g_is_for_canada

One thing that struck me about people who emigrate from Britain, is the incredibly high proportion who are abandoning their culture and lifestyle, burning their bridges with British shores, slating their country while singing the praises of a country they, in most cases, know jack about.

This is certainly true of people moving to Canada, as I did a few years ago. I've been overwhelmed with the frustration of living here and some of the ridiculous rules. For example having to do driving license here is a complete insult to any UK license holding Brit, whose driving instruction and test are far more comprehensive. I also firmly believe most other countries of the world have more courteous and skillful drivers. On a daily basis I see things on the road that both drive me insane and fill me with despair.

Like many, I used these forums to make a very important life-changing decision a few years ago. However actually living here is SO different to what you'd be led to believe, as I was. I find the cost of living in western canada unbearable compared with anywhere I lived in Britain. The cost of maintaining a home is no less, and food shopping considerably more. Buying a car here is a complete joke. Prices were 30-50% higher than the US in the day when the Loonie was on a par with US. Plus there's all the crazy add-on charges and the fact that dealers all charge full retail price. Nobody pays retail in Britain (unless they're completely stupid).

Here in BC, motor insurance is no less than a cartel, state run, money pit. I got scammed by them a few years ago when a government worker was driving illegally and collided into my vehicle. Because of state corruption I took the full wack for this. Prices are 2-3 times what you'd expect in Britain, and only after pimping your insurance cover to keep the costs at this level.

Yet despite this, speak to any Brit here and most will be slagging of their own country and singing the praises of where they moved to. There's a myth that lower salaries here are counteracted by much lower cost of living. Untrue. Salaries are lower but cost of living is far higher. Also unexpected costs are way higher meaning if you have a bad year, you'll end up bankrupting yourself very quickly.

One thing my few years here has given me, is far more respect for my own country. I wouldn't want it to change too much as I like it the way it is. One thing I would like is for Britain to take note of how other countries, not least Canada, treat immigrants. I am (allegedly) highly employable and yet still paid a small fortune and had to jump through many hoops to get my residency here. Almost all the bad things happening in Britain, and the state of the country is down to complete anarchy with immigration, allowing waves of benefits claiming Europeans from backward countries to sponge of us until it's not convenient for them any more. Probably starting to sound like a Daily Mail article but this is how I feel and many others share some of these feelings. One thing Canada does well is to make immigrants really work for and respect the privilege of moving to a new country. If only Britons could start being more defensive and protective of their culture and country.

Needless to say I do have plans to move back to Britain quite soon. I've recently gone through some family changes which need to be resolved prior to making this big decision. However I for one will have no regrets in moving back, and my experience living in Canada has only strengthened by loyalty to my culture and heritage.

Does anyone else share any of these sentiments?

sans

Totally agree with everything you have just said Weve been back in the Uk 9 mths now

Maybe some of us, just have to go to find out where we really belong....

Just to whined you up alittle We paid £197 fully comp with protected no claims, when we came back, for a new mini...As opposed to $1300 for a new mini in BC

macadian

Be careful what you wish for.....


Britain is fighting a war – and we are too soft on our enemies
Too little action is being taken by the authorities against hostile Muslims, says Con Coughlin.

Con Coughlin
Last Updated: 10:25AM GMT 13 Mar 2009
Comments 8 | Comment on this article
It's not just soldiers who win wars. Governments also have a crucial role to play – and to judge by the response of most Western governments to the threat we face from radical Islamism, we are simply not competing on equal terms with the enemy.
No one can claim that we in Britain don't understand the nature of the threat we face. In recent months, there has been a succession of reports highlighting the increasingly pernicious influence British Islamists are having on the Nato-led campaign to bring stability to Afghanistan.

