Hi all, new to the forum, I am Scottish and my wife is Canadian, we have a 17 month old son and we are waiting on our family sponsorship visa coming through (been told the only issue would be if i had a criminal record, prison officer here so, nothing to worry about). We'll be moving to South West Ontario. I'm hoping to be a Corrections Officer when we move as i have 9 years experience here. Looking to see how others have found the move. I'm very excited about it although i realise there will be difficulties. Houses seem to be a lot cheaper especially where we're looking to move and taxes seem very reasonable. Are there any serious pit falls to look out for? I know it's a different country so i expect things to be very different from here, i loved my holiday there but life is different from a holiday. Any advice would be appreciated

I live out in the Prairies so take what I have to say with a pinch of salt but one of the biggest things I noticed was that everything takes a lot longer to get done than back at home.

e.g online shopping, at home we can get next day delivery and they were starting to launch next hour, in more rural places (and I live in a city of 200,000 people) its a week.

On the positive:

Buffalo chicken wings are amazing.

Canadians like to gamble, you'll often find at community events they'll do something called a 50/50, everyone buys a ticket (or lots of tickets) and the money gets put into a pool, the winner gets 50% the host (usually a charity) gets the rest.

CFL is more popular than Hockey, almost every province has a major team where as a lot of provinces dont have a major hockey team.

Its really hard to explain just how big Canada is or how small the UK is.

My Canadian friends think nothing of driving 4 or 5 hours then coming back the next day and they dont understand when you explain to them that its a long distance and we might stay over night.

Some dont even understand when you tell them that we don't have automatics, cruise control (which would be useless) and that there are so many turns, tiny road and so on that means you have to be concentrating all of the time.

A short drive in the UK is about as hard going as a long drive in Canada.

Thanks for the reply.
Bit of a downer on the food shopping, i know it's kind of lazy but i hate trawling the supermarket so always get it delivered. Although that is well evened out by the thought of buffalo chicken wings!
When we came over on holiday we flew into Toronto, drove to Niagara, then to Windsor and then went over to Michigan, i must admit, it was easier than i thought, wide, straight roads, autos and cruise control, so easy. My family stay in the sticks in Scotland so i'm used to tight turns and narrow roads.
Do you have any advice on the banking there? It seems like a lot of people find it complicated...

?! My last 4 cars have all had cruise control, even a 13 year old Renault Scenic had it!

I also drive an automatic. How many years ago did you leave?

I moved over around 13 years ago from Glasgow area. Takes a wee while to aclimatize...First few years I felt like an astronaut who had arrived back on Earth after a long missioní ½í¸Š. Just put a check on your UK sense of humour....Otherwise you will inadvertantly offend as in general terms Canadian humour is very different. Enjoy the ride.

My '89 Alfa Romeo had cruise control!

If Canadian houses are anything like ones in the US which also "seem to be cheaper", they need a lot of repairs and maintenance to keep everything working and looking good. Things which last a lifetime in the UK, like roofs, water heaters, heating systems etc, don't last anywhere near as long in North America. The rule of thumb is reported to be expect to spend and average of 2% of the house value each year on repairs and replacements. Obviously many years it will be less but replacing the roof or heating system will be a major expense.

If you're able to do painting and some repairs yourself then the cash cost will be less, but can draw heavily on your time.

Don't think cruise control is such a big deal here due to the roads, traffic etc. Ah, I kind of figured things may need a bit more upkeep repair wise due to the climate (bad winters and storms we don't get here). Well the housing market here settled for a while but it's getting back to ridiculous, your talking about £120,000 ($200,000) for a 2 bedroom house in a semi decent area, (mine was £118,000 and it's like Beirut Friday & Saturday) if you want a nice area (suburbs) probably closer to £200,000. It seems like you get a lot more for your money in Canada. It's hard to judge whilst i sit over here though. Thanks for the heads up though 👍

I have heard that 2% rule of thumb too, but it always strikes me as odd. For example the place we currently live in is an 1800 sq ft bungalow on approx 1 acre of land with 250 feet of direct waterfront access. It's worth about $300k, if this same bungalow (even with a quarter of the land and no waterfront) were in SE Oakville it would be worth $2mi. The cost of replacing the roof or the furnace would be much the same, yet the percentage of value would be significantly different.

Thanks, i did notice that i was watching my P's and Q's a lot more when we around people there, is it really that different?

I feel it is. West of Scotland humour involves taking the piss from one another and laughing WITH one another, be you the victim of that humour, the perpetrator or simply there. Not so much here. That's where the inadvertant cause of offence can occur. I have found that over time my Canadian friends have become accustomed to my UK sense of humour and that I am not being deliberately objectionable, just having a laugh, that things pan out. However, it takes time

I think the point is that the type of roof you'd put on a $2 million house would be different from the one put on a $300k home ..... I am inclined to a agree that it wouldn't be seven times as much though!

