Hi Sonia,

We moved here based on an eight day recce.

We spent 4 days in Kelowna (B.C)and 4 days in Vancouver.

Vancouver is a great city and a fantastic part of the world but we opted for Kelowna as we have a 5 year old and felt with the outdoor lifestyle,lakes,and smaller city, it would be better suited for us.

Plus we came from a big city in England so felt that we wanted a change as opposed to going to Vancouver, which is another big city !

Having said that, we love visiting Vancouver as it really is a great place, plus there are also some great communities around Vancouver !

That is what i am like, i will adapt to any situation. I am very open minded, and believe if you are happy in yourself it doesnt matter which country you live in you will enjoy it.

I do hope you like your trip and the kiddies enjoy it. Please pm or my msn address is in my profile and let me know how you get on.

Take care sonia x

I want my children to be happy and also my husband in his job like you say, but what i put in the last post, i am happy to up and go without visiting first but i am more open minded than my partner, also i want to know what my kiddies think.

Saying that though! like someone said in an earlier reply on here, you never really get the feel of living in a different country in 2,3 or 4 weeks....you will never experience the day in day out of living there.

Anyway, what will be will be!.

Take Care.

Sonia x

We did, just up and came to Saskatchewan after only spending 2 hours in Niagra. Guess what I'm not go back Ok maybe for hols

We did it, hubby was offered chance with the company he works for, sent application to London end of Dec 07 received OK end of Jan sent me to Canada house hunting couple days later (he has no patience) and moved 31st March with house completion 1st April. Survived a month in a house we both like, land for the 3 dogs we bought with us and spent lots of money on things like furniture and truck Certainly made life interesting

Absinthe, cough mixture, and turps.




R.

I must be in the minority on here then.

I moved here in Dec 1999 after 3 trips earlier in the year (including my first in Jan when T.O. had a huge storm that had the army clearing the snow) Made the decision to move to be with my then Girlfriend, (Wife now) who i had met online....

Had no family or friends here, no job either. put my life in 4 cardboard boxes and left. Was homesick for about a month, missed my kids who were with my ex wife in Wales. Was out of work for 10 months until my work permit came through..

Within a year of moving i was landed, had a work permit, a brill job and life was good...and still is. I go back to the UK only on business (3 times so far) never once feel like a made a bad decision. In fact while there last December i called my wife and told her i was homesick and wanted to get on the plane asap.
Nothing bad to say about the UK, One of my daughters moved here 5 years ago when she was 12, now at 17 she is as Canadian as any other kid in our street, my other daughter is 19 and moving over next year after her schooling is done.

I work as a Design Engineer, and in South Wales it was always a worry if you would have a job next week, we lived in a small semi,

Over here i have been promoted a lot, still with the same company i joined in 2001, we have just had a 3500 sq ft house built..... Would i go back......Ummm NO

just my 2 (canadian cents) :-))))

I've done it twice - I moved to Amsterdam when I was 21 and then moved to Chicago last year.

In the case of Amsterdam I was young free and single and wanted to see something of the world. I moved 6 weeks after being offered the job, packed all of my worldly possessions into one suitcase and headed off. Never seen the place, couldn't speak a word of Dutch, didn't know anyone there. I lived there 8 years and loved it although I couldn't stay there forever.

Because we couldn't stay there forever (British husband who I met in Amsterdam, 3 year old who didn't speak English etc) we started looking at countries to emigrate to (Canada was and still is #1 on that list!). In the meantime my husband got an offer to transfer to the Chicago office of his firm, and so we took it. He'd been here twice on business, we'd both been to New York and Toronto as well, and so I had a fairly good idea of what Chicago would be like. I also read the local newspapers online a lot, read the tourist books etc. Everything we needed around us would be there and we would be able to leave Amsterdam sooner rather than later. It was just what we needed.

In both cases I don't have any regrets. I am also the kind of person who fits in anywhere, I had a good idea of what to expect, I am quick to find my feet in new places (I've travelled like you wouldn't believe). The thought that I hadn't even visited the places I was moving to did cross my mind and of course others always thought it was insane. But at the end of the day you are either the kind of person who makes the best of what they've got or you aren't.

I'd say the biggest problems most movers have is that they aren't prepared for what they are leaving behind rather than what they are going to. If you know you are going to be OK not being down the road from your mum or whatever, then the place you are going to is less important. And it's not as if you are sinking your life savings into this like some do, it's on someone else's dime so you don't have as much to lose.

We did - just 10 days ago.

Ok, people may say that we're in the honeymoon period but our day to day living has just fitted in with Canadian life.

We bought a map at the airport and drove very happily from Calgary to Edmonton - even stopping in toys r us on the way to buy a cot for our 21 month old son.

If you're the kind of people that just knuckle down, embrace change and basically get on with things you'll do just fine.

I've even joined the world of public transport (something I never did in the UK) and am happily and very easily getting three buses from one end of the city into the downtown area. I've even got a bus buddy - a lady from the neighbourhood who said Hi the first morning.

The majority of people are friendly, chatty and helpful.

We're pacing ourselves with the tourist attractions so there's something new to explore when we have days off.

We're having a fantastic time. A friend asked me what I miss about the UK and apart from the obvious 'friends and family' answer I can't think of anything.

Good luck with your planning.

Nikki, Ian & Thomas

hey guy's your here, all going well?

Personally I couldn't go without at least one recce - but then I'm the kind of person that has to plan and research everything to death!! So I just wouldn't take that chance, especially as we have two very young kids. We're only going for a couple of years (job transfer for hubby, no intention to stay forever unless we really love it) and hubby's company are paying for everything but even so, we're still planning on a quick recce of the place just to make sure we don't hate it! Just the cost of moving over there and the uprooting of the children from their daily lives means that I would have to be 100% sure I wanted to live there if I were emigrating.

If I were planning to emigrate to Canada now without having been there, I would probably choose Toronto as the place to settle. But, I've been there numerous times (ex-boyf was Canadian and lived there) and I really didn't like it at all. So I would have hated living there and that could well happen to other people that don't do a recce I guess - I don't think it's so much the country that you might not like but just choosing which area is best for you to settle in I guess.

We reccied New Brunswick and I would wholeheartedly recommend it. At the time we had to chose between landing in Halifax and driving around or Landing in Boston USA and driving up. We chose Boston purely on economics and had a post reccie three day wind down in the White Mountains NH.

Now you can get direct Reccie flights from Gatwick to Fredericton NB. They are running every Tuesday until October with Canadian Affair

After being here for almost 9 years i still say that :-)

Snap, I dont miss anything ..... I am nearly out of my baked bean withdrawl symptoms

It took a while to get out of Walkers Scampi Crisps though..

Recently i found in our village a dollar store with a counter full of "British" foods.
Now that brought back some memory's