set up our goods to follow list, I actually screenshot them and uploaded them. You can be super vague. Our packers actually labelled one box that wa sjust the overflow of loads of little things as "household misc ornaments", lol.

My problem is my wife will have submitted the goods to follow prior to the shippers collecting our goods, so I don't know which items will be in which numbered boxes. Is it essential to include this information? I read on the wiki not all goods need to be brought in one consignment (or at all), so I wouldn't have thought it essential, just useful. I'm only expecting to have about 10 boxes.

Don't bother numbering the boxes then, just make an approximate guess and guess high. Our GTF list had all the stuff from the shippers but didn't have the box numbers, or even the number of boxes. Just the description and the approximate value. (Seriously, go look at the post with the linked example. )

Yours looks like my current one, no mention of boxes. So I'll stick with that, although the boxes I do pack myself (to save time on collection day), I'll try to label in some way.

Has anybody ever had trouble with the goods to follow list and had it denied?

Not sure where to raise it, but I've got an amendment for the wiki - form B4 is no longer in use, see http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publicati...d2-1-5-eng.pdf

There are now equivalents, linked from that PDF.