we did look at BC also as it sounds fantastic and my friends have raved about it. generally it all seemed extremely expensive though, compared to the eastern side of canada. folk moving from london may find it on a par cost wise, however it is still relatively cheap for housing, eating out etc where we are on the east coast of scotland. one of our major criteria from this move, apart from life experience, is it to get a bigger house with more personal space for hopefully less than our current house cost. if we can achieve this it would allow us a bit more cash for starting family, and perhaps allow one of us to work part time.

Check out these two maps. Look at the North of Scotland, then check out the map of Cape Breton.

Incidently, NS is not as cloudy, wet or windy as Scotland (especially Aberdeen). Much more sunshine here all year round (even though its freezing in the winter). Check out the info here on Wikipedia. It describes our climate as continental rather than maritime - it lies on the same latitude as southern France. It's only the icy blasts from up north that freezes us over the winter

Halifax can be foggy, but it does have a harbour so that can be expected. Here is a website for the wettist, windiest, snowiest etc for Canada. Unfortunately it only lists a limited amount of towns. For us, the weather in Halifax is not typical for the rest of the province eg we only have fog a couple of times a year even though we are only a 10 minute drive from the coastline.

Here is a website for historical Canadian weather, although the weather seems to be changing all over these days.

As others have said, Spring is an awful season and quite wet. Otherwise I dont find NS to be a particularly wet place (but then I used to live in NorthWest England so its all relative!). But there is one thing I do want to mention...

When we were thinking of moving here I looked at the historical weather data listed above and was intially fairly concerned about the amount of rainfall, especially in the summer. But what the weather stats dont tell you is what time of day the rain occurs and in actual fact during the summer months the rainfall happens almost entirely at night. The air is humid and at night time when the air cools a bit the moisture condenses and it rains. So typically every morning when you wake up the ground is wet but really, who cares?! If its dry during the day then I'm okay with that.

The Fall is quite dry and really pleasant. And the middle of winter is usually very dry and what precipitation we do get is actually snow. So the only times of year that arent great are November (starts to get wet but not cold enought to snow yet) and April/May.

Thats nice to hear

You are right there Paul. The overnight rain keeps all our grass and plants lovely and green and my well topped up . I find the humidity pretty tough-going though at times.