Hello All,
Since joining this forum (only very recently) I have noticed that there are just a few negatives towards Canada from people who now live there. I have an honest question, I am not trying to be funny or clever or opening the floodgates for rants and raves of I do not know what I am talking about, because I don't. That is why I am asking so we are fully aware and benefit from your advice. If you take offence at this, that is not my intention. So the question is;

If Canada is so bad why have you stayed. Tell us why so we can learn from your experience and be fully prepared.

Thanks in advance for your help and support.

Simon

There are three reasons usually... and the fourth would be nice if it was more common in my opinion.

1. Came with canadian spouse. Staying for love of spouse not love of Canada

2. Run out of money and cant afford to head back to UK on an entry level canadian wage. (try and avoid that point if you can!)

3. Tied by children. Ex spouses can make it very hard to even leave the province with kids let alone the country.

4. Sticking it out for a minimum timeframe to at least give it a fair go. IMO Everyone should stay at least 6 months to a year (certainly through one winter) minimum, no matter how miserable they feel...culture shock and homesickness are part of the normal settling process for most people.

Well I am only a beginner at this living in Canada thing. Spent 2 months at our house here last summer, had a few trips out here for a couple of weeks throughout the year and then at the beginning of December I just decided to move. I have loved every minute so far and have every intention of living here forever. This is my home, no question about it.

If we run into bad luck along the way, which obviously I hope we don't, but if we do then we will try somewhere else in Canada - I would absolutely never go back to the UK (all barr someone close to me in my family being on deaths door) and would rather move to France or Italy or Spain before I would chose to live in England again.

I am one of the worlds fighters, and I have never given up on anything in my life - and I sure as heck don't intend to now.

I am not looking for anything here, I had a wonderful life in the UK and I have just as fantastic a life here. I just got sick of the grey days, the mud and the rain in England. The attitude of some Brits really gets up my nose - a lot of them appear to relish other peoples failures and I can't bear that sort of attitude. I want everyone to do well in life - or at least as well as they want to do.

I guess there are many reason why people stay - love, children, partners not wanting to leave, maybe they are not financially able to just up sticks and move back. I do often wonder why some people don't leave, but then I am also blown away by the few who do leave!

I moved over here to Vancouver in December and I absolutely love it here. I came over as the spouse of a Canadian, found a job relatively easily and have settled in nicely. We're just looking into buying our first house, and then I guess babies, family stuff, and living happily ever after comes next. I love it here and have absolutely no intention of returning to live in the UK. I was fed up of the crappy weather over there, the crappy, dirty cities, and the skanky chavs who seem to be taking over the UK. The window in my office looks out over the city skyline on one side, and a view of the mountains on the other. Much better than my office with no windows that I had in the UK . Of course the streets aren't paved with gold here and Canada does have it's bad bits, but I feel that the overall quality of life here is much much higher than it is in the UK.

I would say try to see through the negative comments that others post on this forum and use other peoples experiences and suggestions to help you settle into Canada easier and find a good job sooner.

Don't read negative comments and use them as a reason to not come here at all!!

Love it here, mush more wholesome for kids IMO. Love the seasons although I am not that keen on winter (or the length of ot rather).

Love the bigger houses, living in one of those makes it very difficult to return to UK and shoeboxes for houses.

Love the outdoors.

Love the things for kids to do.

Dont love the nannystateness (wrong word probably).

Dont love the inconsiderate mad drivers.

1) My spouse is Canadian.
2) There are some things about Canada that beat the UK hands down, i.e absence of scumbags on every street corner & great weather. Therefore I intend to stick it out here for at least a year or hopefully 3 when I can apply for citizenship.

I don't think Canada is bad. I am from Southern Africa. My husband and I migrated to Canada in the 1970s when the apartheid regime still was in power and South Africa's future looked bleak to us. Although one of the possible scenarios that we envisaged for SA (full blown blood bath, etc.) has not unfolded in the way we thought it might, returning to SA still is a non-starter as far as we're concerned.

The fact that we feel as if our bridges have been burned makes things simpler for us in many ways. From what I've seen on this forum and from what Euoprean expats whom I know in "real life" have told me, the choice to remain in Canada is less clear cut if it's feasible to return to your home country.

Because we were so highly motivated to make a go of it in Canada, we were willing to accept the downward mobility that our move entailed. When I read the posts on this forum and when I think of the dreadful job in a horrible factory that my husband accepted when we first moved here, my admiration for him only increases.

I've never lived in the UK, only visited it as a tourist. If I did live in the UK, I believe I would think long and hard before I emigrated. I think my decision would depend on whether I preferred the proximity to old architecture, art and countries that spoke other languages or whether I preferred proximity to wilderness areas.

People on this forum say that houses are more affordable in Canada than they are in the UK, and that seems to be a strong point in Canada's favour.

The downside to migration is that it usually means separating your parents and your children from each other, which is something I have found to be very sad. I don't think our children mind, because they don't know what they've missed. But I'm sure it's been painful for our parents. I too am sorry about this. I know my children haven't had the childhood that I had, which included plenty of exposure to grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and from which I derived a lot of pleasure.

