ronda4

I wonder if anyone can give any advice on life in Vancouver or Calgary with 2 young children? My husband and I have applied to CAN and NZ and are still confused as to which country will offer the most to our family? No job offer from either country, having medicals for NZ this week.

yonk

Err, if you have applied to both, and are having medicals for NZ, then I assume you will have to get on and go to NZ....as that has come up first, depends when and how you applied for Canadian PR, I suppose.

Or are you thinking of knocking back your app to NZ - if you applied recently to Canada, you will know the wait is very long?

Alberta_Rose

NZ sounds nice ...... but oh so far away from UK. We never really considered it, mainly for that reason.

Colsgirl

I have to agree, this was one of the reasons we didn't really consider NZ or Oz. An 8 hour flight and cheap flights with Zoom and Canadian Affair makes Canada much more accessible for people to visit and for us to return to the UK (if we want to!)

koogar

NZ is a nice place.
I was there from Nov '93 til March '94 and the again for 3 weeks in '98.
Worked in Auckland, lived in Howick and then New Plymouth, Taranaki for a while.
I was offered a job driving tower cranes in Auckland last year, but I wanted to see Canada, so I came here.
Only been here 3 days, but I think I've made the right choice.
Ask me again when it's -40c.

Butch Cassidy

I think you made the right choice of country, shame about the province though

Steve_P

Oh, he'll eventually end up in Alberta, most of Saskatchewan usually does.

Sometimes you have to wonder if Calgary isn't Saskatchewan west.

Koogar come to us, resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.

You will become one of the Borg collective of Alberta, it is inevitable.

ezvanetree

As has been said on this thread, the wait for Canada is much longer. But if we put that aside, I wouldn't even consider NZ an option. I lived for 10 years there. It was very isolated and the country, because of its small population and location, is very dull politically and socially. Nothing interesting happens from one year to the next. I found NZers spend a great deal of time talking about how unique NZ is and how wonderful it was to live there. I just couldn't see it. Yes, there are nice things to look at, but I found it very depressing to be always reminded how everything is an introduced species (nothing native left--bird life is starlings and house sparrows. Trees are pine plantations and gorse bushes). Now that I am in Canada, I can look at a mountain and know that it is full of birds and animals. This might not be important to everyone, but I just hated it about NZ.

Once you are there, there is no where to go. A big trip is to go to Sydney to shop. I travelled to Europe a couple of times while there (and did the same after I moved to Australia) and because of those killing experiences, I have made a vow that I will never take a flight that is longer than 10 hours again in my life.

Don't forget the low dollar. Travel overseas is very costly when you are earning the kiwi dollar.

Housing is expensive and of very poor quality. There is no insulation or central heating. This might sound trivial, but winter after winter of sitting in damp and cold lounge rooms around the heater wears very thin after a while. The winters are long, dark and wet. Canada's winters are cold but there is a lot more you can do in snow than you can do in rain. And you return to your heated house.

I lived and worked in Christchurch and Wellington, never Auckland, so I can't say much about that, but I never felt comfortable there, was often very bored and just felt trapped. When it was finally time that I could leave (husband doing a specific time framed job) I ran screaming for the airport. I visited there last year and I couldn't believe I put up with the inconvenience of the country for 10 years (it was 12 degrees in my bedroom at my mother-in-law's house--as an example of the inconvenience!).

Anyway, that's my two cents to part of your question. That said, I am sure there are people who can tell you that they love NZ and are happy there. Can't help with Vancouver or Calgary with kids. Good luck with your choice.

Butch Cassidy

LOL

Calgary actually has more 'natives' of Saskatchewan than any city in Saskatchewan. (apparently)

kt0157

You've got time to go to New Zealand, work there for a few years, get citizenship and still be waiting for a Canadian residence permit. So why not do that. If you don't like NZ you can take up Canadian residence. If you do like NZ, you can give Canada a try and go back to NZ if you don't like it. If you don't like NZ you can give Canada a try.

You see, there are upsides to the utter shambles that is the Canadian immigration system!

K.

Judy in Calgary

Perhaps it's premature to ask about Vancouver and Calgary specifically. At this stage there may be merit in confining the question to Canada versus New Zealand. Then, once you've decided on the country, you can start researching cities within that country.

I find it very instructive to read the Moving back to the UK forum. It seems to me I've learned as much about certain countries from reading that forum as I have from reading the country-specific forums.

I come from Southern Africa originally. I'm from Swaziland and my husband is from South Africa. Living in the northern hemisphere while most of the rest of our family lives in the southern hemisphere has been a challenge. Not only is there the distance, but there's also the fact that the seasons are out of synch, so our kids' school holidays didn't coincide with their South African cousins' school holidays.

We went on an expat assignment to Melbourne for two and a half years, from July 1997 to January 2000. While we were there, we had more frequent visits from South African family members than we have in Canada. It was a shorter flight, and the seasons matched.

If I was from the UK, I believe I would find Canada easier because the UK would be a shorter flight from Canada, as other posters have pointed out, and also because the seasons would coincide.

Although I've never been to NZ, I suspect ezvanetree has a valid point about home heating in that country. I chuckled about the bedroom in her MIL's house. One of the two coldest nights I've spent in my life was in my parents-in-law's home in Johannesburg. The other night that matched that one for cold also occurred in South Africa.

The heating in some Australian houses, especially newer ones, was okay. But Melbourne had many Edwardian houses, and their heating was very dodgy. Even the house in which we lived, which had been built in the 1970s, was cold in winter. There were winter days when we wore long underwear and fleece jackets of the kind that we wear outdoors in autumn in Calgary, except that we wore them inside our house. Here in Calgary we have an expression, which I think originally comes from Scandinavia, to the effect that there is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. But we use that expression to discuss the outdoors, not the interiors of our houses!

If you look at a map, you see that NZ extends into even colder latitudes than South Africa or Australia. So, if NZers are unable or unwilling to build houses that are comfortable in winter, I can see that that would be a problem.

From the point of view of people who currently are applying for permanent residence visas, Canada's application process has some flaws. There's the long wait for your PR application to be processed. Then, even if you are granted a PR visa, the professional body that you may want to join may not accept you. But that varies from one line of work to the next, and you need to research your specific profession or trade.

I actually liked Australia a lot, so I don't want my earlier remarks to sound as if I'm dumping on Australia. Also, the distance from South Africa and the out-of-synch seasons notwithstanding, Canada has enough going for it that we chose to return here after two back-to-back expat assignments in Houston and Melbourne. So I'm not saying that any one factor that I've mentioned, on its own, is a deal breaker. I think you need to add up a variety of different considerations and try to figure out which country represents the best overall "package" from your family's point of view.

All the best with your decision.

kt0157

The seasons argument cuts both ways: people in the miserable grey UK winters are just as keen to fly out and visit a country with summer. I spent the UK 2004/2005 winter in NZ and had a "triple summer" (summer UK, summer NZ, summer UK) and it was fab. OK, I understand that rug rats bring a different set of priorities and problems.

K.

Souvenir

A family of four applying to both Canada and NZ? That's a rather pricey exercise in indecision, innit?

koogar

you're probably both right. (even butch is right sometimes).
I'm gonna ask about moving to the calgary base once I start with them.
The borg need love too.

Souvenir

You're up early mate.