Sri Lankan cricketers attack: Islamic terror groups growing in strength in Pakistan
After senior officers confirmed last year that British Muslims were fighting with the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, it was revealed that RAF Nimrod surveillance planes monitoring Taliban radio stations were surprised to hear insurgents speaking in strong Yorkshire or Midlands accents.
More recently, officers based at the main military base at Lashkar Gah revealed that they had found British-made components in roadside bombs used to attack coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, sent to Helmand by Muslim sympathisers in Britain. This week three British Muslims, part of a terrorist cell whose leader was convicted of plotting to kidnap and behead a British soldier on video, were jailed at the Old Bailey for supplying equipment to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The active involvement of radical British Muslims in the Afghan insurgency has led senior officers to claim that they are engaged in a "surreal mini-civil war" in Afghanistan. And yet, for all the compelling evidence that British-based Islamist radicals are actively participating in a jihad against Britain and its coalition allies, the Government, together with those who have opposed our involvement in the War on Terror from the start, seems determined to give the Islamist radicals the benefit of the doubt.
Even when incontrovertible proof is found that British Muslims are aiding and abetting the enemy in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the Government's instinct is to try to cover up their involvement, for fear of further inflaming Islamist sensitivities.
Twice in the past year I have been admonished by our military establishment for revealing details about the support British sympathisers are providing to the Afghan insurgency, whether it involves actually fighting alongside the Taliban or providing them with the means to kill and maim British personnel. Officials did not question the reports' veracity. On both occasions, I was told that it was simply not helpful to expose such details, as they might cause offence to the Muslim community, or encourage Islamist radicals to intimidate British soldiers returning from combat.
Well, to judge by the disgraceful reception given this week by Muslim demonstrators to members of 2nd Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, as they paraded through the centre of Luton, the Islamists are receiving all the encouragement they need, not least in the form of the virulently anti-Western sermons delivered over the internet by the Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, who was banished from Britain in 2005 following the July 7 attacks in London. He has made his approval of the protesters' actions known, claiming "my brothers from Luton were protesting against people they see as killers of Muslims".
Nor should we be surprised that the only action taken by Bedfordshire police has been to arrest those who were incensed by the Islamists' taunts of "criminals" and "terrorists", aimed at the returning soldiers. The authorities' response in Luton is symptomatic of the perverse attitude that seems to have become Britain's default position when confronted by difficult Islamist issues. When the former Guantánamo detainee Binyam Mohamed claimed that British intelligence officials were complicit in his torture, the main focus of the controversy was the alleged collusion of ministers, rather than precisely what Mr Mohamed was doing in Afghanistan.
He might, as he insists, be innocent of any wrongdoing. But the risks of taking the protestations of innocence of a former Guantánamo detainee at face value have been graphically demonstrated this week by the revelation that another inmate, Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, has re-emerged as one of the Taliban's most effective commanders in southern Afghanistan.
During the six years he was held at Guantánamo, Rasoul, now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, managed to convince his American interrogators that he had never held a military command, even though it turns out he was a high-ranking commander close to Mullah Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader. Rasoul was eventually released after claiming he wanted to return to his family and farm. British officials believe he is the mastermind behind the deadly surge in roadside bombings in Helmand since last spring.
The worldwide campaign against Islamist-inspired militancy is highly complex. But if the West to wants to prevent further terror attacks, we must first distinguish between those who are on our side, and those who are not.


www.telegraph.co.uk/co...emies.html


Just part of the mix that is the UK today it seems....

Ruby Murray

G_is_for_Canada.....I too agree so much with a lot of your post. I can't believe how naive I was during my immigration process and the initial couple of years living here by being so absolutely "for" my adopted country and "boo - hiss" against the UK. Canada was my saviour to the "horrible" life I led in the UK Tut, tut, tut on me!!! It really does take a good while of living here for the reality to set in and your eyes to open completely wide to see that life is, and can be, very very tough here if you're struggling financially or arriving as a new immigrant trying to get your UK quals, skills and experience in the door of a prospective job competing against "the natural borners"!

Don't get me wrong...there are many who arrive here, embrace all what Canada offers - it's rules and lifestyle, and enjoy the rest of their lives here.........but then there are those like me that have gradually grown frustrated with too much B.S. to live with and realise that the UK really wasn't so bad and offered a pretty good life if we grabbed it. At the moment I'm still silently biding my time, but the planning cogs are churning as I decide when it'll be my time to return...and it will happen this year.

YoungSteve17

Well its a relief to know that my family isn't the only family that doesn't like it in their new country.

I too had the same attitude about hating England and thinking America was the shit most of my life. Around the year 2000 i came on two trips to the US for 6 weeks each. I thought i knew what living in America was going to be like, i was way way wrong

"Canada was my savior to the "horrible" life I led in the UK" - Ruby Murray

I thought the same thing about coming to the US. I thought that when i arrived here my life would be great and i would get a fresh start. After a few years here i realized that i had everything i needed in England to lead a good life but i just didn't realize it. I started to appreciate things i had there that aren't here

I guess its true what they say . You never know what you have until its gone

dunroving

But you know what? You try to tell the kids of today, and they don't believe you ...

