Re: Returning to the UK
 

Seems my parents had it easy....:lol: I refused to participate in anything sports related as a child.....so they never had to pay for me to do anything.

Re: Returning to the UK
 

Actually I don't begrudge it at all. Swimming is a brilliant athletic sport and I want him to carry on for health/exercise/social reasons (he loves it too I might add). I was just correcting the misnomer that somehow the UK is very limited and very expensive in it's activities.

Re: Returning to the UK
 

I was/am crap at sports so my parents never had to spend a penny on sporting activities. They had to buy me a very nice violin, guitar and a piano instead. My brother, on the other hand, was very good at sports and cost them a fortune in jock straps and the like.

Re: Returning to the UK
 

I did try musical instruments once, it was a spectacular failure, I couldn't find one that was a good fit...lol

Once I hit 13 or so they did buy me a zoo pass, and I would spend every weekend there, but it only cost like 35 per year at the time, so a pretty good deal overall.

My sister however, joined pretty much every activity she could, but her biggest one was horse riding/showing, I know it cost a pretty penny for her to do it.

I just had no interest as a kid for sports (still don't) and because the kids at school were pricks who picked on me, I had no interest in doing any activity at school at all.

Re: Returning to the UK
 

I didn't mean to make it sound like I was saying you did. I was just making a light hearted comment about it.

Re: Returning to the UK
 

Sorry I know that :) it wasn't directed at you even if I quoted you.. My bad!

Re: Returning to the UK
 

Having read this thread I have a couple of observations, we live in Portsmouth at the minute.
Practically the whole of Portsmouth is a smoke control zone, ie no bonfires or burning the wrong type of coal.
We used to pay £140 a term (ie Easter to summer or New Years to Easter) for swimming lessons, Thai kick boxing was £35 a month, £20 for ju-jitsu a month. There are some after school clubs at his school (he's 14). Finding any sort of club after school is a mission in itself as its like the secret service. I'm lucky I only have one child but if you have more than one it must be a struggle. That's why there are so many kids hanging on the street corners as there are no youth clubs and everything costs so much.
His school is one of the exceptions in that they have huge fields (he goes to school in Waterlooville). Most schools have sold off their fields. If I had little ones I wouldn't want to take them to the park because of the teenagers hanging round and dog poo. There was an incident where some kids were trying to hang an 8 yo from a tree. Mind you I wouldn't have let my son go to the park unsupervised at that age.
When we put DS in holiday club when he was 10 in Okotoks it rained, in the UK the kids would have been hauled back indoors but not there, he was out all day and loved it. The week's activity club was cheaper than we paid in England too. The kids were all so polite too and held doors open for you, certainly don't get that here. Mind you I find the grannies are the worse lol!

Re: Returning to the UK
 

There was an incident here a few years back where some kids hanged another kid on the hook on the back of a door in a public washroom. That's why some don't have hooks, and the hooks are sometimes very low apparently. Unfortunately, they did succeed. My son's first experience of being bullied was in JK.

Friends of ours from Manchester were horrified at the cost, and exclusivity of sports for their kids in Ontario. Everyone was welcome to join and have a go in the UK, whereas he wasn't allowed to even participate in the school golf club here without proving how many tournaments he'd already won.

The concrete pads that pass for school yards here make me very sad. The local high school is basically a building and a parking lot.

I don't think there's a clear answer as to which is better. For each good or bad experience one person has, someone on the other side of the pond will likely be able to counter it.

Re: Returning to the UK
 

Gah! A whole school full of kids in diamond pullovers, plaid trousers and Tam O'Shanters. The Little Jimmie Osmond Academy.

Re: Returning to the UK
 

Apparently so :eek:

Re: Returning to the UK
 

Isn't golf wear more Nike polos and smart cut chinos these days?

Re: Returning to the UK
 

I see two men who play golf around the office so I can say, "no" with some certainty. They do dress as if they're in Falling Down, they do drive Cadillacs, they do lack hand/eye coordination and they do take a homoerotic interest in "Tiger's swing". Awful, awful, people.

I think I'd more readily forgive parents for making thier children practise religion than practise golf.

Re: Returning to the UK
 

Yes, I know where you're coming from. Golf is far too elevated a pastime in NA.

Re: Returning to the UK
 

On Schools:

I know this is entirely subjective but in my own experience the only one who benefited from moving to Canada was me. My wife suffered from discrimination and barriers being put up and so did my children.

My oldest son was bounced around from school to school (he has learning difficulties) and they just didn't want to deal with him. My youngest was bullied incessantly and I think it's affected him - he's gone from being an outgoing successful boy to an introverted sullen little boy. I've also noticed that his grades have plummeted. Whether that's due to discrimination from the teachers or not I don't know but I've definitely picked up an that the teachers and the kids have an attitude. Conversely, when my boys were back home, my oldest got all the help he needed (which wasn't much frankly - just treating him with respect and listening to him was mostly all) and my youngest did better.

So can I extrapolate from that and tar the entire system in Canada (Alberta)? No obviously I can't but I am left with the subjective opinion that our primary schools are far better.

Re: Returning to the UK
 

You've got almost exactly the opposite experience to me. I find Canadians (in Ontario particularly) to be pretty hostile to kids. (For example the conversation in the globe and mail about not allowing women with prams on the train. Or how they incessantly complain to you about your kids when on the plane). In Alberta a bit less so but I find Albertans to be backwards and very country-hillybilly like, complete with discrimination and ignorance in spades. I find the *resources* in the Canadian schools to be much, much, much better but I find the attitudes of the children and the teachers to be breathtakingly bad. Half the teachers don't want to do their job and don't give a monkeys about the kids and if the kids have any kind of problems at all (i.e. learning difficulties) they want to shove the kids off into a box. That's just *not allowed* in the UK. My kids had a much, much better experience in the UK than they do here and I'm gutted that I have to be here for work while they're losing out.