MelVan

I've been meaning to write up a report on my move to Vancouver for ages, but as you can imagine the move, reestablishment tasks (and sadly, an unexpected trip back to Australia to deal with the death of a parent) have been taking up all my time.

In summary, with the help of all the great advice here over a few years, everything went pretty smoothly. That is not to say that moving countries is not without challenges, but being forearmed with plenty of knowledge and being as organised as possible minimises the adverse effects of the challenges!

Some background

We (Canadian +1 and I) had a rather longer gap than we expected between me getting PR and us moving to Vancouver. This was sort of work-related. The short version is we decided to retire on our move to Canada and not keep working, at least for the time being. That may change for me (+1 is adamant working life is over) if I decide a life not working does not suit me. So far not working has suited me (very much). Wrapping up our respective long careers took longer than we thought, and that delayed our move.

We chose Vancouver as our next home (+1 has lived in Canada, France, the UK and Australia, and I've lived in the UK and Australia) as it has a clement climate, great proximity to outdoorsy stuff that we like to do (ski, scuba and hike), reasonably convenient transport links, a decent enough cultural life, a great food scene, decent enough public transport and it would be easy enough for us to continue work if we decided to do that. We also have family and friends here, so the presence of those networks were also important.

Our eyes were wide open to the cost of housing and living in Vancouver. Having lived in London, Sydney and Melbourne, high housing and living costs are the norm for us!

MelVan

The move

We probably didn't do this as well as it could have been done. We didn't make enough detailed lists, and did a few things on the run as we literally ran out of time to finalise the packing up in Australia.

We decided not to ship furniture. We didn't have anything particularly precious that we wanted to bring with us, and were planning on changing living styles from a freestanding house with garden to an apartment. So we got rid of some furniture, put a couple of pieces into long term storage (my piano and our dining room table and chairs, probably the two pieces of furniture that are most important to us) along with our book collection (which is taking up the bulk of our storage space, and unless we created a bespoke library room here in Vancouver, we would never have been able to accommodate all the books) and threw out vast quantities of junk we'd accumulated over the years.

There is also no way I could have brought my complete batterie de cuisine. My kitchen in Melbourne was bespoke built to accommodate a lifetime's acquisition of cooking equipment from three countries (the UK, France and Australia). The shipping cost would have been substantially added to (a complete set of Le Creuset, and beautiful (but very heavy) copper saucepans from Dehillerain in Paris weighs a bloody ton), and I would have needed a bespoke kitchen in Vancouver to fit it all in. Regretfully I had to exercise some discipline on that front and pack only what I simply could not live without. The rest remains in storage.

We also decided against bringing our art collection, at least initially. Because we weren't sure what sort of housing we'd have, and whether our art collection could be accommodated, we packed it up shipping ready and it is living at a close friend's place who has secure storage (and the ability to top up his home contents insurance policy).

We ended up packing and shipping 15 tea chests of winter and sports gear, some books and DVDs (box sets that we'd been saving up over the years to watch when we'd stopped working) and cooking and kitchen kit. We were informed by the shipping company it would take about 12 weeks to reach Canada, and the ship arrived in Vancouver pretty much on the mark, with another couple of weeks or so to clear customs.

We had a luggage allowance between us of 8 pieces of luggage at 32kg each, which we used to the limit to bring our clothes other than winter gear and some initial personal effects such as one set of bed and bath linen, and my most useful small kitchen kit that I really cannot live without (my good knives, my hand cranked mouli, measuring cups and spoons, and a small set of cutlery.

While we kept a basic list for the purposes of our goods to follow list, if I had my time over again I would have prepared much more detailed inventories of the stuff we put into storage and the stuff we shipped. It would have been great to have had a detailed list of what we shipped for the purposes of knowing whether we should buy something new here in Vancouver, or whether it was coming over to us!

Once we finished all our packing up tasks at 3am the night before we flew out(!!!), our actual flight to Vancouver (via Los Angeles) went perfectly smoothly.

