Hi

Wife said that Calgary is out ( too cold) so we are looking at the London area, coming over at Easter , and looking at doing a recon in London, housing schools, work etc.

However with 2 x 8 years old trailiing around dairys,schools and esate agents is not their idea of fun, any advise about things to do in or around london over the easter weekend?

and any one recomend a decent hotel/ B&B motel in the london area as well.

just paid my first instalmenst to the consultants we are using, first step in long jounery!

cheers

Gary

[QUOTE=gary123]Hi

Wife said that Calgary is out ( too cold) so we are looking at the London areaQUOTE]
Does wifey know how cold it gets in Ontario?????

There's a Marriott Residence inn not to far from downtown (walkable) that is popular for longer stays as its has self catering facilities.

If you want to look at a nice area in London I'd recommend "old south" plenty of nice schools and a lovely neighbourhood and its a short walk to the centre (Wortley village).

It’s a nice city, nothing exciting but I enjoyed living there for a couple of years. It would make for a comfortable life style..It gets quite hot in the summer, too far from the lakes to get any cooling effect, but in the winter close enough to get lake effect snow… It has a couple of nice conservation areas on the outskirts of town and puts on a pleasant air in winter with at least two good outdoor rinks to skate on.. It does have a ski hill outside town.. but its very small.. for the summer the closest beach is down at Port Stanley.. but I’d recommend exploring lake Erie further as I liked to go closer to port Bruce and port Burwell.. and you can drive north to Grand bend for the “in� beach

You had better do some more research....the whole country can be veryvery cold in the winter months. I think you should think about where you will get work with your occupations instead of the weather....

[QUOTE=Tiaribbon] Calgary gets into the 30's in summer and Ontario gets pretty cold in the winter too.

The coldest I've experienced here was -35C.

Anyone from Ontario know any winter figures??

we had -32 last winter...

But : 1935, Iroquois Falls, Ontario: Temperature falls below to -58.3° C.(-72.9° F) Ontario's coldest day on record

I went to school for 5 years in London....found it to be cold in the winter with lots of snow.

It's close to alot of smaller cities/towns that are alot of fun to explore if you make London your home. You're very close to the KW area with the farmers' market, Octoberfest and lots of great factory outlets....Stratford is close by with the Stratford Festival and swans swimming on the pond across the street....great for kids......There's Elmira, St. Jacobs - to see the Mennonites still ride in horse/buggy (even in the winter)....draws a big tourist crowd.......and lots of other things to do and see.......

Good luck with your decision......

Calgary actually gets less snow ... we're technically in an arid area ... Ontario gets the lake effect snow ... really big dumps of snow.

The only way to avoid a Canadian winter is to head for BC ... or Mexico

thanks for the help, i am still getting use to this and i explained what info i wanted quite bad, so i will try again.

We have only just started our application to move so we are 2 years away, and a lot happens in two years, London is the first place we both liked the look of it and before we say i am 100% sure we want to move to Canada we wanted a feel for the country so as well as Toronto ,london was picked just for a sample of the way of life, does that make sense?

so info on where to stay , and what to do was what i was looking at more than anything else, and as i work for Diary crest i will go where the work is, on the other hand i spend 3 years at catering college and an extra 6 in a 3 star hotel as a chef , so if i can not work in a dairy i will go back in to catering.

your advice and guidence is of great of use to me , and i do understand that all is cold in canada, but when you see -33 you think of captin scott etc.

also my wife has a cousin in toronto which will be helpfull, however she is not a millonair and does not own a bar , so what good is she really?

thanks

Gary

-33C isn't too bad, until the windchill takes it down to -45C ... I can only think of a handfull of days since I got here when it's really got into the too cold category.

I don't think of anything above -17C as cold any more ... below that you're in frostbite temperatures and you need gloves, a toque, etc.

Make a few fact finding trips over ... make sure that one of them is Jan/Feb ... we were in Ontario in Feb 2001 when they had the worst winter in 50 years ... they had to call the army in.

I can remember sitting in the airplane waiting for the ground crew to de-ice the wings so that we could take off to fly back to the UK ... I still remember thinking "well, that wasn't too bad".

I guess London is as good as anywhere else ... it's a first step and you won't know you like Canada until you visit.

The rest of the country is still quietly sniggering about this behind Torontos back Anywhere else they would have just carried on as usual! A few years before that was the ice storm in eastern ontario and Quebec, some folks went without electricity for more than a month! Over 1000 of those huge steel towers toppled by the freezing rain. Unbelivable damage.

http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSIceStorm/jan10_nphoto2.html

Fantastic picture gallery. :scared: :scared:

I landed 2 days before the last power was restored, driving around kingston area in the spring there were no tops on any of the trees!

Nope that should read :

I back up what MikeUK said re Mariott Residence Inn.

We stayed there for 10 nights in April this year and it is a very comfortable place. You get a very good size living room which leads to small dining area and desk area with free high speed internet access. They have one and two bed suites and each comes with a full kitchen with oven, huge fridge/freezer, dishawasher etc. Comes supplied with all crockery etc. They also offer a shopping service whereby you leave your list at reception, they buy it all for you and deliver it to your room. If you are out they put it all away for you. Room price includes a free buffet breakfast. When we stayed in April we paid the equivilent of about £55 per night for a one room suite. Very good value for the extra space etc.

I attach some pics for info

regards
Jane

It's worth noting that Ontario does go all the way up to Hudson Bay and as you can imagine it gets fairly cold up that way. When most people talk Ontario they mean central Ontario where Toronto is or Southern Ontario where London is etc.

Toronto was pretty cold last winter with many days below -30C however it's not really that bad because you don't spend too much time standing around in actual -30 conditions. Most of the time you are in your house/apartment etc. which is equiped with heating and so forth or you'll be in work or shops etc all of which possess heating. So really It's only the short walks between cars/buses/subway/tim hortons etc. which are cold and a decent jacket, gloves and hat will see you well. Sure you might feel your hair turning to ice and lose the feeling in any exposed skin but as long as it isn't exposed for more than 5-10 minutes you won't get frostbite and have to have it amputated.

All that said you will get maybe a few weeks worth of days that are that cold, most of the time it will be between say -15 and 0 with most of the snow coming closer to zero, otherwise it's too cold to snow much. That's the main difference between winter in most of Canada and the UK. The temperature isn't a big deal, it can feel fairly damned cold in the UK when it drops below zero and you get the damp and a decent wind. The difference is in the general climate. In say for example Toronto and southern Ontario you can pretty much predict an even climate for winter, you know when it will get coldest and there will be a good amount of snow, the ground will be white turning to a mushy slushy brown as the months go by and the sky will be mostly clear and blue and sunny when it isn't snowing. In the UK you get the very changable unpredicatble weather with much more prevelance of grey skies and rain or just dark cloudy frosty days. I think this is why winter in the UK is seen in a different light. Whilst people here in Canada complain about winter and lament the shortness of Summer they still embrace winter and it's a more uplifting affair than in the UK. At least in my experience.

Drew