(i.e., newbies sometimes just won't accept the fact that some of us know through long years of experience)

YoungSteve17

I'm only 17 , i am the youth of today.

I never really understood that phrase until i came here. Coming to this country has been a weird but interesting experience. Its been both good and bad.

dunroving

Presumably, you know the origin of the phrase ... ? (being a teacher of today's yoof, I never assume these things ...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jil6U5Bny8Y

YoungSteve17

No sorry i don't know the origin of the phrase.

dunroving

Monty Python - check the YouTube link (watch it until the end and you'll hear the phrase ...)

Here's a longer/clearer version (I can't find the original):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCAODjdd7Jg

YoungSteve17

OH silly me !!

I listened and was waiting for them to say, You never know what you have until its gone, but i was focusing on an entire different phrase.
I'm with you now dunroving I'm with ya

I was wondering what the point of the attached video was

sorry

Jay Bird

Absolutely and totally agree with you g-is-for-canada. We came home 9 months ago and have never been happier. It took my second chunk of living in Canada for me to realise that this is where I belong.....and it's that feeling of belonging that I craved during the most miserable almost-4 years of my life, which was really like a long bereavement. I know everyone is different, and some people settle and think their new country is The Greatest....but, you know what? I'm always a little suspicious of those who shout about how great it is Over There now, cos like Ruby M, I did a lot of that when I first moved out.
Here is where I'm meant to be, and here is where I'm staying!

TraceyW

Totally agree with you lot too. Been home 5 months now and settling in very nicely ta very muchly.

Took me to move to the arse end of the planet (Australia) on a silly "There must be more to life" expedition, to realise there ain't! Everything I ever wanted was here in my own country all along.

Thank-you Australia. You taught me the biggest lesson of my life!!

BristolUK

Okay....here are my experiences as someone who was NOT looking for something better than the UK. I'm only in Canada because I met, fell for and married a Canadian.

As a non driver I can't speak about motoring costs and rules...other than to say drivers here (NB) are, in the main, courteous. There are four-way-stops where drivers stop and wait for the driver who was there first, to pull away and then the next one. When approaching side roads in school areas, drivers slow to a stop. I have experienced these two aspects in Quebec as well as NB. When I leave my house on my mountain bike, at the end of the street I stop and wait for a gap to pull out...and I find most drivers in both directions actually stopping to let me out.

I contrast this with where I used to live in Bristol, waiting to cross the road and seeing two or three cars going through the red light and drivers parking in cycle lanes or on footpaths.

Cost of living? We are a family of four living on a similar income to what I had for me only in the UK. We shop by flyer. That is we spend 10-15 minutes on the flyers/leaflets we get through the door for the local supermarkets/drugstores.

There are some fantastic deals with many items (and I mean MANY, not just one or two loss leaders to get you in the store) that are half (sometimes less) or two-thirds price. Targeted shopping (otherwise known as a list) saves a small fortune. That's probably why I can feed four for the same cost as one in the UK.

When, out of curiosity, I look at the flyers online for other parts of Canada, I see the same deals as we get here. I have to wonder if some people pay no attention to the prices that food can be had for and just pay whatever the price is wherever they happen to be. Perhaps they have less time than me.

I've just been looking at the Sainsbury's website. The price gap has closed quite a bit since I emigrated but I'm still paying about two-thirds of the UK cost for most things. It was about half before the £ collapsed against the $.

It's like everyone sees the price of chicken and translates that as all food is more.

My four bedroom, detached house with large driveway, garage and huge garden cost $118k. That was less than £55k when I bought it in 2005. On the current exchange rate that has increased to £67k.

My Property Tax had a big increase recently. But it is still no more than my Council tax was for my two bed, no drive, no garage, tiny garden, terraced house was in 2004. And it pays for prompt and frequent snow clearances of roads and sidewalks too.

More expensive in Canada? Not if you avoid the really big cities. And that doesn't mean living out in the sticks either. But the thing is, my first 9 months were in Montreal. Grocery shopping seemed to be a similar price there too.

As I say, just my experience in a different part of Canada. I know there are big differences in many aspects. Canada is NOT this and it's not THAT. It's a huge country with many differences.

macadian

Amen to that pilgrim....