It all depends on who your kids hang around with or not as the case maybe...

Our girls seem very happy with sleepovers and constant txting/facetime/phone calls with friends. We try to do as much as possible with them, like going to the lake,ski-ing,kayaking and anything else we can find. But.....if we had moved to another place in the UK then we would be trying to look and see all of what there is locally to us, so is it better here or there? Does it matter? If you and your family are happy then thats what counts surely?

Be positive and enjoy eh?

Drinking overal is less here, but drink driving in much more common..
Drugs are much much easier to come by than in the UK

Weed is a social norm in Canada, almost a right of passage in youth culture , cocaine and other drugs such as crystal meth is frightenly common compared to Europe.

I have two boys, I will make sure by the time they reach their teens their knowledge will rival a pharmacist, it’s so easy get here you can't avoid the exposure all you can do it make sure they understand the risk.

Your deluding yourself if you think you can get your kids to avoid it

I think there's much more of a community feel here, but that's not true of where I was in Quebec before we moved.

Volunteering seems big here.

That's what Tim Hortons is for.

Yes, it's hard to get used to that. Same with baseball caps. Everyone (almost) wears them.

I had an appointment to show an apartment to prospective tenants and a car pulled up over the road. Hope it's not them, I was thinking as I looked out and saw them cross the road to the duplex.

It was indeed them. Really nice couple and great tenants.

We have a 19 year old and a 21 year old. They're a long way from innocent but neither ever had anything to do with drugs. It's as much as we can do to persuade them to try a drop of wine . They just don't like it, although the lad doesn't mind the odd beer and she can take a cooler but it'll last all night.

Exactly. It's a bit like saying that all kids in the UK get drunk and hang on street corners each evening.

It may be everywhere, but some choose not to participate.

It didn't mean they would all take up the habit..

But thinking abstinence rather than education will be the solution for drugs, is dangerous bet to play

as you know your self, exposure doesn't mean addiction

It probably depends, then, on what you meant by avoiding it.

You can be in a group of people where a couple smoke (ordinary smoking ) and avoid smoking as well.

You can be in a group where a couple might be taking drugs or be about to and avoid it by leaving. That shows disapproval of the others and total avoidance.

So when I said nothing to do with drugs, I meant that literally - not even being there as opposed to just not using.

If your move is about the kid's just make sure you give them the appropriate discipline and they'll be fine on either side of the pond.

My parents didn't know most of what i got up to either

I get a lot of Canadians say to me "why would u want to live here in Canada, when u can live in England" my answer is simply "I've tried that and now i'm trying this" life is wot you make it, all I will say is if u have the opportunity to try it then u should, if it works out then great, if it doesn't then you have tried it!!! there are some dead certs tho......u will see much more snow, you will get a lovely summer, its a great country to raise children, the rest is down to you!!

Parents today are generally a bit more on the ball regarding these things though what with there being more information around.

How so?

With facebook and twitter you can often pretty much find out almost everything your kids are into. They do not seem to have a clue about what is appropriate to put n the internet.

Kids these days are quite happy to share details of their drinking and drugs and other activities.

I do not spend too much time checking on them but from time to time I will check out their profiles.

I have tried to educate them on why they should not put their whole life on the internet but so far they have not heeded my advice.

Recently one of my children's friends approached him to sell drugs through facebook. After a call to the other parent involved and also a discussion with my son and the other boy and their parent about why facebook is not a good place to discuss illegal activities. We managed to get one boy out of the drug trade (for now).

That's probably what the mother of my 17 year old goddaughter thinks - she hasn't got a clue that her daughter blocks her from seeing certain stuff on her page! So she'll get some status updates, but not all, and I suspect I only see about 50% of the stuff she posts as well. It's very easy for teens to keep part of their life hidden away, even with social media sites.

I'm sure you know really. 30 or 40 years ago parents were only looking for signs of boozing - staggering around, hangovers etc - or smoking - the stained fingers, the smell...unless there was a really bad trip that highlighted another issue.

Now they know to look for so many other things - as opposed to notice them. It's proactive. There's more in the media about drugs and stuff on line; the sort of information not readily available in the past.


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Forgot to mention. Just about the most depressing thing about Canada is the existence and acceptance of food banks as the norm rather than having a decent financial support system in place.