Email to a friend
Feb 7th 2008, 6:44 pm
#1
BE Enthusiast
Thread Starter
Joined: Feb 2007
Location: Canmore, AB
Posts: 345
Email to a friend
I have just hit send on an email I sent to a friend who is in the early stages of emigrating and wanted to know how things had gone for us and any advice I might have. I realised this great rambling email is exactly the sort of thing that others might be interested in. So here it is, unedited and written 'off the cuff', so don't blame me if there is a load of rubbish in it 
--------------------------------
Sorry for the delayed reply, everything here is going very well but it does mean I have been pretty busy! I’ll just ramble on here about what we have experienced, much of it may be completely irrelevant to your situation, but I hope something is useful. Scroll to the second half for actual advice if you want to skip the waffle.
When we arrived in August, I just carried on working in my existing home based IT job, there were some initial complications as we were three weeks in hotels waiting for furniture to arrive at our house and for an internet connection to be installed. Trying to get reliable all day internet access in a hotel is not as simple as you might assume and frequently the connection was not good enough for my average 5 hours per day on VOIP calls.
Once we were in the house things settled down a bit, especially when the kids went to school as we began to move from a ‘holiday mode’ into realizing that this was a more permanent life change. The most significant initial challenge was a financial one. We had gone from having two salaries to one and although we had purchases the Canadian property two years previously, we had always had tenants in it. The UK property was not let for three months, so one salary covering two mortgages without rental income was very hard. In fact it was completely unsustainable.
My wife, an accountant, started looking for work locally and saw a couple of fairly low level accounting clerk type jobs which would have helped a bit with the cash flow, but not a great deal and would not have been very satisfying for her as she had come from a senior position. We both wanted to avoid her commuting to Calgary, an hour away, and so did not even look for jobs there which I’m sure would have been quite plentiful. Instead she contacted Robert Half, an accounting recruitment company who she had used in the UK and who have a Canadian operation. They immediately came back with a Financial Controller position that was not being advertised in the press or online and which was a 30 minute drive away at the local ski hill! She applied for the job, got it straight away, it was good money, very senior position and she absolutely loves it. About two weeks later the house in the UK was let so suddenly our money worries were resolved.
The kids like their new schools and have made friends easily. School grades are about a year behind here because they start a year later than in the UK. For example my 12 year old daughter had completed her first year of high/secondary school in England, then in September she went in to the first year of Canadian high school. What that means is that in some core subjects like Math(s), Science and English she is repeating work and finding it quite easy, this is offset though by things like Geography and History (here combined as Social Studies) where she of course has none of the basic ‘local’ knowledge that others have. As an example, she recently got a very simple maths question wrong (her strongest subject) because it asked what proportion of provinces are West of Manitoba. She knows how to do proportions standing on her head, but had no idea what the provinces were and in what order they occurred across the country! Some expats have complained that they schooling is too easy, mainly because of the one year difference, which is especially pronounced at a younger age and because of that put pressure on the schools to move a child up a grade. Our view was that the kids were going through a big enough disruption as it was and if the first year of school was a little easy, then that just helped to offset other things like homesickness, trying to make new friends etc. Also the Canadian education system still seems to be able to get kids to university level by the time they are 18, they just do it one less year. The final consideration, especially for a girl, is that we did not particularly want her being with significantly older children in her teenage years and that had nothing to do with ‘formal’ education.
Recreation is what we came here for, living in hotels to start with and on a very tight budget, we didn’t really take advantage of any of the Summer activities last year. However with the arrival of snow and my wife getting the job at the ski hill, we immediately hit the slopes as soon as they opened in mid November. We have been going at least one day every weekend since then with several days over the Christmas period. The whole family loves skiing/boarding and we were already quite expert so it is fantastic that this has now become part of our regular week. This will continue through until May when the other outdoor activities will take over. The outdoor life is simply what people do here, there seems little point in living in this environment if you don’t want to experience it. I’m sure it’s different in the cities and I know there are certainly many Canadians who live no more than 90 minutes from the slopes and yet don’t ski, but here in the mountains pretty much everyone does outdoor activities. They also tend to make a lot of use of their weekends, especially as we get fewer holidays, I have gone from 5 weeks plus 8 bank holidays to 3 weeks plus 12 public holidays. My wife has once again been very fortunate and secured 4 weeks holiday, but that is unusual here and is mostly due to the seasonal nature of the ski industry meaning that she works very hard (usually 6 day weeks) throughout the winter but will have very little to do in the Summer.