I would guess the biggest differences would be in the money poured into kitchens and bathrooms.

I'm not sure about that. I had a house for which I paid $140,000. Some years later it was worth over a million, the house hadn't changed and the income of the occupants hadn't changed significantly so, each time the roof was replaced, it cost the same numerically but not as a fraction of value. There may be a rule of thumb to be had "2% of what you paid for it" but, if so, we've rather overspent on the last couple of houses.

Well there's the thing - they were the same owners, who had bought it relatively cheaply. When you get the sort of people who can afford to pay $1 million for a house, they get highfalutin' ideas about what sort of roof their home needs.

You've definitely described what living in the prairies is like. It's a unique part of Canada with its own quirks and values. Gambling is definitely a prairie thing, for sure. CFL is also very much valued in the prairies. I have spent time in Alberta and in Manitoba, and I am always fascinated by how different the place is compared to coastal BC. Likewise, whenever I travel to Ontario I am always fascinated by how different it is. As far as I'm concerned, although they are all a part of Canada, each province may as well be its own separate country. They certainly function that way.

Also, I think online shopping isn't much of a thing in Canada because of the physical vastness of the country and the population density doesn't make it economically feasible. There simply isn't the demand because distances are too vast and populations are too spread out to make it cost effective. This is especially true in the prairie provinces. There are only a handful of cities where population density is sufficient enough to support an efficient online shopping culture (Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal), but the prairies are not one of those places. Most cities in Canada are suburban sprawl-y by nature. They build outwards, not upwards.

I think population density is also the foundation of a lot of cultural differences between the UK and Canada. In the UK, you have a population of 64 million people living on a landmass a quarter of the size of British Columbia. Canada has a population of 35 million spread over a landmass the size of all of Europe (approximately).

Imagine if Brighton and Inverness were the only major cities in the UK and there wasn't much in between. And now imagine the next major city being located Paris. And the biggest city is located in Moscow. And the capital of the country is in Cairo. (Cairo is even closer to London than Ottawa is to Vancouver!) This is the reality of Canadian distances. And because there are vast spaces separating the major cities, culture and prices are influenced locally, not at a national level.

There are other things you may take for granted in the UK that you won't be able to find in Canada, like being able to travel by train everywhere, or being able to fly for cheap anywhere. Or being able to have your "right to roam" in the countryside. Or socializing with your coworkers over a pint. These are things you may not even think about, but once living in Canada, you'll realize they're missing.

Because it's more expensive to fly domestically in Canada than it is to fly internationally, and since the distances are so far between areas of interest of Canada (remember, we're talking London to Cairo type distances) you're probably not going to be experiencing the polar bears and the totem poles and the Lake Louises of Canada - you're likely only going to be experiencing that microculture of wherever you end up in Canada. So flying to Cuba or Mexico may be more alluring when the time comes to take that holiday - it'll likely be quicker and cheaper than flying to the Rockies!

In southwestern Ontario, you'll be experiencing urban, industrial, and agricultural Canada. It means humid summers, snowy winters, rolling countryside, forests, and lakes. It means half the population in the summer is spending their weekends in a cottage on a lake. Don't move there for mountains - there aren't any! You do have Niagara Falls.

The seasons are different, start and end in different months. The food is different. They way people shop for food is different. The ingredients people value is different. The way people socialize is different (there is no equivalent to UK pub culture). The immigration settlement patterns are different and the types of ethnic foods as a result are different. Even familiar ethnic foods you're used to in the UK like curry will no longer be the default ethnic cuisine, and when you find them, they will be prepared differently in Canada. What people are nostalgic about are different (as are the TV shows, the radio, etc.).

It really is a different culture so hopefully you are mentally preparing yourself and are seeking a total change, to immerse yourself in a different society with different customs and a different way of life, and be open to that change. The best piece of advice is to not compare it to the UK. Accept that things won't be better or worse, they'll simply be different.

Mate. If you are coming with the idea property in SW Ontario is "cheaper" please be careful. The prices are crazy high. My wife and I are currently renting in Oakville, and will soon have to make the decision to move the kids out of school again as there is no way buying in this area is worth the money, never mind affordable. Even as far out as Hamilton, Cambridge, Guelph and Barrie the prices are being affected by this 'boom' and becoming silly.

Banking. (Scotiabank) have a new immigrant set up thing. In our experience though they 'lost' our £'s in cyberspace we transferred over from the BOS which resulted in my wife and I having only a few hundred dollars in cash which we had on us to see us through a couple weeks until it was sorted. So not the best of starts for canadian banking. In essence though its more or less the same. You put your money in your account, and you take it out when you need to pay your bills etc. But the difference is, you have monthly charges (about $15 I think) for that privelage. Oh and watch out, you also pay a fee if you have more than 25+ transactions per month?
Which prison do you work in Scotland? My uncle was a PO in Barlinnie, many years ago now though.
Good luck with your move mate. Any other questions ill try my best to answer.