corn2can

Hi,

Now that we have our visa's in our hot little hands we are in the process of planning a recce visit to Calgary between the last week of July and the middle of Aug this year.

We would be grateful if anyone could recommend a vacation rental property for our stay in Calgary or close by. We are hoping to find a house to rent for us and three kids (15, 9 & 5) so that we can experience a more 'Canadian' visit (as opposed to a 'hotel based' vacation).

Any advice on must do or see events would also be welcome. As we are also hoping to check out the employment market during our stay, any advice on the best way to network or jobsearch in Calgary would also be great.

Hope to hear from someone soon.

Regards,
The Fletcher family

Judy in Calgary

See the Furnished Accommodation section of the Wiki article on Renting.

The event in Calgary in July is the Calgary Stampede, a ten-day, western-themed festival.

The nearby Canadian Rockies are drop-dead gorgeous. If you don't go to Moraine Lake (9 miles from Lake Louise), I'll never forgive you.

I'm a great fan of the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, which is between 1.5 and 2 hours' drive northeast of Calgary. The collection of dinosaur skeletons is awesome, and every kid whom I've taken to the place has loved it.

There are lots of other fun places for kids in or near Calgary, including Heritage Park (a pioneer village), the zoo, or Calaway Park (an outdoor amusement park).

See all the Wiki articles on Calgary.

Read all the Wiki articles in the series on job hunting in Canada.

It's important to convert your CV into a resume, to network and to market yourself. I've just looked at one of your old posts and have seen that you have an eclectic background. Therefore you'd be better off writing a functional resume rather than a chronological one. There are links to Wiki articles on all these topics in the main article on Job Hunting in Canada, to which I've provided a link, above.

A topic that's important to grasp at the outset is how to Find Job Opportunities. That article has a link to the Canadian Company Capabilities website, which is an excellent source of information about who the corporate players are in any given industry.

In that other thread in which I saw what your background was, it seemed that you were attracted to Alberta because of the huge number of jobs here. I'll just give you a warning about Alberta. Yes, the province is crying out for workers. But real estate prices have risen a lot in the last three years, at least by Canadian standards. Remember that, once you're living here, you'll be earning in Canadian dollars. Depending on how large your mortgage is, depending on what sort of jobs you get, and depending on how much those jobs pay, you may or may not have a wonderful quality of life. A big factor will be the amount of equity that you'll be able to bring with you from the UK. Obviously more equity means a smaller mortgage and more discretionary income; less equity means the reverse.

You said you had HND qualifications. You may want to emphasize that side of your work experience. Having engineering-type qualifications and experience means that it will be easier for you to get into some sort of occupation that serves the oil industry. That, in turn, is likely to pay fairly well.

Use the forum's search function to find previous discussion threads that address the matter of HND qualifications and the recognition of same in Canada.

I recommend that you also read the Wiki article called Where to live.

Hope that helps.

Judy in Calgary

In a couple of other current discussion threads, gryphea has provided a link to Consulting Engineers of Alberta (CEA). Their website states that they will be holding invitation-only recruiting events in London, UK during the week of 21 April 2008. If nothing else, the links page on their website provides links to other useful websites.

The website that I gave you, above, is the website for a specific recruitment drive. However, it's also instructive to look at CEA's main website and, more specifically, the web page on which it lists its membership. It's a real who's who of Alberta engineering companies.

I suspect that the Canadian Company Capabilities website, which I told you about in my previous post, has a link to the Consulting Engineers of Alberta's website too. Still, it doesn't hurt to get information from more than one source.

Alberta_Rose

hey .... just a whimsical thought...... I am kinda thinking of visiting the UK around then ..... are you up for some house/snake/dogsitting?????

edit: Just asked hubby .... he says our doggie's too old to think about it, (sorry)...... however, a house exchange type holiday might be an option with somebody, you think?????

Just googled home exchange sites: http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid...change+calgary !!! Any possibilities there?

SarahMom

Hello and welcome.
I have a contact in Calgary for a basement rental.(Expat family who are very accomodating and helpful). As you are probably aware most homes have basements that are then developed. This one is fab.....much,much nicer than a manky hotel! PM me if you want more details.
Sarah