We still don’t have our PR application completed, but since we got here, on a work permit, it does appear to have been accelerated and we have already completed medical checks, updated police checks and proof of funds is going in the post today! The next and final step should be sending our passports off to have them returned with the visas, however this could be another 6 months away. Still all together I believe we will have had a 24 month PR process in place of the 42 months we were quoted and the over 48 months that new applicants are being told now. Of course the fact that over half of the time we will have been living here means that it is now not much more to us than a formality, but we will still celebrate completing the process.
So finally some advice:
1. www.britishexpats.com the undisputed king of all information regarding emigration and living abroad. If you have not found this site already and trawled through the mountains of information and joined in the forum discussions then you can’t be serious about emigrating. You will not have a question that can not be answered by that site and you will not have an experience that has not been shared, just be aware that it can also consume a huge amount of your time because somehow it seems vitally important to discuss how to cook your eggs with other expats!
2. The only way to speed up the process is to have an employer offer you a job and be willing to assist in the immigration process principally through LMO (look it up in the BritishExpats wiki if you don’t know what this is). Put simply, if you don’t have a Canadian employer who is willing to prove to the Government that they need you and can not find a Canadian employee to do the same thing, then you will not get here in less than 4 years. It is a very good idea to come here for a trip first, bring lots of copies of up to date resumes completed to the Canadian standards (check the BE wiki for this as well). Write to potential employers in your field and tell them when you are coming and that you would like to see them, don’t look for specific job opportunities because any will not be advertised and those that are will not meeting your timescales and will not include LMO. Don’t bother with house hunting, but do visit areas of the city to see what they are like. You can find lots of house details on the internet but you can’t find out what an area is truly like remotely (although again BE has some good stuff on areas of Calgary).
3. Bring as much as you can when you move over here. It cost us a lot of money, at a time when we didn’t have it, to replace things that we gave away or threw away in the UK. It would have been far better to have paid for a bigger container and brought all manner of crap over here and then get rid of what we really didn’t need rather than guessing.
4. If you are both working now and only one of you has a job to come to, then it will be hard on the other. It is not always easy to find a job (although Calgary and Alberta are massively understaffed) in your chosen field and even harder to find a job at an equivalent level to the UK. Staying at home for months with money being tight is no fun for anyone.
5. Related to the previous point, be very realistic; in fact be extremely pessimistic about your financial situation here. Do not believe anyone who says it is cheaper to live here, it is not. House prices in Alberta are very high, food is as expensive as the UK and in many cases more so because we do not have any place that has the buying power of Tescos. Petrol is cheaper, as are cars and some luxury purchases, but that is irrelevant if food and mortgage are tying up all your income. The Canadian dollar is currently hovering around the 2:1 mark with the pound, but we view every price as a 1:1 value. By doing this it has helped to control our spending and we are now comfortably living within our means. I bought a new plasma in January, it was $1500 but I thought of it as £1500, if I had viewed it as £750 I would have bought it much earlier as a ‘bargain’ at a time when we really couldn’t have afforded it.
6. Another point about money, don’t under estimate the initial expenditure on car(s), replacing furniture you didn’t bring (see point 3), replacing electrical goods you couldn’t bring, nights in a hotel, buying a ski pass, getting car insurance (your UK NCD might be worth very little here) etc. Add this to the fact that you will have just shelled out on flights, shipping costs, farewell parties etc. Also you may have significantly reduced income until both are employed, so the first few months can be a real challenge. If you are selling up in the UK, then I would put no more that 75% of your funds towards your Canadian home. If you end up with a smaller house and a year later when you both have jobs you want to move, then that is far better than having no contingency in the first few months and ending up retreating to the UK to ‘cut your losses’.
7. Expect a different life. This should be why you are coming here, but different does not mean better in every way. Some things will be worse, some things will really annoy you, some things you take for granted in the UK will not be available here. Give it a chance, if you are investing as much time and money as is necessary to get here, then it would be madness to give up too soon. Come here with a personal commitment that however bad things get, you will give it at least a year. You should be willing to give up at least on year’s income to reflect the worst case of not being able to find employment.
