Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

:huh: I dont suppose your realtor would, as i said it was all Vancouver Island.
And at the end of the day your realtor wants the sale and at 7%, i doubt they give a dam who your neighbours are.

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

I'm not trying to sell anywhere to anybody, just trying to give an honest account of what I've found to date. I don't think Canada's perfect, I don't think the UK is perfect, it's up to each person to decide where they want to live based on what's important to them.

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

dbd (does that stand for deadbeat, by chance?)..You're an idiot and a complete loser who spends all his waking hours reading and posting comments on this board..why don't you just go and get a REAL life and have REAL realtionships with REAL people. Posting an avareage of one post per waking hour, seven days a week for the last two years is a bit pathetic you know...

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

Ah yes Realtor's, not to keen on them either. Be you're best friend as long as they can smell a sale somewhere...

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

dbd is a truncation of deadbeat dad. One of my children suggested it as a name after overhearing me refusing to pay for the opinion of a second aromatherapist for the autistic daughter. (The children's mother felt that the first aromatherapist was making little progress with the autism).

I told you above, I don't devote my life to this board. I also post on GU.

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

Sorry to hear about your family loses. You should check that pension thing out for your Aunt on one of the other threads around here. You can get some good and useful advice I've found. I Got a lot of information for my sister-in-law on bringing her dog to Calgary in September, on one of the boards, which was/is very useful.

I'll bet it was quite a thrill seeing that grandchild for the first time. We haven't got any granchildren yet, but I can imagine the feeling though.

Anyway take care and again all the best to you and your family in the UK. I'm so sorry you had should bad time over here, but at least your back in the UK now and can get on with your life.

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

I think you need to get some professional help...

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

I could use some, yes, my horse has talent, easily clears 3' 6", but is unruly and bucks like the Dutchman's mount at the Olympics. Some time with a trainer might help but I don't want him polled or otherwise abused.

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

dbd, chinook and any others engaged, or about to engage, in more mud slinging...If you feel you need to continue the spat, please start your own thread!!

To the people who have e-mailed me personally - thankyou, some candid and refreshing honest stories.

To everyone else, please please can bring this back to experiences from those who have tried Canada and not liked it for whatever reason.

As I explained, my better half and I are gathering info to help us make our decision and really appreciate the advice we have been given. Any more welcomed.

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

Good point...

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

Chutley, I have to get back to work, but for what it's worth, I've spoken (personally) to a lot of people who have emigrated to Canada and settled in Ontario, Alberta and BC and generally they seem to state that the first 2 years are the hardest for most people to settle into a new way of life in a new country. Also, not everywhere in Canada will suit everybody (you have to think of Canada as more like the European Union, than the UK, as it's so vast and quite diverse. We couldn't settle in Ontario and nearly returned to the UK (in our first year here), but we did fall in love with western Canada and decided to stay (a decision I and my family have never regretted). Accordingly, I think you need to do your own personal research into life in Canada, to decide if this is for you and what part of the country would fit with your required lifestyle.

As far as advice from this board is concerned, you have to remember that there are literally hundreds of thousands of people emigrate to Canada from all over the world every year and a good proportion of them are from the UK. The vast majority of Brits who come to Canada will never post on this board.

After over 25 years of living here, I only came on this board for the first time a week ago to find out some information for my sister-in-law about bringing the family dog to Calgary and to be honest I'm not sure I would take any advice about living here obtained on this board as relevant and use it as a basis for deciding to come to live in Canada. It's all personal experiences. Some people will go back to the UK simply because they miss the food, the accent of the people or believe it or not a TV show. Others will come here and completely embrace the Canadian way of life and avoid expats like the plague, as they feel they have left the UK way of life behind them and they don't want to become ghettoized (and sincerely I'm not trying to be offensive, I'm simply stating a fact).

On the other hand, some expats will form and/or join clubs with other expats and spend most of their leisure hours doing the same kind of things they did in the UK (play darts, cricket etc). It's different for everyone. Then finally you get the poor souls, who can't settle here, really miss the UK way of life and become very depressed and then everything is wrong about this country and they tend become very bitter and critical of Canada, when they realize they can't or they won't return to the UK.

