zRichi

I'm in a meeting in London and I notice, in the meeting that 2 canadians are in the room. Ever hungry for talk of my new homeland I start talking to them and eventually tell them of my plans to move to Toronto in June and contract in IT for a year then move to Nova scotia indefinately.

One of them is from Newfoundland and she asks why I don't go there, the other quickly disagrees and says Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island is the better of the 3.

Anyone visited or live in any of the above that can discuss?

Atlantic Xpat

I live in Newfoundland and visited PEI once. What do you want to know?

zRichi

Erm as much as possible!
I spent a few weeks in Nova scotia last year which was ace but I was a bit of a tourist mostly taking pictures and staying in different hotels.

How you're living, what you're working as, how people take to brits over there, how you got a job (as I understand that's the thing that lets brits moving over down) etc.

I'll be coming across as single so ideally I would like a bit of community where making friends isn't too tough. (sigh I'm 25 in July and in my plan of life which is written on a notepad somewhere I wanted to be married by 26).

ultrarunner

The soon to be royal couple will be visiting there in June

feralbob

I live in Charlottetown. Moved over as single 26/27 year old - having never stepped foot in Canada before.

I work in the video game business. I was lucky that I knew one person out here already. The whole place was very welcoming - quickly made friends within the company.

I met my wife in the hotel I stayed in the first week - we hooked up a year or so later, now happily married with a kid on the way.

Charlottetown is about 37K pop - so it is smaller - but it has everything that you need. If you're after the big city life, this isn't it.

Summer is gorgeous - nice beaches good weather. Winter not too bad. More snow this year it seems.

Brits are welcome - lots of expats in the gaming field. We also have people from various other countries and I don't think they've had any problems

Gimme a shout with any specific questions.

B

zRichi

Ahh very cool. No small town living is my thang. In London at the mo as contracting here is ridiculous (in a good way) but you have to take the good with the bad.

IE. London = lotta money to save for June but it does make you want to shove a rocket up everyones arse.

But then Londons a big change for me anyway as I'm country bumpkin to begin with.
I saw that PEI has quite a big video games industry. I'm a hobbyist programmer (Messing around with python and Pygame and C++ and SDL). Would your company ever take someone one not qualified at a junior rate for instance if they could show a few games they'd written? I'd pretty much love to be in the games industry
I've seen some beautiful houses in Charlottetown. The man I was talking to about Charlottetown had the utmost respect for it.

Atlantic Xpat

Those are rather open ended questions, but briefly:

Quality of life is good for us, we live in a community outside St. John's in a nice house. Commuting is easy. (compared with Essex!). St. John's and surrounding area has a population circa 150k so it's not a big city by any stretch of the imagination but has most of the facilities one needs.

Excellent bar and restaurant scene. Google 'George Street'. Newfoundlanders are rightly famed for their friendliness but of course it is also largely up to you how well you integrate or not into society. One imagines that a 25 year old single guy with a British accent could have quite the time in St. John's. (I'm 42 and happily married but my Received Pronounciation goes down a storm......) St. John's has a University (Memorial) with 17000 odd students so there are lots of 20somethings around.

Getting a job is the challenge whereever you are. The economy in St. John's is very buoyant at the moment, driven by the offshore oil business. However getting into that business without contacts or direct experience is a tough gig. There is a small computer games industry here and some other IT related stuff. www.careerbeacon.com is the website to check (also covers NS, PEI and NB).

Downsides to living here? The weather can be a challenge. Not so much extreme cold (rarely lower than -10C) but the amount of precip. In the past 16 days we've had 109cm of snow for example. Spring is the worst season as endless days of rain drizzle and fog & +2C when the rest of Canada is basking in early summer is enough to make one consider suicide at times. Travel can be expensive - only two ways off the Island, air or a 12hr drive & a 8 hour ferry ride.

Property prices have increased dramatically over the past 5 years. Still cheap compared to Toronto & Van but substantially more expensive than PEI I would imagine.

Definately worth visiting prior to moving.