8. Don’t underestimate home sickness. It can happen to anyone at any time and it is really hard to deal with. We have been lucky so far because we have all found new distractions, but the children still miss some of their friends and family and my wife in particular misses her family which is large and many of whom lived very near to us in the UK. The trouble is that when something else bad happens, even just having ‘a bad day’, then it is natural to think “I want to go home”. We very quickly forget the things we didn’t like about the UK but never forget the things we liked about it. It gives us a ‘rose tinted’ view of our previous life which is completely unrealistic but can make it hard for our new life to compete.
9. There is one very specific downside which is hard to think about, and that is what to do if a close person in the UK becomes very sick or dies? It has not happened to us yet, but it will because these things are inevitable. Whilst it is true that in theory you can jump on a plane and be there the next day, that is not the same. It could already be too late, the trip may not be long enough, it might not be possible to take time out of work, to sort out children etc etc. On top of that there can be the guilt of ‘not being there’. It is every expats worst nightmare and one that we will all have to go through eventually, I have no advice other than to talk about it openly with your loved ones, don’t pretend it won’t happen.
10. Despite all I have said, do it! Once you have the idea in your head, you will never be truly content unless you have given it a shot. I would far rather be a person saying “I tried emigrating, it didn’t work out and we came back” than a person who says “We often thought about emigrating but never went through with it.”
I hope I haven’t put you off, we love our life here and we already know for certain that this was the right move for us at the right time. We have been lucky, but that was on top of very good planning. Others have been very unlucky and I feel genuinely sorry for them. Some have been unprepared, naïve or quite simply reckless, I don’t feel sorry for them I am just bewildered at how they could contemplate such a life changing experience without doing as much investigation as possible. After all, what else are you going to do for the next 4 years?
--------------------------------
Sorry for the delayed reply, everything here is going very well but it does mean I have been pretty busy! I’ll just ramble on here about what we have experienced, much of it may be completely irrelevant to your situation, but I hope something is useful. Scroll to the second half for actual advice if you want to skip the waffle.
When we arrived in August, I just carried on working in my existing home based IT job, there were some initial complications as we were three weeks in hotels waiting for furniture to arrive at our house and for an internet connection to be installed. Trying to get reliable all day internet access in a hotel is not as simple as you might assume and frequently the connection was not good enough for my average 5 hours per day on VOIP calls.
Once we were in the house things settled down a bit, especially when the kids went to school as we began to move from a ‘holiday mode’ into realizing that this was a more permanent life change. The most significant initial challenge was a financial one. We had gone from having two salaries to one and although we had purchases the Canadian property two years previously, we had always had tenants in it. The UK property was not let for three months, so one salary covering two mortgages without rental income was very hard. In fact it was completely unsustainable.
My wife, an accountant, started looking for work locally and saw a couple of fairly low level accounting clerk type jobs which would have helped a bit with the cash flow, but not a great deal and would not have been very satisfying for her as she had come from a senior position. We both wanted to avoid her commuting to Calgary, an hour away, and so did not even look for jobs there which I’m sure would have been quite plentiful. Instead she contacted Robert Half, an accounting recruitment company who she had used in the UK and who have a Canadian operation. They immediately came back with a Financial Controller position that was not being advertised in the press or online and which was a 30 minute drive away at the local ski hill! She applied for the job, got it straight away, it was good money, very senior position and she absolutely loves it. About two weeks later the house in the UK was let so suddenly our money worries were resolved.
The kids like their new schools and have made friends easily. School grades are about a year behind here because they start a year later than in the UK. For example my 12 year old daughter had completed her first year of high/secondary school in England, then in September she went in to the first year of Canadian high school. What that means is that in some core subjects like Math(s), Science and English she is repeating work and finding it quite easy, this is offset though by things like Geography and History (here combined as Social Studies) where she of course has none of the basic ‘local’ knowledge that others have. As an example, she recently got a very simple maths question wrong (her strongest subject) because it asked what proportion of provinces are West of Manitoba. She knows how to do proportions standing on her head, but had no idea what the provinces were and in what order they occurred across the country! Some expats have complained that they schooling is too easy, mainly because of the one year difference, which is especially pronounced at a younger age and because of that put pressure on the schools to move a child up a grade. Our view was that the kids were going through a big enough disruption as it was and if the first year of school was a little easy, then that just helped to offset other things like homesickness, trying to make new friends etc. Also the Canadian education system still seems to be able to get kids to university level by the time they are 18, they just do it one less year. The final consideration, especially for a girl, is that we did not particularly want her being with significantly older children in her teenage years and that had nothing to do with ‘formal’ education.