So my point is that asking for information like, why do you like it here (Canada) or why do you not like it here, the answers will not be in any way representative of the vast majority of brits who come to live here and the bottom line is it can be a very different experience for everyone. One thing I would say though, if you do not deal with change easily, you probably won't be happy leaving the UK for anywhere else in the world, because when it gets right down to it life in Canada (or Australia etc) is not going to be the same as life in the UK.

Hope this helps you...I've got to go now. So good luck with your decision.

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

Things I don't like about the GTA, some of which will apply to other Canadian locations:

- physically ugly
- polluted (though not, I understand, as bad as the Fraser Valley)
- chronic traffic problems
- unwatchable TV, unlistenable radio, cancon rules
- ever expanding urban sprawl; tract housing developments with chain restaurants and stores
- very little vacation and it's considered a career limiting move to use the days the law does allow

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

I agree with what Chi_Nook said. I believe there are too many variables for the answers to be useful.

When you ask a Briton whether or not they liked Canada, you may or may not know the following:

• What their personality is and what they themselves contributed to their life experience.
  
  
• When they arrived in Canada. (In Canada I know British "war brides" who arrived just after WW II, Britons who arrived in the 1970s, some who have arrived this decade, and a small sprinkling who have arrived within the last few months. In some cases the timing of their arrival has made a difference.)
  
  
• Which part of Canada they settled in. (As Chi_Nook said, it's a vast country, so it's more useful to think of it as many countries.)
  
  
• What qualifications, skills and work experience they arrived with.
  
  
• How close the fit was between the work skills they arrived with and the need for those work skills in the area of Canada in which they settled.
  
  
• The ease with which they could get certification / accreditation in their field.
  
  
• The amount of respect (or lack thereof) that they experienced in their workplace.
  
  
• How much they earned in Canada.
  
  
• How much capital they arrived with.
  
  
• The age at which they arrived.
  
  
• What kind of family responsibilities they arrived with, for example, did they arrive with or without children?
  
  
• Their race, sexual orientation, etc., and how well these were accepted in the area of Canada in which they settled.
  
  
• What else happened in their lives after they'd settled in Canada (death of a spouse or child, divorce, birth of a child with serious difficulties, accident that caused disabilities or, conversely, chance investments that netted handsome profits and other welcome developments).

The variables are virtually endless. One could go on listing them for pages and pages.

Until quite recently we were friendly with a British engineer who worked with my then-husband. He returned to the UK because he was a foodie and Calgary didn't have enough good and different kinds of restaurants to float his boat.

Now I'll grant you that Calgary is not without its faults, and I'm leaving it because it's reached its Use By date as far as I am concerned. But the paucity of restaurants is not one of my complaints about Calgary, not even remotely so.

So, Chutley, while I would love to help you out, I don't feel I can.

If you really want to collect anecdotal accounts, the best thing to do probably is to read through old discussion threads on the Moving back to the UK forum as well as the Canada forum. I feel that will be a more productive use of your time than trying to motivate people to respond to your question. There actually is a wealth of information tied up in previous discussion threads.
x

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

One day whilst i was still in Nanaimo...... i had just parked up in the save on foods car park. And this old boy noticed i had a for sale sign in the back window of my mini, so he came over and was asking how much i wanted etc

It turns out he was 79 yrs old and came from York, he was drilling me for ages on how "old blighty" was :lol:
He then said he'd been in Canada since 1969 and every day since, he has wanted to go home :(
He also said he didn't think he'd be able to afford to buy a place to live in the Uk, but thought that the Uk would look after him and his wife in there old age better then Canada was :frown:

I have heard similar stories from other people, that have constantly given it another year untill they have resigned themselves into never being able to return home.............

Or long to go.......... but simply can not afford it.

People often dont like to admit how they feel, expecially to others that are as happy as larry...........It would never do, to be known as a pommy whinger :ohmy:

Re: Honest Advice from those returning from Canada
 

:confused::confused: ?