Jimbo2012

Just putting this out there to see if anyone else has had a similar experience ... I recently visited the UK for the first time in 5 years (mainly to catch up with family post-lockdowns etc) and I was shocked at how much I enjoyed being back "home".
I have been in Ontario for 10 years, and things have by and large gone well in terms of work, settling in and embracing the climate/culture, and the thought of going back to the UK has never really crossed my mind until after this latest visit.
Even now having been back here a few weeks, I cannot shake this thought, and it's left me feeling quite unsettled in terms of where I want to be and what the future holds.

Has anyone else encountered these thoughts after a visit home, and will they subside in time?

For context (and I realize this is key information), I have a family here (school-age children) and two adult children back in the UK from a previous relationship.

I wouldn't normally reach out on a forum on such personal matters, but this is eating away at me every waking hour and I thought it might be helpful to hear from anyone who has been in a similar position.

Thanks!

Piff Poff

We were left unsettled after a trip home.

After5 years we realised we didn't want to stay in Alberta. After much twoing and frowing between Ontario and UK, hubs want to go home. My stumbling block is my daughter in Ontario.

In all honesty, I just want to go home, I've had enough of being from away.

dbd33

Yes, no.

abner

I've had similar thoughts, based on 'visits home' in the past. (The details differed from yours, but were similar in the ways that matter for the question you've initially posed, *absent some crucial details*, on this thread.)

But, what strikes me most about your post is, you mention a new(ish) family of school-age children, based in Canada, yet not your status with regard to the other parent of those children. Nor any indication of whether you expect to include them, or how otherwise you propose to treat them, if you choose to act on your inclination to move back to the UK.

Can't advise you there. Wouldn't want to.

bats

Because they are ******* adults and can move anywhere anytime?

Anyway OP, my husband had that thought and here we are packing up, literally. Moving back at the end on November. The exchange rate is in our favour right now. What does your wife/partner think?

Jimbo2012

Good luck to you, bats. If I remember correctly, you live in the same area as me. I think we even met once for coffee many moons ago when I was a newbie here :-)

To your question, my wife (who is Canadian-born) would not want to move back to the UK. From a logical standpoint, neither do I. It's just the recent visit back (on my own due to costs etc) left me with this nagging feeling about "what if" that I hope will subside.

Is it family that is drawing you back, or just needing that sense of "home"?

bats

​​​​​​I think it's realsing that however lovely your friends are family are,, mostly there for you.
plus Waitrose

CanadaJimmy

I think we’ve all occasionally had thoughts like that, it’s only natural. The UK does have advantages, I miss how towns and cities are far more pedestrian-oriented, I miss being able to get around the country by train and I miss the more social and less atomized culture. And of course I miss family and friends who still live there. That being said I like how Canada is more laid back, how many activities there are to do, the government is also far more accountable to the people on the whole in my opinion. Like my daycare fees are going to be halved in December due to more subsidy, while the UK has some of the highest daycare fees in the world. Keeping in touch with friends and family is also a lot easier than it was in the past with Skype and Facebook (though I accept nothing really beats an in-person visit).

Anyway it sounds like you had a nice visit in the UK, and maybe just getting away from the mundane of day to day life may have been part of why you felt that way. It takes more effort to do these things outside of trips like that.

I would recommend checking out the Rovers Return subforum too: https://britishexpats.com/forum/rovers-return-111/

tdrinker

In Canada, you have a wife who doesn't want to move to the UK and school-age kids. Unless you're prepared to break up your family and move back alone, you have to stay in Canada, at least for now. Perhaps you can re-visit it when the kids have left home, your wife might be more open to the move (if you still want to go). There are also visa hoops you must jump through.

nicola_p

My hubby and I have been in Ontario for 11 years today and we want to go back to the UK now, We have always been here alone and don’t have children so we are just ready to be back with family doing regular family stuff that we all probably, to a degree take for granted! Everyone has a personal story and a reason why they would want to go but you just need to decide what is important to you and to your family! The pandemic taught us all that life can change in an instant and taught us that the ability to fly back if we needed to can be taken away, that scared me and my husband, having all of our family in the UK we have always been ok in the knowledge that if we had to be, we could be home tomorrow, who knows if that would change again moving forward?!?

so for us, it’s just time to go, we just have to work out how to get our 3 dogs back with us!!

Nobody says when you move it has to be forever, maybe if you and your wife are in agreement it’s better to go when kids are young, my parents did that with us at 6 and 9 and my brother and I were fine!!

good luck buddy, I know how all this can mess with your mind!

BristolUK

I was surprised you didn't get much response to a thread you started last year but you seem to have made your decision so good luck.

tdrinker

Who would have thought that democratic countries like Australia and New Zealand would lock their own citizens out? The UK wasn't quite as bad, in that it was possible some or most of the time to get in. But unless you had an empty property in the UK, where would you stay as hotels, Airbnb's and similar were banned from accepting guests? As you say, it was a trigger for a lot of people to reassess their plans of where they want to live and in what type of accommodation.

Jimbo2012

Thanks a lot, and good luck to you in your next move.

As for your dogs, aren't there companies who can take care of this for you? We used a similar service for our dog when moving from the UK to Canada. Granted it was not cheap, but it took away a layer of stress on top of the many we already had at that time.