Recreation is what we came here for, living in hotels to start with and on a very tight budget, we didn’t really take advantage of any of the Summer activities last year. However with the arrival of snow and my wife getting the job at the ski hill, we immediately hit the slopes as soon as they opened in mid November. We have been going at least one day every weekend since then with several days over the Christmas period. The whole family loves skiing/boarding and we were already quite expert so it is fantastic that this has now become part of our regular week. This will continue through until May when the other outdoor activities will take over. The outdoor life is simply what people do here, there seems little point in living in this environment if you don’t want to experience it. I’m sure it’s different in the cities and I know there are certainly many Canadians who live no more than 90 minutes from the slopes and yet don’t ski, but here in the mountains pretty much everyone does outdoor activities. They also tend to make a lot of use of their weekends, especially as we get fewer holidays, I have gone from 5 weeks plus 8 bank holidays to 3 weeks plus 12 public holidays. My wife has once again been very fortunate and secured 4 weeks holiday, but that is unusual here and is mostly due to the seasonal nature of the ski industry meaning that she works very hard (usually 6 day weeks) throughout the winter but will have very little to do in the Summer.
We still don’t have our PR application completed, but since we got here, on a work permit, it does appear to have been accelerated and we have already completed medical checks, updated police checks and proof of funds is going in the post today! The next and final step should be sending our passports off to have them returned with the visas, however this could be another 6 months away. Still all together I believe we will have had a 24 month PR process in place of the 42 months we were quoted and the over 48 months that new applicants are being told now. Of course the fact that over half of the time we will have been living here means that it is now not much more to us than a formality, but we will still celebrate completing the process.
So finally some advice:
1. www.britishexpats.com the undisputed king of all information regarding emigration and living abroad. If you have not found this site already and trawled through the mountains of information and joined in the forum discussions then you can’t be serious about emigrating. You will not have a question that can not be answered by that site and you will not have an experience that has not been shared, just be aware that it can also consume a huge amount of your time because somehow it seems vitally important to discuss how to cook your eggs with other expats!
2. The only way to speed up the process is to have an employer offer you a job and be willing to assist in the immigration process principally through LMO (look it up in the BritishExpats wiki if you don’t know what this is). Put simply, if you don’t have a Canadian employer who is willing to prove to the Government that they need you and can not find a Canadian employee to do the same thing, then you will not get here in less than 4 years. It is a very good idea to come here for a trip first, bring lots of copies of up to date resumes completed to the Canadian standards (check the BE wiki for this as well). Write to potential employers in your field and tell them when you are coming and that you would like to see them, don’t look for specific job opportunities because any will not be advertised and those that are will not meeting your timescales and will not include LMO. Don’t bother with house hunting, but do visit areas of the city to see what they are like. You can find lots of house details on the internet but you can’t find out what an area is truly like remotely (although again BE has some good stuff on areas of Calgary).
3. Bring as much as you can when you move over here. It cost us a lot of money, at a time when we didn’t have it, to replace things that we gave away or threw away in the UK. It would have been far better to have paid for a bigger container and brought all manner of crap over here and then get rid of what we really didn’t need rather than guessing.
4. If you are both working now and only one of you has a job to come to, then it will be hard on the other. It is not always easy to find a job (although Calgary and Alberta are massively understaffed) in your chosen field and even harder to find a job at an equivalent level to the UK. Staying at home for months with money being tight is no fun for anyone.
5. Related to the previous point, be very realistic; in fact be extremely pessimistic about your financial situation here. Do not believe anyone who says it is cheaper to live here, it is not. House prices in Alberta are very high, food is as expensive as the UK and in many cases more so because we do not have any place that has the buying power of Tescos. Petrol is cheaper, as are cars and some luxury purchases, but that is irrelevant if food and mortgage are tying up all your income. The Canadian dollar is currently hovering around the 2:1 mark with the pound, but we view every price as a 1:1 value. By doing this it has helped to control our spending and we are now comfortably living within our means. I bought a new plasma in January, it was $1500 but I thought of it as £1500, if I had viewed it as £750 I would have bought it much earlier as a ‘bargain’ at a time when we really couldn’t have afforded it.
