great46

I have never been to Canada but from all that I have read it really appeals to me, obviously you need to have a look for yourself, but I can only manage to fit a week in this year, would that be long enough to have a good look around Calgary?

Due to the lengthy process, 2-3 years I am keen to start the ball rolling and I don't want to wait too long to put our papers in, we have a son due to start secondary school in September! 2-3 years is pushing it for him but any longer and I dint think we would be able to move him.

Is Calgary a good choice as a first place to visit? what could we see in a week any help would be soo appreciated

Judy in Calgary

Well, it would be an expensive trip to do for just one week, especially if you'd be coming over as a family, but it could be done.

I don't know. Judging from the amount of activity on the travel discussion boards, I would say the Alberta Rockies are the third most popular Canadian tourist destination (behind Ontario and British Columbia). But what you're contemplating is not the average tourist visit. Yes, if you come to Calgary you can do a day trip to the beautiful Rockies. But, beyond that, how representative of Canadian life is Calgary if you're ultimately going to end up in the Greater Toronto Area or somewhere else completely different? I don't think Calgary, with a population of 950,000, would provide you with a snapshot of life in Toronto or Vancouver.

Since you've mentioned Calgary first, I'm guessing you have some reason for thinking it may be a suitable destination for your family. Perhaps you think you and/or your partner have a good chance of finding employment here. Perhaps you're attracted to the mountain scenery. Since it appears that you are attracted to Calgary for some reason, there may be merit in visiting the city.

Well again, the purpose of your trip will influence the way in which you'll spend your time. If you were coming for a tourist visit, I would say you shouldn't spend a single second in Calgary other than the time you needed for landing and taking off. With only a week at his/her disposal, a tourist should spend every available moment in the mountains. In your case, however, I would suggest a maximum of three days in the mountains. You could even reduce the mountains to a single day trip to Moraine Lake, Lake Louise and Banff. You could spend a day looking around downtown Calgary, and another day or two looking at residential neighbourhoods outside of the downtown core. If you and/or your partner were able to arrange an informational interview with someone who works in your field, that would be helpful. (An informational interview is not a job interview but only a meeting to find out about a given industry, what it's like to work in it, what developments are taking place in it, etc.) Although this is another tourist activity and it would not advance your understanding of life in Calgary, I highly recommend a day trip to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller. The dinosaur skeletons are awesome.

Hope that helps.

great46

Hi Judy

Thanks for your reply

It would only be me and my husband to keep the cost down. I would have liked my husband to go on his own, he is self employed and it would be easier and cheaper but he doesn't want to


To be honest I am very confused about areas, Canada is so vast and I know little about the different parts. Calgary seamed to be a good choice from what I have read on here, employment is a huge factor, obviously. I would like to have a better safer life for my children with lots for them to do the weather concerns me and I am confused with all the different opinions that I have read some say it's not a problem some say it's terrible

What made you chose Calgary?

Alberta_Rose

I second whole-heartedly what Judy has said ...... I was about to post almost exactly the same reply but thought I'd better read hers first!

Do your homework before you go, and plan the week VERY carefully, and it should be enough time, though you'll feel run ragged by the time you get home!!

I would add the following:

Get in touch with a relocation agent (PM me if you'd like a recommendation) and they will talk to you about the different areas and spend a half day or so showing you around properties in various communities. All the communities have information online, so you can look up things like house prices and crime figures and where the schools are and how big etc, to give you a start of an idea.

We sent CV's to likely possible work situations, telling them when we were coming over and asking if they would grant an informal chat such as Judy suggested. This has resulted in making some good contacts; a formal interview has been offered my husband now we have our visas, and I have found a mentor for myself until I pass the physio competency exam.

We also contacted a member of a local field hockey club (insert whatever your particular interests are ) and met up with them for a drink, and to swop club shirts .... great fun and an opening onto a social scene too!

You might also look into schools before you go, and visit one or two if you have school aged kiddies.

We did find people to be quite laid back and "give us a call when you're here", but if you explain you are on a very tight schedule you can usually pin them down at least to within the half-day

Good luck, and enjoy your trip!!

Judy in Calgary

In that case, I would suggest you skip the day trip to the Royal Tyrrell Museum. It is indeed fantastic. However, if you settle here, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to visit it. I suggested it because I thought your kids might be with you.