MelVan

On arrival

We stayed with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law for the first days when we arrived while we got over the jet lag and did the urgent landing things, such as getting our BC driver licences, registering with BC Health and buying a car. We had all of that done within a few days. +1 still had Canadian bank accounts (but not a credit card, which proved to be somewhat inconvenient until a card was obtained), and I had established my bank accounts and credit card when I did my landing about 18 months beforehand, so they were all in place before our move. However getting a credit card for +1 proved to be a bit of a pain (because of no ongoing credit rating and trying show income based on investments etc) and the limit for +1 is quite low (BMO, with whom we bank, had very kindly given me a series of (unsolicited) credit limit increases after my landing, but even so, I had to keep paying into my credit card account in the first couple of months to make sure that things like furniture purchases didn't overrun my credit limit).

Getting our driver licences was reasonably straightforward. With the benefit of the excellent guidance here, we had obtained before we left hard copies of our driver licensing histories in Australia, and confirmation of the length of our car insurance policies and no claims status in the ICBC required format. We had to take an eye test and a 5 question test about BC driving laws (note to future BC residents – have a quick shufti of the BC driving laws, in particular about those infernal flashing green lights and more obscure things such as what you should do if you see a car with hazard lights activated by the side of a road), hand in our existing licences and then we were issued with interim BC licences. The photocards arrived in the post pretty promptly a few days later.

Buying a car was about the most straightforward thing we did in the first few days. We'd already decided we would lease a new Subaru Outback. We've owned Outbacks for the last 20 years, and find them reliable and very well suited to our lifestyle. Being a station wagon/medium SUV, they're very handy for transporting furniture around! I'd corresponded with the Subaru dealer before I left Australia to set up and appointment. We turned up, went through the specifications of the vehicle we wanted, handed over vast sums of money for the down payment and set up a direct debit for the monthly lease payments. We had no issues with getting credit approved. Three days later we had our new car.

We then moved into a B&B for two weeks, and set that as the limit to find somewhere to live. It took about ten days to find an apartment and sign a lease. As it was a brand new place, we were able to move in right away. The landlords had appointed an agent to handle the leasing and the amount of personal information they wanted from us was extraordinary! Because we're not working full time and living on investment and other income streams, that did not quite compute for the agents, so we had to do a fair bit of explaining and demonstrating how we were not any sort of money risk! Our personal references in Canada (lucky we had those) were also checked.

The apartment has turned out to be terrific. It is on the top floor of a six storey building in the Cambie corridor. We have a roof top deck covering the full footprint of the apartment, so in effect we have a garden, with panoramic views of downtown, the north shore mountains and we can see some of English Bay. There's some garden beds maintained by the body corporate, and we've installed various planters for growing veggies and herbs etc. Being a brand new, LEED six star has also been brilliant. Our utility costs are tiny (only BC Hydro for power), and in a new apartment with energy very efficient lighting and heating and cooling, our monthly bill has been about $70 each month (and we've been using the cooling system very often). Water and gas (stovetop cooking is the only thing) included in the rent.

MelVan

Establishing a new home from scratch, more or less

We had to give some thought and prioritise what we bought and from where we bought it. After the amount of crap we threw out in the move, we were pretty horrified about that waste and resource consumption we'd undertaken over the years and agreed we would try to source as much as possible second-hand. We didn't do too badly, although there were some things that were really difficult to come by second-hand.

Looking at our purchase records, our priorities were something like this:

1. Beds
2. Basic kitchen kit to cook and eat off
3. Sofa
4. TV and TV lowboy
5. Coffee table
6. Table & chairs
7. Bedroom furniture
8. Bookcases
9. Complete kitchen kit
10. Artwork
11. Outdoor furniture

We decided that we would buy new, good quality beds – so that was one queen bed for the master bedroom and two single beds for the guest rooms. We also bought the bed linen we needed for the single beds new.

We were able to buy a second-hand sofa, table and chairs, TV lowboy, hall table, office desk and drawers and bedside tables. We ended buying a new bedroom chest of drawers and a bookcase as we couldn't find what we wanted second-hand. Second-hand outdoor furniture and gardening items were in very limited supply, so we ended up having to buy the key items new (from a variety of places such as Canadian Tire, Home Depot, Rona and London Drugs (which now appears to sell virtually everything!)).