6. Another point about money, don’t under estimate the initial expenditure on car(s), replacing furniture you didn’t bring (see point 3), replacing electrical goods you couldn’t bring, nights in a hotel, buying a ski pass, getting car insurance (your UK NCD might be worth very little here) etc. Add this to the fact that you will have just shelled out on flights, shipping costs, farewell parties etc. Also you may have significantly reduced income until both are employed, so the first few months can be a real challenge. If you are selling up in the UK, then I would put no more that 75% of your funds towards your Canadian home. If you end up with a smaller house and a year later when you both have jobs you want to move, then that is far better than having no contingency in the first few months and ending up retreating to the UK to ‘cut your losses’.
7. Expect a different life. This should be why you are coming here, but different does not mean better in every way. Some things will be worse, some things will really annoy you, some things you take for granted in the UK will not be available here. Give it a chance, if you are investing as much time and money as is necessary to get here, then it would be madness to give up too soon. Come here with a personal commitment that however bad things get, you will give it at least a year. You should be willing to give up at least on year’s income to reflect the worst case of not being able to find employment.
8. Don’t underestimate home sickness. It can happen to anyone at any time and it is really hard to deal with. We have been lucky so far because we have all found new distractions, but the children still miss some of their friends and family and my wife in particular misses her family which is large and many of whom lived very near to us in the UK. The trouble is that when something else bad happens, even just having ‘a bad day’, then it is natural to think “I want to go home”. We very quickly forget the things we didn’t like about the UK but never forget the things we liked about it. It gives us a ‘rose tinted’ view of our previous life which is completely unrealistic but can make it hard for our new life to compete.
9. There is one very specific downside which is hard to think about, and that is what to do if a close person in the UK becomes very sick or dies? It has not happened to us yet, but it will because these things are inevitable. Whilst it is true that in theory you can jump on a plane and be there the next day, that is not the same. It could already be too late, the trip may not be long enough, it might not be possible to take time out of work, to sort out children etc etc. On top of that there can be the guilt of ‘not being there’. It is every expats worst nightmare and one that we will all have to go through eventually, I have no advice other than to talk about it openly with your loved ones, don’t pretend it won’t happen.
10. Despite all I have said, do it! Once you have the idea in your head, you will never be truly content unless you have given it a shot. I would far rather be a person saying “I tried emigrating, it didn’t work out and we came back” than a person who says “We often thought about emigrating but never went through with it.”
I hope I haven’t put you off, we love our life here and we already know for certain that this was the right move for us at the right time. We have been lucky, but that was on top of very good planning. Others have been very unlucky and I feel genuinely sorry for them. Some have been unprepared, naïve or quite simply reckless, I don’t feel sorry for them I am just bewildered at how they could contemplate such a life changing experience without doing as much investigation as possible. After all, what else are you going to do for the next 4 years?
Feb 7th 2008, 6:51 pm
#2
Now on Vancouver Island
Joined: Feb 2005
Location: Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Posts: 6,935
Re: Email to a friend
This is incredibly relevant and useful, Solarfish. You are a star. 
The Wiki section is not designed for personal reports. It's supposed to be factual, written in the first person, and so on.
However, the Articles section of the BE website is an appropriate place for personal accounts. I hope you'll submit this to the Articles section.
The Wiki section is not designed for personal reports. It's supposed to be factual, written in the first person, and so on.
However, the Articles section of the BE website is an appropriate place for personal accounts. I hope you'll submit this to the Articles section.
Feb 8th 2008, 2:34 pm
#3
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 2,710
Re: Email to a friend
I Solarfish, I too think this would be really useful for some people!
Also I had few questions to ask you. We are off to Banff for family weekend and are planning our ski lesson for kiddies, childcare needs/wants. We will definately ski at Louise as we have a louise card and would like to go to Sunshine as we haven't been. We may do a couple of hours at Norquay as it is really easy to do just a couple of hours there and easy on the wallet. I have heard really bad things about parking at Sunshine though. Will we ever get a spot on either sat, sun or monday next weekend, if so what time do we have to be there? is there any other alternative to parking?