Morwenna has given you great advice about using the short time that you'll have here.

Actually I think it’s a good idea for you to go on a recce trip together. It promotes each partner’s ownership of the project and acceptance of whatever decision ends up being made – to go or not to go. If one partner goes ahead to check out the place, he/she returns and gives the best situation report he/she can manage. If some aspect of the destination later turns out to be different than expected, there is the temptation to blame the partner who went ahead, as he/she can be accused of failing to report back properly.

Do you mind my asking what kind of work you and your husband do?

Although I have not lived in the UK, so cannot compare from direct experience, I would guess that a middle class family and even a working class family in Canada can have a lifestyle for which a family would need more money in the UK. I’m basing that guess on what I’ve heard from friends and relatives who live in the UK and from what I’ve read on this forum. As so often has been said on this forum, Canada gives you lots of scope for outdoor activities if that’s what you like. If you love Europe’s architectural and art treasures, Canada obviously will come up short.

Calgary gets some very cold weather in winter. That is moderated to some extent by the warm Chinook winds that come along from time to time and melt the snow. That breaks up the winter and helps to make it feel shorter than it actually is.

Something that I consider to be in Calgary’s favour is the fact that it has a relatively dry climate. Usually the cold weather is a crisp kind of cold with sunshine and blue skies. For all our cold weather, we get much less snow than Toronto does, so it’s less of a chore to shovel our driveways and sidewalks.

Also, buildings and cars are designed for the weather. There is a good reason that the first shopping mall was built in Canada. In Calgary’s downtown core, buildings are connected by overhead glass tunnels known as the Plus 15 System. The system enables you to walk through just about the entire downtown core without a coat or boots in winter. Other cities, such as Montreal, have similar tunnels, except that theirs are underground.

There are some people who like the milder climate that Vancouver has and who are willing to put up with the rain in exchange for the milder temperatures. There are others who would rather put up with the cold and have sunnier skies. That is a very individual preference.

Something I like about Calgary’s climate is that summer nights are almost always cool. Our summer days sometimes do clime into the high 20s C but, because of our fairly high elevation of 1,100 metres, our July and August nights go down to about 10 deg C. That means that, even if your house grows hotter as the day wears on, you at least start out with a cool, fresh-feeling house every morning.

Career prospects. We moved here from South Africa in 1977. Around the time that we decided to emigrate, around 1975, there was a National Geographic article about Alberta’s oil industry. My husband is an electrical engineer, and he worked on a mine in South Africa. He thought his skills would be transferable to Canada’s oil industry. That turned out to be true, albeit he has done a great deal of continuing education over the years. The first thing he did when we got here was learn Canada’s electrical code, which is different from South Africa’s.

There also was another factor that attracted us to Calgary. My husband had a first cousin once removed who lived in Calgary. The cousin’s South African mother had married a British soldier during the Boer War, The cousin had grown up in the UK and had migrated to Canada as an adult.

When we wanted to migrate to Canada, my husband made enquiries and, after some digging, found out his cousin’s contact details. She and her husband were too distantly related to sponsor us, and we got into Canada because my husband qualified as a skilled immigrant.

However, my husband’s cousin and her Canadian-born husband were very hospitable towards us. We stayed in their house for a month when we first got to Calgary. That gave us a base from which to hunt for jobs and look for an apartment of our own.

My husband’s cousin died a couple of years after our arrival in Calgary. However, her widower, who was a most remarkable man, lived in his own house until his death at the age of 101. We used to have frequent contact with him, and he was a surrogate grandfather for our two Calgary-born sons.

I like Calgary’s size. With just under one million people, it has enough amenities to meet my needs, while still being manageable in terms of traffic, etc. The easy access to the Canadian Rockies is a huge plus, of course. Even if we don’t drive to the mountains, we have good parks right here in the city. We are fortunate enough to live close to Glenmore Reservoir in the southwest part of Calgary, and we regularly go paddling in our canoe on summer evenings.

Although I don’t have close relatives in the United Kingdom, I like the fact that we have non-stop flights to London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, etc. We don’t have as many non-stop flights to the UK as Toronto does, and our flights are a little longer and a little more expensive than Toronto’s are, but they’re still pretty good, in my opinion. I would think this would be an advantage for anyone who had close family in the UK.