We were also able to outfit about 90% of our kitchen with second-hand things. All of our electrical appliances bar our toaster and kettle and working kitchen kit were bought second-hand from Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace and estate/garage sales. We could not believe our luck with this stuff. The electrical appliances all seemed virtually brand new to me, and those selling them said they'd used them once or twice (or not at all). We saved a lot of money buying them this way (eg, a food processor for $125 that retails for $400). We also had some unbelievable luck – when picking up a second-hand vacuum cleaner, the seller said he and his sister were having their mother's estate sale that day and I was welcome to take a look. It turned out there was a lot of good quality and again what looked like barely used kitchen stuff like ceramic baking dishes, Pyrex dishes, platters, baking pans etc. I put together a box of stuff and the seller said since I'd bought a vacuum from him he'd give me the box for $10!!!! A huge saving over buying it all new.

Thrift stores also came in very handy for getting quite a lot of miscellaneous kitchen kit. There's no shortage of things like Pyrex dishes, stuff like glass water jugs, cocktail and wine glasses and utensils available at such places for very little money in comparison to buying new. We were able to piece together complete sets of wine glasses (red, white, champagne and cocktail) for a song. The "ick factor" is pretty easily dealt with – run it all through the dishwasher on an intensive cycle. It all came out looking brand new.

We tried hard to piece together a dining crockery set but had no luck with that, so bought two Ikea plain white sets of plates and bowls, along with some water glasses. We had no trouble putting together sets of mugs second-hand.

All that said, our housing establishment costs were $21,600. It is amazing how quickly it all adds up. I don't think anything we bought could be described as especially extravagant, either. The biggest category spends were furniture (including beds and bedding), outdoor furniture and electrical appliances. We could have saved some money by shipping some more kitchen kit, but as most of our furniture in our home in Melbourne was built in/bespoke, we couldn't have avoided the new furniture costs. I think this really emphasises the advice I've seen on here about being very detailed in your planning (down to the last spoon) to get an idea of what likely establishment costs you will face.

MelVan

Some observations on living in Vancouver and Canada

Although I was superficially familiar with Canada from visiting for work and seeing family and friends here over the years, I've been surprised at how quickly Vancouver and Canada has become to feel like home. There are very many big picture similarities between Canada and Australia – the system of government and how the laws work are very, very similar; we were both dominions in the Empire; we share the same sovereign, etc. These foundational matters do influence the "feel" of and lead to similar outcomes for a country, I think.

Much of day to day life looks and feels the same (particularly during the summer) as in Australia. Vancouver has a very similar feel to Melbourne (and half the staff everywhere are young Australians anyway). We've already joined choirs and performed in our first concert. I've found a gym I like and have started to meet people through that. We have lovely neighbours on our floor of our apartment block and we've started making friends with them through having drinks and dinners with them. Based on reading about people's experiences here, I've been very mindful to make sure that we make an effort to get involved in the life of our new home and get to know people and learn the "culture" of this place.

With the benefit of having lived in the UK myself, I can definitely see how life in Canada differs perhaps more markedly to life in the UK than it does to life in Australia. I'm equally comfortable in the UK as I am in Australia and Canada, but I respect how some UK folks have found Canada more challenging than they might have expected.

I can also see how Vancouver can be a challenging place for some. It is a costly place to live. There are significant disparities between the costs of living (including housing) and incomes. There are strains on social services and homelessness and mental health support are big issues.

So far, and acknowledging it is early days, we're finding life here very agreeable, and we have no regrets at all about making the move to resettle in Vancouver. And we've not had any problems with the available cheese.

Thanks again to all the good folks here at British Expats who provided reams of invaluable information and guidance about moving to Canada. It was all very, very greatly appreciated and made a big difference to the ease and efficiency of making the move. If anyone has any specific questions they'd like to ask of me, please go right ahead. I will be happy to help if I can.