supergirly

Hey everyone,

Just wandering if anyone here lives in London Ontario and could tell me a bit more about it. I know everything about the weather etc but am looking for stuff that you can't get from a website like are the people friendly there etc?

Thanks in advance for any replies

xxx

Tangram

Tom Masters does. PM them. Also Voyager.

sugar

Hi I live in London Ontario and have for the last 26 years.
I find the crime rate pretty low you can still walk around at night without getting mugged etc.
The police force is on top of most things no gangs of kids hanging around looking for trouble.
The cost of homes rents is much lower than Toronto with a better quality of life than a big city (in my opinion)
It is a major medical center providing many jobs in that sector.
I never hear of the schools having any problems racial etc.
As far as people being friendly I would say generally yes exceptions everywhere.
With a University and college we have a lot of young people from diverse and cultural backgrounds which I think adds to the city.
We have lovely parks which are well maintained, lots of camping lakes close by.
The job situation right now a lot of layoff especially in manufacturing but that is happening world wide.
This is a lovely city for a young family as the housing is reasonable the schools good and many recreational facilities.
If you want the night life there are lots of bars but I dont have much experience in that department.
The weather in winter can be crappy snow cold but this is Canada we say that if we didnt talk about the weather we would have no conversation.
I have noticed over the years the winters are changing so far this one is a doozy and we are only in January, but oldtimers have told me this was a typical winter years ago we are in the snow belt.
London has the distinction of being the thunderstorm capital of Canada not seeing as much of those either.
The summers can be hot and very humid air conditioning is a standard in most accomodations.
One thing we have a shortage of doctors in Ontario you will probably not get a family doctor straight away will have to go on a list.
For medical problems we have many "walk in clinics" where you wait to see a doctor you can also go to emergency at the hospitals.
The medical care in my opinion is excellent I have had personal experience with family member with serious condition.
We used to be called the forrest city I dont know if that still applies but we sure have lots of trees with most people maintaining their property.
If you come here I am sure most people will make you welcome.
My philosophy is you get out of life what you put in if you are friendly you will get the same.

Auld Yin

London is a very nice city in south-western Ontario. People are neither more or less friendly than anywhere else in Canada. From many other posts on this site it appears that immigrants from UK are quite surprised/pleased as to how friendly/helpful Canadians are.
The post by sugar mirrors my opinion of the city/area.

dbd33

Flat though, innit?

Td0t

My sister lives there. London is nice... It has a lot more character than your average Toronto suburb. It's a "city" with a town feel. The student population keeps the energy up, but it slows down conciderably when they leave for the summer.

The only thing about London is that it's two hours drive away from everywhere. Detroit 2h, Toronto 2h, Buffalo 2h. It makes cheep flights difficult.

KRoss

I have lived here since end of July 2007, rented for a year and bought a house in July 2008. I love living here, the people are friendly, lots of parks and green space. I dont find that being 2 hours from Detroit/Toronto a problem - in fact I always tell people it is convenient for flights because it is only 2 hours away from those airports! When I arrived in July 2007 there didnt appear to be any family doctors accepting new patients, although since then there have been a couple of doctors accepting new patients and we got one easily in the summer of 2008 - and near our home. In fact there is a website you can check to find out who is accepting patients http://www.ldam.ca/FindaDoctor/tabid/40/Default.aspx
and there is a couple of doctors accepting at the moment, so hopefully you will be in luck when you get here later on in the year.
Good luck with your move!
p.s. it is flat though! I was used to the rolling hills of the Scottish borders!

Bleepedy Bloops

I'm from London, born and raised for 18 years. Like someone mentioned, it's a city with a town atmosphere; some insightful pioneer in days of yore decided to call it "the forest city", because--amazingly--of it's many wooded areas in and around town, what a genius . The city itself is located smack dab in the middle of farm country, so you'll get some of that country air you would never get in a larger place like--cough--Toronto.

There isn't a whole lot in the way of cultural stuff or nightlife beside bars and clubs, but there is some. People tend to network socially very easily, lots of parties and get-togethers, BBQs in the summer. Driving around is very easy and stress-free, people aren't in hurry to get anywhere.

The main draw for young people is the UWO, and that's a positive. UWO is one of the premier univeristies in North America for medical research and several major discoveries have been made, none of which I can recall at the moment.

There are a few drawbacks to living here however, one of them being that there is a bit of lingering "rural" mentality among SOME of it's residents, hard to describe if that's a possitive or a negative, but it's there. Another would be that there is a fair amount of drug-taking among the younger crowd, and by "fair" what I really mean is "epidemic" ..that is the price of livin ina city with limited cultual avenues of entertainment...people tend to make heir own. Also, parts of the downtown core are very dilapidated in places, lots of closed storefronts and seedy cheque-cashing places, head shops etc. ..if you're a nightlife person looking for a cosmopolitan lifestyle, this isn't the place.

To sum up, I would say London is great place to grow up, make lasting friends, or to get into medicine.

Novocastrian

I've never lived in London but I go there quite often because I have contacts at UWO. I'd agree with the above posts, but just add that although UWO has several areas of excellence which attract excellent students from all over, it is also the "home" university for all the rural / small town areas in SW Ontario (pax U. Windsor). This produces a disproportionately large number of "party-hearty" students who do not IMHO add much to the charm of living there.

<Slightly off topic, but the reason why London is the thunderstorm capital of Canada is really rather interesting, at least to me. >

Bleepedy Bloops

That would be lake effect...the cold air off lakes Huron and Erie mix with the warmer air and presto, thunderstorms in the summer, snow snow snow in the winter. Good times.

Novocastrian

That's very close, but it's not so much the cold air, warm air but the convergence of lake breeze fronts from Erie and Huron (and to a lesser extent St. Clair). The fronts "bump" into each in the afternoons of summer months and initiate uplift, or convection, which is amplified by the existence of very warm boundary layer air (in the summer). If the synoptic flow is from the SW (which it usually is in July and August), then the convective cells are nicely developed when the system passes through the London region.

Lake effect snow is, of course, a result of synoptic winds picking up moisture from the relatively warm lakes and then cooling as they pass over the relatively cold land area. The lake effect snow from Erie and Huron operate independently of each other.

<you asked for that >

Bleepedy Bloops

I see ...so we have a weather expert here. You made it sound like you were curious for an answer; so I answered. I didn't say it was going to be the right answer

sugar

Thank you for the informative info

Novocastrian

No, don't take offense please. I only said it was interesting to me, I never expected a response. But thanks for yours anyway.

I'm not actually a weather expert, but specialize in atmospheric chemistry, so I need to understand dynamics as well.

<tutorial continues>

Since under the summer conditions described, the SW flow is highly polluted (having passed through Ohio and the US rust belt), the dirty boundary layer air convected to great heights by the thunderstorms (perhaps 15 km up), can actually be transported by the jet stream as far as Europe.

On not infrequent occasions, this polluted air from Ohio etc. gets into descending air over Europe and adds considerably to pollution levels over there.

It's a small world.

Bleepedy Bloops

Don't worry..you'd have to practically come up behind me with a skillet over the head to do something like that. I'm new here, wouldn't want to start things off badly or anything

Very interesting. I always wondered why less populated areas don't have air pollution to any noticeable degree, even when they're in the path of polluted air upstream, so that seems like a reasonable explanation to me.