Iamabigaillawrence

Also, am I right in thinking it’s easier to get a job with a Canadian employer if you have a work visa in place because they don’t have to prove why they gave you the job over a resident Canadian? Or do they still have to do the same things?

christmasoompa

You mention your OH’s score, age and lack of post-secondary education but not your own score - do you get any higher by any chance?

I’d suggest you start a new thread in the immi section of the forum with full details of your points score, jobs, education, whether you’d consider any other provinces etc. It may just be there’s another visa route that could be explored?

christmasoompa

If you’ve got the open work permit then there’s no need for a LMIA, so yes, much easier for the employer.

HTH.

Iamabigaillawrence

Ah sorry, I meant that was me as lead applicant and him as the secondary - it’s insanely low if he is the main applicant as he is a self employed green grocer so he runs his own business and has done for 17 years so not much there for immigration points.

Thanks will copy it over to the immigration forum. Thanks for all the help.

scilly

Post-secondary education is very expensive for a non-PR or Canadian student ...........often insanely expensive.

Have you checked out what is available in Cranbrook for your OH to do, and how much the fees are for foreign student.

Also 1.5 hours each way in winter would not be such fun!!! If he is doing that, then you definitely would need a second car for yourself

Iamabigaillawrence

Yes we had indeed looked into that and know how much we need to save up.

We are looking to do a blended learning course where he can attend lessons for at least 50% of the time and the other he can do online. As that would fulfil the criteria for the permit and also means he can avoid doing the journeys in the depths of winter if the roads are awful.

We know it’s not IDEAL but really struggling to see a different way of getting out there. As soon as I have work experience in Canada our points go up it’s just getting me out there!

christmasoompa

I’ll take a look at your other thread in a bit and see if any other visa options may be possible. But just wanted to say that the online learning thing is only allowed for study permits currently due to Covid - if you’re not going for years then you’d need to be prepared for him to be studying in person all of the time.

ann m

Ooh, you’re brave. Your current 11 yr old is going to change a lot in the next 5 yrs. It’s a cute ish little place, pretty setting but I reckon most teens that grow up in those small BC towns can’t wait to get out. My two would have suffocated there. The drive to Cranbrook would get old really fast, I already think the drive from Invermere to Kimberley is a bit gutty, but to Cranbrook regularly, hmmm, no fun. Especially in the winter.

But I guess your son would not be there too long anyway if you are assuming he will go to post-secondary elsewhere. 16 would be ok to do grades 10-12, to get a high school diploma and the grades he would need.

I dunno, my gut says your plans might change. Five years is a long time. Best wishes though.

Partially discharged

Is Invermere south of Radium Hot Springs. If so, I've been in the summer. We went swimming in the lake at the north end by the town beach which was nice and quite warm. The setting is nice and there is an old part to the town with 'angled parking' on a main street and a good ice cream place if I recall, a large Sobey's supermarket and some nice restaurants. The area just north of the town is a bit grim with lots of billboards. I sensed it was quite arid there especially in the summer. Radium Hot Springs has the lovely thermal pools and is the gateway to Kootenay National Park and for some reason I think 3 Austrian/Hungarian restaurants.

Golden is a bigger place but also a bit of a railway shunting yard kind of place and very close to Yoho which is probably my favourite national park.

Iamabigaillawrence

Oh awesome, thanks so much, this is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for - just an idea of the area and what it really has and what people’s impressions of living/visiting there were.

Thanks for your reply

scilly

That's because the "alpine" quality of lots of small towns near mountains in BC (and possibly also Alberta) attracted lots of immigrants from Switzerland, Austria, Italian and French alpine regions, the Hungarian refugees for the Russian takeover ca 1958, etc, especially during the 1950's through to the 1970's.

Then in the 1970's the BC Government provided money for "spiffing up" small towns to attract tourist ("Hello, gullible ones"!!) ............... and many if not most, of the small towns near mountains decided to go for the "alpine" look, and then entrepreneurs opened restaurants to fit the theme

I can name any number of those towns that still have the theme, spiffed up a little bit more since then. It gets quite funny when you have the "alpine" theme, the "alpine" restaurant(s), and then the Japanese sushi, the Mexican, and the American pancake house

We had a Swiss brother-in-law, now deceased, who came over in 1967, and ended up in the small northern town of Smithers, with, guess what ................. a lovely mountain for skiing less than 10 minutes from "downtown", still not developed for much except local use back around 1970. They had gone for the Alpine look about 1968/9, and the mountain ski area was developed more and more during the '70s, with also a lovely cross-country ski place as well. It's still a popular place, especially for people living in the north, and European tourists. There are still only about 5,000 people living there, but about 10 churches, each of a different denomination.

The remote areas were, and still are, very attractive to hippies or their modern equivalent, communes, marijuana growers, etc. We've gone past more than one very secluded, high fenced, guard dog protected, property in our back roads driving over the years.

It is also worth remembering that even small towns are not safe from the dangerous attractions for youth, especially drugs ........ there's really so little for them to do if they are not into sports.

Stumpylegs

Thats the one - I spent 2/3 days in Golden, the trappers bar does very nice burgers! I liked it, but I think the other half felt it lacked the pretty town feel you get a bit of with Invermere etc. and felt somewhat more industrial. Yoho really suprised us as its largely unheard of by a lot of tourists (it wouldnt be on a typical UK road trip itinerary) but is actually really nice and without the crowds of Jasper/Banff/Lake Louise etc.
Providing you understand you are really letting yourself in for small town life and thats something you/your family are prepared for - then youll likely not go far wrong, although there will be numerous other towns of similar sizes dotted about in similar vicinitys to ski hills. Just I feel a lot of people really dont understand the isolation when compared to the UK - unless your up in the highlands, if you live in a reasonable size village your rarely more than 30 minutes away from a big town on reasonable roads. It sounds like youve got your head screwed on as far as realising how far Cranbrook is etc.

hg42

Nothing inherently wrong with Invermere per se though I don't think predetermining what your kid will want in five years is the greatest move. In the summer it's full of nouveau-riche tourist types from Calgary, average age I'd guess about 55-60 (and, personal opinion, in the main not very nice people) - though not to the point of being a pain except on long weekends - and in the winter pretty dead; Panorama is a nice enough ski hill but doesn't really attract the crowds into town the way some of the others do (at least in my experience), and there's not really any other big draws apart for people heading up into the mountains with powersports stuff - if you're going to Radium you'll probably stay in Radium etc.

Services are 'ok' since it's theoretically the biggest community in the valley outside Cranbrook I think - though tbh while that's true in the summer I doubt it is in the winter. Supermarkets, Cdn Tire etc. Same as most places, really. Weather isn't quite as much a thing as you'd expect if you don't try to go east or west, the valley bottoms are pretty mild for where they are. I would never choose a commute to Cranbrook over just sucking it up and living there though as while it's a nice enough drive you'll mostly be doing it in the dark and will be dodging deer etc on a daily basis. Don't know why you'd move halfway across the planet to do that, I guess?

Not enough people around for most of the year for crime, drugs etc to be very high on anyone's agenda. Basically the same as most small towns in BC...there's a bit, it's usually the same handful of people per town and they'll never go anywhere or change. Honestly after living in Golden for 3 years+ the obsession with that sort of thing feels weird and honestly slightly worrying in itself. Kid'll be fine in school, there's lots of fairly transitory people who are around for a year or two and then gone so new faces will be no shock.