You probably will have read how little vacation (holiday time) Canadians get. The shortage of vacation time is compounded if you feel obliged to spend some of your vacations visiting your family members overseas. Those trips in any case don't feel relaxing, because you spend so much time rushing around trying to see so many people. You never satisfy your family members' desire for you to be present in their lives. You can never go back often enough or long enough for their taste. And yet you feel short changed in terms of how much of Canada you're able to see and how relaxing your vacations can be.

If you emigrate when you're young, as we did, there is another issue that tends to emerge quite a bit later, when you're middle aged. That is when your parents grow older and more infirm and ultimately die. It feels truly awful to be far away when one of them experiences a serious illness. In our case we felt obliged to choose between the needs of the next generation and the needs of the previous generation. We had no hesitation in choosing to meet the needs of the next generation, and we still feel that was the right decision. Yet on those occasions on which we have felt the crunch (especially when we lost our respective fathers) our convictions have not spared us from feeling terrible.

If you live in the UK, there is another obvious destination that is worthy of your consideration, and that is Australia. I would say the great benefit of Australia is its climate. The downside is the much greater distance from the UK and the fact that the major summer holidays are out of synch with the UK.

Conversely, the downside of Canada is its cold climate in winter (albeit many British expats say they like the increased sunshine that they experience in much of Canada compared with the UK winters which they describe as being cloudy and rainy). The advantage of Canada over Australia is that Canada is a much shorter (and cheaper) flight away from the UK, and the summer holidays of the two countries are in synch with each other.

I suggest you think long and hard before deciding to move to Canada. If your minds truly are made up and you are going to move, no matter what anyone says, then I would go even further than iaink's recommendation of sticking it out for six months to a year, including at a minimum one winter. I think it can take as long as three years to go through the cycle of initial honeymoon / culture shock / adaptation.

Hope that helps.

We've been here nearly two years and now we are here don't intend to stay forever. We came with the intention to maybe stay but once here although happy and settled we know we don't want to be here forever.

So you could ask why haven't we gone back already. Hmmm, well I guess it is because husband has a good job and is happy at work for now, we feel there is lots more of Canada to explore whilst here, our son is only 3 so doesn't need to be on the education ladder yet even in UK, we have just got PR and are tempted to stay for citizenship, we enjoy the winters and have started to learn to ski, love the outdoor pools in the summer. But I think missing family back in Europe and the far better schools in UK will lure us back before too long.

Good luck whatever you do and wherever you go

The advice my dad gave me, from a close friend who moved to Australia, was that it takes a good 2 years plus to settle, 3 before they really felt at home.

The relocators who are advising us came out themselves in the mid-90's and even THEY said that if they'd been able to come back there had been 2-3 times in their first year that they WOULD have done.

I am expecting to feel this. I shall be happily surprised if we don't! But we shall sell our house to come, and make it as hard as we can to run back if/when the going gets tough.

We are leaving elderly parents, which is heart-breaking, but moving for the future of our kids! We at least plan to stay to get citizenship if we can, and that will give the boys the chance to choose where they live.

Morw

The prices on the west coast are increasing all the time and are very expensive though I hear house prices are stabilizing.

[QUOTE=Morwenna]The advice my dad gave me, from a close friend who moved to Australia, was that it takes a good 2 years plus to settle, 3 before they really felt at home.

The relocators who are advising us came out themselves in the mid-90's and even THEY said that if they'd been able to come back there had been 2-3 times in their first year that they WOULD have done.

I am expecting to feel this. I shall be happily surprised if we don't! But we shall sell our house to come, and make it as hard as we can to run back if/when the going gets tough.

We are leaving elderly parents, which is heart-breaking, but moving for the future of our kids! We at least plan to stay to get citizenship if we can, and that will give the boys the chance to choose where they live.


Well said Morwenna

Our story is much the same as yours, for me personally, I worry about the kids settling as they are 16 and 12 so may find the whole process harder than younger ones but we shall see

We stayed to give it a good go. After 18 months (including 2 winters) it's not what we want so we are doing something about it. That's just our personal opinion and everybody is different.

You are to be congratulated on trying to find out as much as you can, both positive and negative, before you make the leap. I wish I had found this site before we made the move. It wouldn't have changed our minds but it would have made us a little bit more prepared for some of the pitfalls we hadn't anticipated.

Good Luck,

Simon.

I think that is a good question. In our case, we moved here for much the same reasons as everyone else - 4 seasons, more space, outdoor lifestyle (due to the weather), adventure and travel, more property for your money, less traffic hassles, wider opportunities for our kids if they are dual citizens etc.

We arrived last April and after the first few days of excitement, I didn't like the place. It was alot scruffier than I had remembered it being, although I now realise that it gets like that for a few weeks during the transition from winter to spring/summer as the cars, roads etc. all have a filthy dust on them due to the grit etc. The trees and plants were not in bloom either. A few weeks later though, it all looked much better. I know it sounds trivial, but first impressions and all that!