An area in which Alberta leaves something to be desired, in my opinion, is its political conservatism. Our present provincial premier, Ralph Klein, is a Thatcher-like politician who is popular for having slashed taxes. The business community loves him, and many people here talk about the “Alberta advantage.�

In my opinion, however, public health care, education and physical infrastructure have suffered since Klein has been in power. The parents of school aged children in my suburb of Oakridge volunteer at casinos to raise money for textbooks for the neighbourhood school. That was unheard of when my kids, who now are in their early twenties, were attending that school. Back then I was involved in fundraising too. However, I raised money to buy improved playground equipment and other “nice to have� amenities. The province’s education budget was big enough to cover all of the basics like textbooks.

What worries me is that the Klein government is failing to invest in human infrastructure, if that’s the right term. I’m lucky enough to live in a middle class to upper middle class neighbourhood in which parents have time to volunteer. Parents who live in working class neighbourhoods, many of whom work two jobs, lack the time to volunteer. I hate to think of the state of the schools in those neighbourhoods.

There has been a recent news story that demonstrates the benefits of investing in human beings. In spite of the fact that it was offered a huge tax incentive in the United States, Toyota announced that it would build a new factory in Ontario. The apparent reasons for that included the fact that Toyota found the Canadian workforce to be better educated and that it calculated that Canada’s public health care system would save the company money.

Klein and his fans have turned their back on the Ontario model and have moved Alberta closer to the U.S. model than I like.

But if your husband will be an entrepreneur in Canada as he is in the UK, he might find Alberta very attractive. My husband, who also is an entrepreneur, has a very positive opinion of Alberta’s business climate.

And, for all my concerns, Canada in general and Calgary in particular still offers a lifestyle that is pleasant and safe by world standards.

Hope that helps.

psb182

a week would be enough if you went in january then imagine 12-16 straight weeks of that every winter .....in fact a day would be enough you would be right back on the plane saying get me outta here

great46

Thanks for all that info!

My hubby is a self employed Kitchen and Bathroom fitter, although he worked for Fords prior to that as a Prototype Vehicle Technician for 16 years. His qualifications are all in Manufacturing and Engineering.

"a week would be enough if you went in January then imagine 12-16 straight weeks of that every winter .....in fact a day would be enough you would be right back on the plane saying get me outta here"

I think that proves my point about the conflicting views regarding the weather!!!

Alberta_Rose

I hope psb will not mind me pointing out that they are somebody who has lived in the states for 20 years and is now wishing to go back to the UK.
I don't know if they have actually lived in Calgary, but Judy does so she should know of what she speaks yes?

Canada is not universally under feet of snow for months or even weeks on end. I mean parts of it are, but not all. It has a varied climate, even relatively locally.

You might be interested in the following (very long) thread on cold weather which was started in January: http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...t=279564&pp=15

Parts of it are very amusing!

Alberta_Rose

Judy, with regard to your rather disturbing comments about the financial state of schools etc....

I'm sure I read that Alberta was falling over itself looking for ways to spend the huge amount of surplus money it has!! Wern't they canvassing residents for ideas for how to spend it?

Why on earth do they not put more into schools???? Surely the schools hold the very future of the country?

psb182

I have no problem at all you saying that........just pointion out the weather situation in winter.....it's a LOT colder in Calgary than where I live in the winter ........when you can drive a truck onto a frozen lake in winter it's brutally cold

Alberta_Rose

I know my uncle HATES the winters in NS, and when he and my aunt were younger they were part of the set that flew south for the winter He's not a great snow-shoveller!

I definitely get the impression that Calgary is not in the same league though, and I have not seen many people on the boards leave Alberta due to the weather.

The main thing I am not looking forward to is the ice, from the driving perspective really. .... and the freezing rain, .. I have only met that once in the UK, and it is not nice!

Purley

Ice actually isn't too bad to drive on once you get used to it. If you have ABS in your car that makes it a lot easier. Black ice and freezing rain - those are the worst things to contend with.

Judy in Calgary

In the budget that it handed down in April 2005, the Alberta government did increase its spending by 10% over the previous year. There were major increases for education, health and policing, as well as more money for people receiving Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH).

