riddle89

Hi

We have our forms in with the CHC in London at the moment, got the letter back with a date stamp of 21st Nov 2004 stating 21 months.

We are now in the process of planning next years holiday which is also going to be a reconnaissance mission. My wife has visited Vancouver island for a long weekend when she was living in Spokane (Washington US) but other than that we have never been to Canada.

We love the outdoors, skiing, Camping, Scouting and are very family orientated. We have a couple of ideas of where to go either Toronto / Ottawa, Calgary or BC around Vancouver but not in the city.

Does anyone have any advice on reconnaissance missions - How long you went for? What you did whilst you were in Canada? Did you get any help from anyone / any company? I know I have some info coming from our emigration agent but we are chomping at the bit and want to get flights booked (Have seen then at a very reasonable price with Canadian affair Manchester -> Toronto Late May)

My initial plans have been Fly into Toronto spend some time looking around and then fly to Vancouver or Calgary and have a look around / visit the other by car and then fly home. However instead of flying to Vancouver I have considered hiring a camper and driving over 4/5 days giving us a chance to see the rest of the country en route.

Your suggestions will be much appreciated, Thanks

Souvenir

Your last idea is fine if you want to spend your entire trip behind the wheel. It is 2,800 miles from Vancouver to Toronto. Driving eight hours a day, at the speed limit, you won't see much change out of six days. A lot of that would be in the flat bit. You wouldn't see the rest of the country, either. You'd miss half the provinces and all the territories.

Possibly a better bet would be to fly to Vancouver, drive to Calgary (650 miles of scenery) and then fly to Toronto. That could get pricey.

Or hang around here for a while and narrow your scope a bit.

steve of 5-0

If you are planning a recon` mission - check BC`s Provincial Nominee programme - that might work better for you - and quicker!

riddle89

Steve

I have had a look on the BC PNP website and it looks like an imigration program or a method of applying for immigration for which the state of BC and Canada will help you / your employer.

We already have our forms in with the CHC (Canadian High Commision) and will hopefully hear off them in around 6 months. What I am planning is a holiday May / June 2006 which will also be a recc'i to see where we want to land when / if we get accepted.

There is a PDF that I found on the BC PNP website http://www.ag.gov.bc.ca/sam/newcomer...c_guide_03.pdf
A little basic in some areas but not bad.

Fight or Flight

Hi,
I am biased but I would suggest that due to your interests if you went early May you might Ski in Alberta at sunshine Village (we skiied there in may this year check their website for projected date to finish season) and then head either through to Vancouver in BC via Golden or head north to jasper and then head to Vancouver down the Thompson valley, either way you will see a lot of the place and if you time it right you can drive on an evening to maximise the time you can spend doing stuff during the day. check the internet for activities and buy a map and plan plan plan!
You can plan everything over the internet and on the whole everything will go ok, we planned a three week trip two years ago including wedding and honeymoon in alberta and BC without speaking to hardly anyone, it is easy.
i am sure that you may have ideas about other areas but as mentioned earlier canada is such a vast and diverse place it is difficult to say where you should go only you can decide that.
internal flights are ok but again this will add travelling time and may be expensive depending on where you want to go.

dbd33

I'd drive. I say that never having done it and without knowing how much it costs. However, in the past couple of years I have driven San Diego/Toronto, Toronto/LA/Toronto, Denver/Toronto, Toronto/Halifax/Toronto,Toronto/Miami/Toronto for pleasure. On these trips we've mixed camping and motels. We also drove up to the north shore of Lake Superior for a weekend this past summer. It's three days from here to LA so I suppose, and I hear from others, that it's three days to Calgary. The drive from Toronto to Wawa (as far as I've been) is interesting and scenic with lots of wildlife. The drive from Calgary to the ocean is famously scenic so there's only the flat bit in the middle that might be boring. I would think that to drive once the very flatness would be something to see. It'd be especially something to see if, like us, you find yourselves near a tornado.

If you can pick sometime slightly out of season there's lots of choice of places to camp, the attachment shows the view from a typical Ontario site we happened upon this summer. List here : http://www.ontarioparks.com/
I don't think the Canadian cities are all that exciting or all that different from one another, except for small areas of the downtown core where you're not going to live. In any case, the choice of city will likely be made by employment prospects so I'd spend as much time as possible being outside, away from the concrete.

Souvenir

Three days TO to Calgary? That's about 1,200km per day. Doesn't sound like an awful lot of fun to me.

dbd33

How far is that ?

Souvenir

What do you mean, how far is it? My map says that it's 4,500km from Toronto to Vancouver and 1,057 from Vancouver to Calgary. Thus, Toronto to Calragy is about 3,500km (about 2,200 miles, in old money). To cover that distance in three days, you have to either not sleep much or be a keen collector of speeding tickets.

dbd33

2,200 miles is about 3 day's worth, yes. I usually reckon to go 900-950 miles the first day, that's to Omaha if you're crossing the states. I usually stick the cruise on 85, leave early, eat from the cooler, and stop only for gas and scenery. The next day I'd go 800 taking the pressure off the third day. Obviously if you're two drivers and some books on tape you can go much farther but usually I'm the only driver. Note that in all the trips listed I've only had one speeding ticket, that was for doing 100 on a mountain road in Utah, I suppose the limit was 75. The cop said he had to ticket me as I was a hazard to the elk but he made it fifty bucks and no points which I thought fair enough.

There's no denying that Calgary's a long way, still I prefer to drive if I can, at least I feel I've seen something of the country. Once past Calgary, of course, it'll all be scenic. One alternative might be to take the train to Calgary and drive from there. Flying will be a massive bother with children, especially non-nationals, as it'll likely involve hubbing through Chicago or Minneapolis. That or, for the true masochist, flying AC.

Rich_007

Hmmm....crystal meth, hot wheels, and nitrous

Rich.

R2D2

Hi riddle,
We flew to Toronto, then on to Calgary using Air Canada's budget internal airline 'Tango', who we thought were fantastic. They even allowed us to take our childs buggy all the way down the ramp to the doors of the plane and store it up the front (don't know about health and safety there.......but very helpful)
From Calgary we hired an RV (motorhome) and did a big loop through the Rockies. A great way to travel, esp if you have little ones as you can stop wherever and whenever and the campgrounds on route are great, just drive up and plug everything in ie, water, power, sewage.

Depends on how long you have for your trip, maybe you wouldn't be able to fit it all in on one trip.

My husband used his 2nd reccy trip to follow up all leads he had on the employment front and arranged 3 interviews to have whilst there. One of which came up with the job offer. The job he now holds ! If you don't have employment lined up, then it would be a good idea to take copies of CV with you and arrange a quick visit or even cold call on companies in your field.........you never know what may come of it. Don't be too English and reserved !

dbd33

We're going to Colorado for New Year. It's a familar trip and we're allowing two days each way to/from Denver (1500 miles) same as always. Obviously by British standards it seems a lot but there are excellent roads across the US and Canada. No need of drugs or an exotic car for that sort of pace.

Rich_007

Aw c'mon, admit, you've been watching Vanishing Point on repeat, you're a regular Mr Kowalski aintcha ?

Rich

dbd33

Who he ?