My little (and I mean little- 3) girl is progressing and has just started on bronze (the little chairlift) at Nakiska, she needs somewhere where we can take her on more than a magic carpet (which she is outgrowing) and is gentle and safe without experts whizzing by. Opinions on sunshine/louise for this? We would tend to maybe ski as a family for the morning and out her into childcare for pm and my son into lessons giving us a couple of hours off, so we need to satisfy a few needs!
PS if you and alro (and kids) wanted to meet up for a meal or something let us know?
Gryphea
Also I had few questions to ask you. We are off to Banff for family weekend and are planning our ski lesson for kiddies, childcare needs/wants. We will definately ski at Louise as we have a louise card and would like to go to Sunshine as we haven't been. We may do a couple of hours at Norquay as it is really easy to do just a couple of hours there and easy on the wallet. I have heard really bad things about parking at Sunshine though. Will we ever get a spot on either sat, sun or monday next weekend, if so what time do we have to be there? is there any other alternative to parking?
My little (and I mean little- 3) girl is progressing and has just started on bronze (the little chairlift) at Nakiska, she needs somewhere where we can take her on more than a magic carpet (which she is outgrowing) and is gentle and safe without experts whizzing by. Opinions on sunshine/louise for this? We would tend to maybe ski as a family for the morning and out her into childcare for pm and my son into lessons giving us a couple of hours off, so we need to satisfy a few needs!
PS if you and alro (and kids) wanted to meet up for a meal or something let us know?
Gryphea
Feb 8th 2008, 2:47 pm
#4
little snowy owl
Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 6,921
Re: Email to a friend
This is incredibly relevant and useful, Solarfish. You are a star.
The Wiki section is not designed for personal reports. It's supposed to be factual, written in the first person, and so on.
However, the Articles section of the BE website is an appropriate place for personal accounts. I hope you'll submit this to the Articles section.
The Wiki section is not designed for personal reports. It's supposed to be factual, written in the first person, and so on.
However, the Articles section of the BE website is an appropriate place for personal accounts. I hope you'll submit this to the Articles section.
An excellent post, and great to hear you are enjoying your new life!
Feb 8th 2008, 2:57 pm
#5
little snowy owl
Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 6,921
Re: Email to a friend
I Solarfish, I too think this would be really useful for some people!
Also I had few questions to ask you. We are off to Banff for family weekend and are planning our ski lesson for kiddies, childcare needs/wants. We will definately ski at Louise as we have a louise card and would like to go to Sunshine as we haven't been. We may do a couple of hours at Norquay as it is really easy to do just a couple of hours there and easy on the wallet. I have heard really bad things about parking at Sunshine though. Will we ever get a spot on either sat, sun or monday next weekend, if so what time do we have to be there? is there any other alternative to parking?
My little (and I mean little- 3) girl is progressing and has just started on bronze (the little chairlift) at Nakiska, she needs somewhere where we can take her on more than a magic carpet (which she is outgrowing) and is gentle and safe without experts whizzing by. Opinions on sunshine/louise for this? We would tend to maybe ski as a family for the morning and out her into childcare for pm and my son into lessons giving us a couple of hours off, so we need to satisfy a few needs!
PS if you and alro (and kids) wanted to meet up for a meal or something let us know?
Gryphea
Also I had few questions to ask you. We are off to Banff for family weekend and are planning our ski lesson for kiddies, childcare needs/wants. We will definately ski at Louise as we have a louise card and would like to go to Sunshine as we haven't been. We may do a couple of hours at Norquay as it is really easy to do just a couple of hours there and easy on the wallet. I have heard really bad things about parking at Sunshine though. Will we ever get a spot on either sat, sun or monday next weekend, if so what time do we have to be there? is there any other alternative to parking?
My little (and I mean little- 3) girl is progressing and has just started on bronze (the little chairlift) at Nakiska, she needs somewhere where we can take her on more than a magic carpet (which she is outgrowing) and is gentle and safe without experts whizzing by. Opinions on sunshine/louise for this? We would tend to maybe ski as a family for the morning and out her into childcare for pm and my son into lessons giving us a couple of hours off, so we need to satisfy a few needs!
PS if you and alro (and kids) wanted to meet up for a meal or something let us know?