What those promising numbers fail to portray, however, is the length of time it will take for the education and health care systems to recover from the several years of budget cuts to which they had been subjected.

The Alberta government is not spending all of its revenue. If the projected price of oil and therefore royalties from the oil industry are correct, the 2005 budget will result in a $1.5 billion surplus. The surplus will be invested in the Sustainability Fund and the Heritage Fund with some money also going to the Medical Research Endowment Fund.

The Sustainability and Heritage Funds are good ideas, in my opinion. They are intended to act as cushions, which I feel we do need. Resource-based economies traditionally have been volatile, so I think there is merit in having a rainy day fund.

I do believe, however, that we could get away with less investment in the Sustainability and Heritage Funds. We would benefit from more investment, over a sustained period of time, in education, health and infrastructure.

My point exactly, Morwenna.

I find that one of the challenges I encounter in dealing with government is that so many governments are economical with the truth. Alberta is blowing its trumpet and telling everyone who is willing to listen how much it has increased spending on education and health care. But the reality doesn’t look quite as rosy if you listen to someone who actually has to cope within the system.

At the beginning of July 2005, I had dinner with a friend who teaches at a school in an affluent neighbourhood. She said that the number of teachers at her school had increased in response to the Alberta government’s increased education budget. At first blush that might have looked like a good thing. After all, it improved the student / teacher ratio (which, I might add, had grown rather alarming in recent years, so it was merely returning to somewhat more respectable levels).

What the government didn’t factor into the equation, however, was that a larger number of teachers would result in a larger number of classes, which, in turn, would create a need for a larger number of classrooms. My friend told me that there was a desperate shortage of space at her school, and she had been teaching in a room that was only a little larger than a broom closet.

The well-heeled parents in this school district were absolutely appalled at classroom conditions. The Parent Council was all set to purchase some portable classrooms and have them delivered to the school to ease the crush. The principal begged the Parent Council to refrain from letting the Alberta government off the hook. The principal explained that parents in poorer neighbourhoods could neither afford the money to make donations to their children’s schools nor the time to raise funds by, for example, volunteering at casinos. If affluent parents implemented band aid measures, they would solve their own children’s challenges in the short term, but they would only prolong the overall problem. The principal begged the parents to continue to pressure the Alberta government to increase spending on education across the board.

To their credit, the parents at that particular school did what I’m sure must have been frightfully difficult for them to do. They bit the bullet and refrained from buying the portable classrooms that they could have afforded.

Judy in Calgary

Actually I don't find cold to be the most difficult thing to deal with. It takes a little planning, but you can equip yourself for cold by building suitable structures in which to live and work, driving suitable vehicles and wearing suitable clothing. We are fortunate that we get relatively little snow in Calgary. What snow we do get usually is of the light, fluffy variety. We get a couple of snowfalls of the wetter, heavier kind in the spring, but they usually melt away pretty quickly. I've lived in Calgary for all but four years since 1977, and I don't remember experiencing freezing rain here in all that time.

I believe the worst winter experience our family has ever had was an ice storm in usually warm Houston. The ice weighed down the branches of the trees, which then fell down onto power lines. The power was out in large swaths of Houston, including our neighbourhood, for about 36 hours. All services ground to a halt. For example, we couldn't have filled up with gas (petrol) if we'd wanted to, because the pumps at the gas stations weren't working. We couldn't buy groceries, because the tills in the supermarkets weren't functioning. Heck, we couldn't drive out of our little subdivision because the road was blocked by fallen trees. Our heat and electricity were out. We cooked on our propane barbecue.

It was actually quite a good family bonding experience, because none of us could watch television, play electronic games or anything like that. We sat around our coffee table, wrapped in our -25 deg C Canadian sleeping bags, playing chess and card games by candlelight.

That night it got down to -11 deg C (12 deg F). That may not sound all that cold, but it's cold enough if there is no heating in your house. Suffice it to say, I slept with my Canadian toque on my head that night.

I know things like that happen in Central and Eastern Canada, but I have never experienced anything remotely like it in Calgary.

Michelle Rodgers

Hiya, Ive sent you a private message

michelle

p.s. Judy - helpful as ever I see - what would us newcomers do without you!!