live to ski

The best ski instructor I ever had grew up in Saskatchewan skiing their ski hills.

Amber and Chris

Hi GILDOC,

It is impossible to generalise, but by and large Canadian living is cheaper than UK. Especially at the beginning when you are still comparing pounds!! (you walk round going "this meal is only five quid! It's 1 pound for about a litre of coffeeshop coffee in your cup, and they give you free refills! Ridiculous!") I was able to live very comfortably in Canada on a lower income than if in the UK, which took the stress off. I found saving easy. I could afford to visit my family in UK once a year and also go to my sister's in the US. I could afford better accommodation than in the UK so I could also happily host family and friends when they visited. (I have no kids so that would change things, but except for sports enrollment still things are cheaper).

If cost of living is your major decision factor, look away from NZ and focus on Canada! I am now in NZ and it is MAJOR expensive. I had a much more comfy lifestyle in Canada! Food, utilities, rent, furniture, are all more expensive here - in fact our last gas bill was more than I've ever paid in any country I've lived in! Also NZ costs will be prohibitive for visiting home. In Canada England feels do-able if you really needed to drop everything and get there it'd be less than a day door-to-door. Here it's a couple of thousand dollars and at least 2 days.

dingbat

It is impossible to generalise, particularly if you have no children and no idea how much they actually cost. Singletons and couples can live cheaply and nicely, thanks. If you have more than a couple of kids to feed, clothe, educate etc. most provinces are very expensive compared to the UK.

MB-Realtor

We have downhill skiing here in Manitoba.
You don't need those bloody great lumps of rock to have fun you know.

montreal mike

I just got out my AA 1999 UK road atlas and am absolutely amazed how tiny the island really is. What on earth do the young people (those under 35) and even the younger kids do to amuse themselves?

Whichever country you pick, and assuming you do move countries, do you intend to settle in a similar spot all over again? If so, it seems to me the Falkland Islands might be a fair comparison, if not for the climate then for remoteness.

To each his own but living on a tiny island, even though there is a ferry service, is not my cup of tea. Probably nice for a pleasant summer afternoon visit.

TigerShark

GILDOC,

We live on an Island not to very far from you (Bute), and have a similar lifestyle also. My wife has a couple of horses that she keeps on a farm close to the beach, and our two kids go to a fairly rural School with relatively small class sizes. The kids go out for long hikes and ride the horses along the beaches, hills and moorland that surrounds us here. I’m sure you’ve been over to Bute, as I have been over to Millport, and you’ll appreciate that despite the fact that we don’t have any great amenities on offer compared to some areas, it’s still a wonderful place to live and rear a family.

However I feel that when kids get to teenage years, there is nothing to offer them here on Bute. Many leave the Island when they complete School and others end up in poorly paid jobs and live for the weekends when they generally spend there time getting pissed in one of the ample supply of pubs that our local town has at its disposal. House prices for the area are ridiculously high due to people from the south buying them up for holiday homes and this impacts on young folk getting on the housing market.

With this in mind we went through the immigration process and finally landed last May to become permanent residents of British Columbia. I worked over there for the first time 4 years ago and immediately fell in love with the place. I took the whole family over the following autumn and we spent a wonderful 2 weeks staying with the family of my potential future boss, who took us to some of the many sites that BC has to offer. When we landed again last summer to collect our PR cards, we hired a car and drove over to Alberta via Whistler, heading down through the Rockies to Lake Louise then wound back into BC through the Okanagen and Fraser valleys.

When I returned to Vancouver Airport after my first visit to Canada I felt as though I had come home. I told my wife this and I think she though I was talking B.S. However when she landed there last year for the second time she felt the same way. It is a vast and very beautiful country and the Canadian people are very open and hospitable not unlike the Scots. I think it would be far easier to make a new and exciting life there, than in most parts of Europe.

However here’s the rub…. We continue to live on Bute!!

