Photoplex

More jobs? It's a larger market. Are you really surprised a market with 7m people has more jobs than one with 1m people? I have some magic beans for sale if you're interested...

Better paid? Hahaha. Now that's funny.

Here's a few more to add to the list:
* not living with 7m other people
* not living in the worlds most indebted sub-sovereign borrower (twice the debt of California I believe)
* Doorstep access to the Rockies
* No PST

I could go on...

dbd33

So the advantage of Calgary is that it's a small town near mountains. The advantage of Toronto is that it's bigger with more jobs.

I didn't see a reference to pay rates in the previous posts so I don't know which one you think is better in that regard; I'd expect property to be cheaper in Calgary and that that is more important than income differences. There are differences in sales taxes and probably income taxes as well but, again, if your house is ruinously expensive, those are details.

klogd

Even with a 1/7 or 1.2/6 population ratio my searches seem to have a 1/25 - 1/15 ratio, but then again GTA might be better for software development for obvious reasons.

I'm pretty sure I'd hate living in Toronto, my own personal hell is going into London (or even Cambridge city centre).. people EVERYWHERE.

The PST and being close to Banff and other awesome places is definitely a big plus.

Housing prices in Calgary is a big selling point for me, I could never buy a nice place where I'm currently living, I just mentally can't bring myself to spend this amount of money on a shitty British apartment:

dbd33

Well, that's a pretty shitty Canadian house, a tract house with griege siding crammed next to 100 identi-houses with a view of yet more tract houses, good for fifteen years or so if there aren't any storms or fires. That's the sort of place the Talking Heads used to make records about.

I think you'd have to be moving from somewhere a lot rougher than the flat shown before that house would be attractive, Somalia perhaps.

Stinkypup

Nice analogy - which one though,
Road to nowhere?
In motion?
On fire?
Swamp?
Heaven?
or This must be the place?

No offence dbd but there were some real sheds that were being discussed on line on a thread a bit ago in your neck of the woods- yes, they had the acreage but didn't look fit for pigs let alone horses. You need that land, some don't- they like the snuggly closeness.

dbd33

The Big Country.

And I'm actually an urban person, I don't mind small houses closely packed. I'm just not a soulless plastic wasteland type of guy. The house pictured could be in Mississauga.

Stinkypup

Is Mississauga that bad?
Damn ... despite all my suggestions, I still got the wrong song

dbd33

It's a town of three halves. The south is older affluent suburbs, the north, former farmland, is treeless flat expanses covered in dense packed houses of the type shown. There's provision for shopping in the form of some malls. The major highways through Mississauga are lined with light industrial developments and some discount malls. It's not bad, it's just cheap housing, the miners' cottages of this century. Looking at the "before" pictures of Fort McMurray, it looked the same so, at least, the fire didn't do any aesthetic damage.

Steve_

Not really, but what is the point of moving from the UK to Mississauga? You might as well move to Slough.

dbd33

You get more consumer durables in Mississauga than in Slough and that, typically, is the core reason for moving to anywhere in Canada. Mississauga, Cochrane, Fall River, Coquitlam, none of them is routinely confused with Shangri-La.

Steve_

Cochrane is a lot bloody closer to it than Mississauga and Slough though.

Wasn't Legends of the Fall shot in Cochrane? Don't see that happening in Slough.

Siouxie

Watch the video in my post here: http://britishexpats.com/forum/canad.../#post11790271

Stinkypup

Thanks Siouxie,
Interesting to learn about other places. Probably not for me, I'm not a city pup- I love a slightly more rural outlook. I could see very few /if any park or large green areas. Are there any I wonder? There are some very handy shops I suppose, and an Imax. Canon service centre is there and I had to send mine in for repair so that's a bonus if local

dbd33

Not really, there's some green along the lake but the basic idea of a suburb is that you drive one way from it for work and the other way for grass. Mississauga is built on farmland and, for decades, its tax strategy has been based on revenue from lot levies; charges for converting more and more fields to concrete.

Steve_

I rest my case: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...tion-boom.html