renewremew

Hi,
JUst started looking into emigrating to Canada. What would be the best area's of canada to look for physics, optoelectronics or solar energy jobs ? Does anyone have any experience of the job market for physics - research jobs in canada?

Cheers

Ian

Oakvillian

I have no direct experience, but three things spring to mind from an Ontario perspective - other provinces will have a different outlook:
- before and since the demise of Nortel, a small but significant optoelectronics industry sprang up in and around Ottawa. I don't have company names to hand, but I know of a number of optoelectronics types who either were or still are in the area
- Waterloo, with RIM and the University attracting both commercial and research people to the region, is another place to look for anything related to communications technology, if that's the area of optoelec that interests you
- Canada is only just beginning to take Photovoltaic power generation seriously. There are a couple of companies in the Hamilton region, I think, that are doing some good research and small-scale commercial work.

Not much to go on, but it might at least give you a steer...

Souvy

This could be a good place for an initial trawl.

http://www.nce-rce.gc.ca/Index_eng.asp

agr

As far as I know, I am running the only concentrating solar thermal R&D program in Canada, so you would be welcome to PM me for more info. The federal government labs (CanmetEnergy) have done some solar work, but mainly passive thermal. There's a solar thermal test facility at their lab in Quebec. In solar PV, Ontario's solar industry is booming because of its feed-in tariff. Keep an eye on http://ontariosolarnews.com/. However, this is all commercial deployment rather than R&D.

I know of an optics technology company that does quite a lot of R&D - http://www.ino.ca/en-ca/.

To get an overview of many of the applied R&D organizations in Canada, you could look at the site of a network that links them together - see http://www.i-can.ca/member-organizations.

renewremew

Hi all,
thanks for the replies. At the moment i cant PM as I am a newbie with less than 3 posts.

Wishing everyone a happy new year and hoping that myself and others are in Canada for the next .

Ian

helcat12

Then get on the Maple Leaf area of the site and post some waffle like everyone else does! Before you know it you will be a Senior Member

G77

There's a lot of Solar/Wind energy firms popping up in Windsor, with some big companies due to arrive soon (Samsung I think). Not sure if they need R&D people though, I'm guessing the attraction to the area is a large amount of available manufacturing workers (ex auto workers). Might be worth investigating though....

renewremew

Thanks everyone for their replies.
Justr starting out on the canada route and not entirely sure that i want to stay in R& D. Actually making a real product that someone wanted to buy might be nice.

Cheers

Partially discharged

The relatively high amounts of sunshine, the strength of the sun and for wind the fact that land is flat and generally free of windbreaks like trees helps Essex County...on the downside that area has some of the most productive farmland in Canada.

Surprisingly, eastern Ontario has high # of hours of sunshine/year due to its relative distance away from the Great Lakes which create their own mini climate of cloud.

LynseySmith

Hi

We've been living in Waterloo for almost two years now. Love it here. Hubby works for RIM in their engineering (He has a PhD in Physics from Liverpool Uni). I've just started work for the Faculty of Engineering at the Uni of Waterloo...there's actually a solar research lab in my building! Not sure of the job possibilities, but might be worth checking out.

Can't believe how this city is growing and there's lots of tech firms around.

Best of luck

Lynsey

fledermaus

There seem to be solar energy panels appearing all over the place around here. Whether that signifies any local industry I have no idea.

dbd33

It's so common in Ontario for farms to have solar panels mounted on the barn and selling to the grid that coverage for them is a standard rider on farm insurance policies, if you have a farm but don't have panels you can delete it for a discount.

fledermaus

These aren't panels on barns but huge banks of free standing ones about 10 foot square lined up in fields. They rotate and turn to the sun. Blot on the landscape IMHO.

dbd33

Less troublesome than windmills, surely? I haven't heard of people shooting at solar panels.

fledermaus

Not yet.

I take your point though, there's no noise and the don't kill birds but they do look hideous.