Lessons Learned
 

We have been in New Brunswick for nearly 20 months and I havent posted much on the website down to spending most of our time outdoors :D

I have been keeping a diary since arriving and I am in the process of putting them into a blog. Something that may be of use to others is conducting a lessons learned thread. See my lessons learned entry in the blog.

I hope others will add their lessons learned to this thread.

Loving it here :D

David

Re: Lessons Learned
 

David, I found your "Lessons Learned" web page interesting. It is well laid out, clear, and contains lots of good information. I think it would be helpful to people who were thinking about moving to New Brunswick.

But one thing that I think is misleading, and therefore potentially unhelpful, is the fact that that page refers to "Canada" all the time. Some of the things you say are pretty much universally true of the whole of Canada, but some of them are not. Some of the experiences you've had are reflective of your region of Canada.

I think it would be more useful to readers of your "Lessons Learned" page if you placed greater emphasis on the fact that you were in New Brunswick.

Hope that helps.

Re: Lessons Learned
 

Thanks for sharing :) We have friends in New Brunswick who found things much the same as you guys when they first got there. Their pace of life has slowed tremendously and they now seem to spend a lot more time doing what they want to do, as opposed to what they have to do. Sounds good to me!:thumbsup:

Re: Lessons Learned
 

Hi there,

I really enjoyed reading your blog ;). I always find it interesting to read about other people's experiences on their first year in Canada. I think I will have to start a blog when we are closer to the time of moving, got ages yet!

Karen

Re: Lessons Learned
 

Great blog, loads of details. Glad to hear you are settled and enjoying yourselves.

You must live just around the corner from where we used to! We lived in the big red house on the right hand side near the top of the hill in Carriage Hill Drive!

Re: Lessons Learned
 

Hi Tuppence,

I'm glad you like the blog and you are right we are just around the corner from Carriage Hill Drive Canadian style about 2 or 3 km further out turn left at Valley Ridge Furniture.

We have some friends up on Fawn Crescent (about 1km up Deerwood) so we drive past your old house couple of times a month.

Where are you now?

Re: Lessons Learned
 

I've added a couple of random thoughts from three months in Kelowna - landed end May 07.:D

Re: Lessons Learned
 

Thanks and I totally agree with the bit about buying transformers in the UK. I would also check if your dvd player / video player is multi-region and multi voltage. We found out by accident that our daughter's portable UK TV with built in video player actually worked at 110v and didnt need a transformer :~)

Re: Lessons Learned
 

Great Blog! Its a fantastic read and very helpful.

Karla x x x

Re: Lessons Learned
 

Education Lesson Learned - Hope this saves you some money
One point I want to add is that when we arrived one of our daughters was 18 year old (sad but the drinking age in NB is 19, how would you feel getting to be able to drink in a pub in July then losing it again in Nov!!!).

Well back to the point. In the UK she had attended the local college and studied for two years to gain a BTEC diploma in Applied Medical Science and some A2's in Maths. When she arrived here she needed to apply to university and they didnt recognise her qualifications, infact they barely glanced at them and suggested an Arts degree.

Two courses of action were
1. to get them fully translated for equivilence by WES at a cost of $250ish (we should have done this first) and then resubmitted to University. Instead we also took step 2.
2. Put her into the local community college to redo Year 12 of NB high school essentials (mistake).

The college cost us $5,700 for the year, most of the students where dropouts from previous high school years long term unemployed and some dubious community service clients. After the year we discovered we could have probably got her into High school (for free) because they often keep kids in school if they have received their graduation scores.

Re: Lessons Learned
 

Credit Rating and other thoughts:
Bring letters of reference from your utility suppliers (Gas Electricity etc) to tell of your credit worthiness. Then you will be able to avoid some high security payments at the start. We had to submit $400 with the power company as a security bond (they gave it back at the end of the year).

If you have the money put a large deposit on a car and take out the auto company interest free loan for a small amount. This will establish your rating. We brought at Ford (they seemed the friendliest for credit) and I also had a second car on a 3 year lease (again to help increase our credit rating).

Definitely bring letters regarding no claims bonus etc from your car insurer it may help. It helped us in NB. Auto insurance in NB is very high especially for immigrants.

Re: Lessons Learned
 

Payment - Direct Debits
Asked for Equalization Payments (monthly payments) for your utilities this is a form of direct debit otherwise you will be issuing monthly checks for power, gas etc.

Bank Charges
Banks in Canada do not provide a free current account service (well not in NB) and they charge for services like using another banks ATM. Both banks will charge you $1.50 for a withdrawl so you get stung for $3.00!
There are monthly charges that will depend on how many transactions you will be doing.

Re: Lessons Learned
 

We live in Fall River now, and work in Halifax.

I love Valley Ridge. We bought a hugely expensive bedroom set in there, in the good old days when we were spending house equity and still converting back to pounds! It scares me when I think what we could buy with that money now :eek:

Re: Lessons Learned
 

Yes we brought a hugely expensive dining table and chairs in there too.

Fall River is a nice sounding name. I have visited Halifax a couple of times working for xwave (part of Aliant). I was lucky to get a job pretty quickly in Fredericton so we settled pretty fast.

Re: Lessons Learned
 

I certainly agree about the TV, and I have been here for nearly 40 years. I have solved the problem by renting a digital box from our local cable company. I record the shows and fast forward over those incessant commercials. Sometimes in a prime time show it seems like the ads are longer than the programs.