Hello all fellow brits out there who have taken the leap of faith and left blighty for Calgary. I recently received my job offer from CPS and now have to submit my Immigration docs, so could be out there late 2008 or early 2009? I would be grateful on any info from anyone who is currently training or already working out there. How have you found work and home life? Also my wife is an Educational Consultant in the UK and research into transferring her qualifications has hit a bit of a dead end! Anyone who has successfully moved as a teacher or consultant and can offer advice or experiences, would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers..

I've been here for more than 30 years, I'm largely assimilated, I wasn't British to start with, and I'm not a police officer. So I don't know if I'm qualified to answer your questions. But, for what it's worth, I wrote the Wiki articles on Calgary.

As to your wife's qualifications, if she has a university degree, she could use Canadian Centre for International Credentials to find out if her degree(s) will be recognized in Alberta. It (or they) most likely will be recognized.

Teaching is a unionized profession in Canada, and it takes a long time and a lot of patience to get your toe in the door. There is a Wiki article on Teaching in Canada.

The Wiki articles on Job Hunting in Canada were written mainly with the private sector in mind. Hiring in the public sector, which includes education, is a more transparent process. That is, job vacancies are posted (they are not merely broadcast by word of mouth), in some parts of the public sector hiring decisions are made by committees, and so on.

Nonetheless, the Wiki articles still would be of some use to your wife. For example, the article on resumes would help your wife to convert her British CV into a Canadian resume.

Also, although teaching falls into the public sector, networking still is a useful process to understand. It helps to be on friendly terms with someone inside the "system," someone who can alert you to a vacancy that has come up suddenly (owing to illness or whatever), who can provide a friendly introduction to a school principal (who has a lot of the decision-making power when it comes to hiring), and so on.

While your wife has a chance of getting into teaching, if she's willing to perservere, my frank opinion is that she has a snowball's hope in hell of getting a job as an educational consultant, at least in the short to medium term. The few educational consultants whom I know in the Calgary Board of Education and the Calgary Catholic School District have worked their way up through the ranks. All the ones whom I know are born and bred Canadians. At a minimum, I would think someone would need years of experience in the local setting before the public (state) school system gave them a job as a consultant. An outsider just wouldn't have credibility in the eyes of the local establishment. Well, that's what my observations of friends' careers have led me to believe.

I see that in this thread Atlantic Xpat provided you with a link to the Wiki article on Teaching in Canada. I hope you read the article to which he provided a link. If you did read it, I don't know why you're asking again. Perhaps it's because you don't believe what the article says. Well, Atlantic Xpat should know. He's a Briton who is married to a Canadian school teacher.

When Mrs. AX returned to Canada after a stint in the UK, she had to jump through a lot of hoops to get back into teaching in Canada. For a time Mr. and Mrs. AX even lived apart in separate towns during the week, and got together only on weekends, because Mrs. AX initially couldn't get a job in the place in which Mr. AX was working and in which they'd bought a house. I don't know if Mrs. AX still is commuting like that or if she has now managed to transfer to a job in the same town as Mr. AX. I also seem to remember reading that Mrs. AX didn't have a fulltime job and that she was tutoring a student privately in order to make up her hours and supplement the income from her "official" teaching job.

I have several friends in Calgary who are school teachers. Those who have stayed home for a few years to raise young children have had to jump through similar hoops when they're returned to teaching. The timetable that's listed in the Wiki article on Teaching in Canada comes from my friends' collective experience (that is, what you can expect to accomplish in the first year, the second year, and so on).

Besides all that, Calgary is a fine place to live. Having to take a step back in actual seniority or even just losing a certain amount of credibility in local people's eyes because you lack "Canadian experience" (when the "best practices" in your part of the world actually may be more advanced than the ones here) can be annoying.

How willing you'll be to put up with that crap in the short-tem will depend to some extent on why you're moving to Calgary and what you want from Calgary.

I recommend that you read the Wiki article entitled Relocation Strategies.

I also recommend that you read the Moving back to the UK forum to get a sense of why some people return to the UK.

In case you haven't found BE's professional forums, there's one on Police. I don't participate there, but a glance at the forum suggests that there are a fair number of threads about Calgary.

There also is a Teaching forum, but most of the threads seem to be about Australia.

Very informative, not sure what you were talking about with the Atlantic thing, but on the whole thanks for taking the trouble to provide such a thorough response.