Gryphea
Cars park Waaaaaaay down the road by that time, and there are shuttle buses that pick up and drop off, but you can wait a while. At the end of the day the buses stop running at 5pm, so anytime after 4 ish the lines ar horrendous to get back on.
What we've done in that situation is pick somebody who can still walk, to hike (up to 6km though so I wouldn't want to walk that far!) back up the road to fetch the car while the rest of the party wait in the warm and drink hot chocolate!
If you aim to be there by 9-9.30 you will be OK though.
An alternative from Calgary is to catch the sunshine bus from outside MacDonalds, opposite COP at 7.40 am. http://www.sunshinecoach.com/rates.aspx
Once you get to Sunshine the lines are never bad and the place is so vast that it's never really crowded (if you get off the Strawberry runs!)
Last edited by Alberta_Rose; Feb 8th 2008 at 3:00 pm.
Feb 8th 2008, 3:11 pm
#6
Forum Regular
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia
Posts: 244
Re: Email to a friend
great found it very very helpful thanks
Feb 8th 2008, 3:23 pm
#7
BE Enthusiast
Thread Starter
Joined: Feb 2007
Location: Canmore, AB
Posts: 345
Re: Email to a friend
Thanks everyone for the positive comments, I even received some karma
I have now submitted the post for consideration as an article, with substitution of the very midly offensive word and correction of a couple of typos (why can't I edit my post after a reply ?).
grypheaParking at Sunshine is not as bad outside the Christmas period and if you do end up parking along the road then there are free and frequent shuttle buses to bring you to the gondola. Having said that, a family weeked, especially if we have had some recent snow, will be busy and I would plan to get there before 8.30 for the best parking.
Louise has the t-bar which services a run that is a nice step up from the carpet, but it can a problem for the really little ones to use the t-bar. Instructors sometimes take them up between their legs as the bar could lift them off the ground! The run down from the t-bar is short and it is exclusively used by beginners, the last time I was there it was fenced at the top preventing anyone from coming in from higher up the mountain.
At Sunshine there is no t-bar, so as soon as you are off the carpet you are on a chair. The easiest chair is Strawberry which is right next to the carpet and this goes to the top of a modest hill. From there you have at least one green run and a couple of blues, all pretty easy and I would expect that the biggest challenge for anyone but a complete novice would in fact be the chair itself. Strawberry chair is fairly slow and the hill is not challenging, so it tends to be avoided by the more able skiers/boarders but it is not an exclusive learning zone like the one at Lake Louise. Given the choice of the two, and assuming you are OK with lifting your daughter on and off the chair, I would suggest Sunshine rather than Lake Louise. The main reason is that I think the t-bar is tougher on the little ones unless accompanied by someone who is very familiar with assisting them on it. Also of course Sunshine has the best snow rather than that man made muck at Lake Louise
I have no idea what we are doing for that weekend, my daughter is in a Saturday ski programme (total cray stuff!) and my son is in a Sunday boarding programme, but we may well be there all weekend. I just spoke to alro and she said email her to make arrangements so I'll PM her address.
I have now submitted the post for consideration as an article, with substitution of the very midly offensive word and correction of a couple of typos (why can't I edit my post after a reply ?).
grypheaParking at Sunshine is not as bad outside the Christmas period and if you do end up parking along the road then there are free and frequent shuttle buses to bring you to the gondola. Having said that, a family weeked, especially if we have had some recent snow
, will be busy and I would plan to get there before 8.30 for the best parking.Louise has the t-bar which services a run that is a nice step up from the carpet, but it can a problem for the really little ones to use the t-bar. Instructors sometimes take them up between their legs as the bar could lift them off the ground! The run down from the t-bar is short and it is exclusively used by beginners, the last time I was there it was fenced at the top preventing anyone from coming in from higher up the mountain.
At Sunshine there is no t-bar, so as soon as you are off the carpet you are on a chair. The easiest chair is Strawberry which is right next to the carpet and this goes to the top of a modest hill. From there you have at least one green run and a couple of blues, all pretty easy and I would expect that the biggest challenge for anyone but a complete novice would in fact be the chair itself. Strawberry chair is fairly slow and the hill is not challenging, so it tends to be avoided by the more able skiers/boarders but it is not an exclusive learning zone like the one at Lake Louise. Given the choice of the two, and assuming you are OK with lifting your daughter on and off the chair, I would suggest Sunshine rather than Lake Louise. The main reason is that I think the t-bar is tougher on the little ones unless accompanied by someone who is very familiar with assisting them on it. Also of course Sunshine has the best snow rather than that man made muck at Lake Louise
PS if you and alro (and kids) wanted to meet up for a meal or something let us know?