Anyway, I missed our old house, neighbourhood, friends, family, shops, t.v. etc and thought Canada was very poor in comparison. Also, if we phoned anywhere, we would leave a message on voice mail and never here from people which we thought was really rude and inefficient. We were almost laughed at for asking to register with the local family doctor as there just aren't enough family doctors in Ontario and thousands of people do not have one. We had just left a very good family practice and in our mind, a much more civilised country!!

It took Tom 7 months to find a decent job and during that time, we felt like second class citizens. He dealt with some very rude agents barely out of uni themselves who didn't have a clue or others who just didn't return calls at all etc. All in all, we became very disillusioned and came very close to going back home where Tom could walk back into his extremely good job that he had just given up for the sake of moving to Canada.

However, the kids (aged 3 and 5 at the time) absolutely loved the place from day 1. They got to play outside most of the time, we took them to the park, visited different places etc. They had both parents around all the time and basically had a great time. They then settled straight into school after enjoying a long warm summer. Tom then found a good job with nice people. We started to make friends ourselves which helped to make us feel more normal too. This in turn, along with time, helped to ease our homesickness.

If Tom hadn't got the job when he did, we would have gone back at around the 7 month point due to running out of funds. We didn't want to run ourselves into the ground and be stuck here in a bad situation. We would much rather have gone back to the UK and at that time would have managed to get back onto the property ladder etc. Even though we would have been worse off financially than we had been, we would have still been able to move back into our old neighborhood etc with our friends, family doctor etc. The only real problem was that there would always have been the niggle at the back of our minds - 'what if we'd given it longer?' etc. It was a very tough decision! We decided that if Tom found a job soon, we would stay for a year and find out what a Canadian winter was like then reveiw the situation.

As it turns out (after almost a year!) we have realised that we can make it through a Canadian winter, we prefer snow to rain, we like the fact that we are being adventurous and are living in a different culture. Also, we are looking forward to some good weather between now and October. We have made some lovely friends who we can have a laugh with just like in the UK. The traffic is less (here in London Ont anyway), there are a couple of lakes for swimming in less than an hour away.

As far as the family doctor situation is concerned, we just use the walk-in clinic which has turned out to be ok - not ideal or as good as we had it, but still ok. Also, one of our good friends is a GP so we have a kind of safety net!
We have made some good contacts (very important in Canada as we have discovered!) and Tom is gaining valuable Canadian experience in a job that he likes (less pay than the UK by a long shot, but we were expecting that).

We have a nice house in a good area which is spacious enough to have my mum living with as she is on a student visa!! Of course, having mum here has helped too and I am very lucky as most people don't emigrate with their mum! Has it's positives and negatives !

We are now used to not having our calls returned - we now expect it and just follow up if we have to. At first people seemed superficial as they used to say 'how are you?' but not wait for a response. Now we realise that this is just a cultural difference and just means 'hi'. People are people wherever you go, it's just the culture that's different.

Looking back, I now realise that alot of our negative feelings towards Canada, came from two sources - culture shock (which I honestly didn't think we would get as Canada is a western culture etc.) and lack of jobs (we knew it would be more difficult than the UK, but didn't believe how bad it could be). What helped me to get through our first year, was knowing that I had Tom's support to go back after a year if we still hated it. It made it much easier to put up with, knowing that although it would be tough financially, we could go home if we wanted - no one was making us stay.

As it turns out, we have actually become much more settled and will probably stay in Canada indefinitely. If, for some reason we change our minds, we will either move back to the UK or go somewhere else. This time though, we will move with a job! Having been through our first year here, it has given us confidence that we have made it through quite a traumatic time together. Also, assuming we get citizenship (God willing), the kids will have dual citizenship which will give them more opportunities which was one of our goals!

As usual, I have rambled on a bit, but I think you get the idea!!

Chris

I don't think property prices are that bad here. Especially when compared to some areas of the UK. Sure if you want a 3/4 bedroom townhouse in West Van or Kitsilano then you can (and should) expect to pay an arm and a leg for it. Maybe that is something to aim for later on in life, once the kids are all grown up and have buggared off and we have a partly/almost or completely paid off little mortgage already... But like any city/area there are (nice!) areas where property is reasonably priced for the first time buyer. For our first home (and first mortgage) we're looking at spending less than $200k for a 2 bedroom apartment. At the moment we are looking at the Burnaby area, just because the commute won't be too bad for both of us to get to North Van and UBC. That will work out at monthly payments of $1200 or so, which isn't too bad for a couple both on full-time wages. But well priced property (and even cheaper) can also be found in other areas, Richmond, North Van, Port Moody, to name just the ones I know of.

If you do a search on www.mls.ca for property in the Greater Vancouver area. There are currently 424 under 175k. Sure some of those might be in Crackville or Bumtown, but the opportunity is there!

How about this one. "Great corner unit - 2 bedroom mobile, located in a park on the water side of Maple Ridge.@ Just $7,000. If you want cheap property...

Swooooosh!