Why? Well for the life of me I don’t really know. I know I have a good job here, and I get home every night which is pretty uncommon for the profession that I am in. We are living in a kind of limbo at the moment where we dream of a new life in BC but are too scared to make the move. The kids continue to grow and in another couple of years we will no longer have the opportunity to go as our PR cards will be nullified unless we spend 3 years in the next 5 in Canada. I am like you; I have seen the benefits of leaving one Country and starting afresh in another, and I know that the area we are considering is fantastic for us as a family, but I just don’t seem to have the confidence to carry it through.

startwin

Steve, I haven't been here as long as you - only 33 years - but I agree with every word, it was exactly that way when we emigrated. And it's still that way when we go back over there to visit. God forbid that you should expect them to get off their bums to come see you where you are staying - you have to go there, and not while Coronation St or football or somesuch is on the telly. Sorry for my rant, but it hit a chord with me too. I have a sister and a brother in the UK who have never been to visit me in all these years, their attitude is I took myself off so it's up to me to do the travelling. Their loss.

GILDOC

Tigershark. I have a very good friend who lives in Rothesay, chances are you might know her or her hubby as I knwo Neil used to live out int he sticks in Bute. Names: Natalie and Neil Whitelaw??? Do you know them? BC sounds fab, I have actually just been told my grandpa has left me a few thousand in his will so it may make us decide to visit somewhere or save it for emigrating.

flashman

The best guideline is the one determined by market forces.

The more costly areas to live are where there's plenty of well paying jobs like Alberta. The cheaper areas are where jobs aren't as plentiful such as rural Ontario, the Maritimes etc.

dbd33

Behind me in once of the most populous bits of Canada sits a fairly serious skiier. She has a condo at Tremblant and an interest in some sort of thing, time share I guess, at Blue Mountain. She does ski at the latter though it's really just a bump and some years gets no snow at. She never goes to Tremblant though as it's always cheaper to go to Austria. She's never been to western Canada though she quite often goes to Utah. Every year I hear in graphic detail the machinations to get as much cheap skiing as possible out of the year. The way it goes is that it's cheaper to fly to Europe than within Canada and the hotels tend to be a wash; somewhere like Kelowna wouldn't be on the radar for skiers from here anyway as it's just too inaccessible; flying to Vancouver and driving is all too much trouble.

The only people I know who regularly ski in western Canada and who don't live there are Norwegians and are rich enough to go anywhere. They also have a European vacation allowance. For people who earn in Canadian dollars resorts within driving distance make sense, otherwise resorts in Canada do not. If it's hours per year on the slopes that count then London is a better place to live than Toronto.

stevesilva

Very informative post,

How about simple differences in cost of living?
For example in the U.K. a basic rate taxpayer pays 20% income tax, National Insurance on top. Average Council tax band D in London can be £150 per month,property prices are now ten times average salary, that all adds up for the average person?

Also differences in standard of living, for example "dishwashers, large screen t.v's, hot tubs even" are SUPPOSED to be common in the U.S., does the same apply to Canada? Wheras all those items are considerd luxuries in th U.K. And of course much larger homes.

However I am well aware the grass is always greener on the other side.

dbd33

Dishwashers are common, pretty much usual. Hot tubs are not.

dingbat

Two levels of income tax, provincial and federal, pick your province and add the two:http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tax/individ...axrates-e.html ;
property taxes = council tax, [decent size] house prices average ten times the average non professional salary (excluding trades) at roughly $400k house cost/$45,000 average household income in my area, I had a dishwasher in the UK , my TV here is the same as one I would have in the UK, hot tubs are revolting anyway. I never quite got to grips with people who sit in these unhygenic outside bathtubs in full view of another person's kitchen window/deck. Yuk.

gamequeen88

yeah, i agree with you... ....

destinationnovascotia

Thank goodness for that. I thought that I was alone in thinking this. Everyone else I know thinks they are great. Is it only you and me who find them just a bit yeuk!