Feb 8th 2008, 4:06 pm
#8
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 2,710
Re: Email to a friend
grypheaParking at Sunshine is not as bad outside the Christmas period and if you do end up parking along the road then there are free and frequent shuttle buses to bring you to the gondola. Having said that, a family weeked, especially if we have had some recent snow , will be busy and I would plan to get there before 8.30 for the best parking.
We may find 8:30 am a struggle- We are not known for our early rising. Although it would be good training for when I start work!
Louise has the t-bar which services a run that is a nice step up from the carpet, but it can a problem for the really little ones to use the t-bar. Instructors sometimes take them up between their legs as the bar could lift them off the ground! The run down from the t-bar is short and it is exclusively used by beginners, the last time I was there it was fenced at the top preventing anyone from coming in from higher up the mountain.
T bars are not my favorite. At Panorma at Christmas they had a very weird lift, like a T bar but not quite- it was the beginners lift up from the magic carpet and I fell!! Took me back 25 yrs!!!
At Sunshine there is no t-bar, so as soon as you are off the carpet you are on a chair. The easiest chair is Strawberry which is right next to the carpet and this goes to the top of a modest hill. From there you have at least one green run and a couple of blues, all pretty easy and I would expect that the biggest challenge for anyone but a complete novice would in fact be the chair itself. Strawberry chair is fairly slow and the hill is not challenging, so it tends to be avoided by the more able skiers/boarders but it is not an exclusive learning zone like the one at Lake Louise. Given the choice of the two, and assuming you are OK with lifting your daughter on and off the chair, I would suggest Sunshine rather than Lake Louise. The main reason is that I think the t-bar is tougher on the little ones unless accompanied by someone who is very familiar with assisting them on it. Also of course Sunshine has the best snow rather than that man made muck at Lake Louise
She seems to do OK on chair with my OH, he adopts the 'poles as well' hold and she seems to manage with a fairly steep descent from the chair.
I have no idea what we are doing for that weekend, my daughter is in a Saturday ski programme (total cray stuff!) and my son is in a Sunday boarding programme, but we may well be there all weekend. I just spoke to alro and she said email her to make arrangements so I'll PM her address.
, will be busy and I would plan to get there before 8.30 for the best parking.We may find 8:30 am a struggle- We are not known for our early rising. Although it would be good training for when I start work!
Louise has the t-bar which services a run that is a nice step up from the carpet, but it can a problem for the really little ones to use the t-bar. Instructors sometimes take them up between their legs as the bar could lift them off the ground! The run down from the t-bar is short and it is exclusively used by beginners, the last time I was there it was fenced at the top preventing anyone from coming in from higher up the mountain.
T bars are not my favorite. At Panorma at Christmas they had a very weird lift, like a T bar but not quite- it was the beginners lift up from the magic carpet and I fell!! Took me back 25 yrs!!!
At Sunshine there is no t-bar, so as soon as you are off the carpet you are on a chair. The easiest chair is Strawberry which is right next to the carpet and this goes to the top of a modest hill. From there you have at least one green run and a couple of blues, all pretty easy and I would expect that the biggest challenge for anyone but a complete novice would in fact be the chair itself. Strawberry chair is fairly slow and the hill is not challenging, so it tends to be avoided by the more able skiers/boarders but it is not an exclusive learning zone like the one at Lake Louise. Given the choice of the two, and assuming you are OK with lifting your daughter on and off the chair, I would suggest Sunshine rather than Lake Louise. The main reason is that I think the t-bar is tougher on the little ones unless accompanied by someone who is very familiar with assisting them on it. Also of course Sunshine has the best snow rather than that man made muck at Lake Louise
She seems to do OK on chair with my OH, he adopts the 'poles as well' hold and she seems to manage with a fairly steep descent from the chair.
I have no idea what we are doing for that weekend, my daughter is in a Saturday ski programme (total cray stuff!) and my son is in a Sunday boarding programme, but we may well be there all weekend. I just spoke to alro and she said email her to make arrangements so I'll PM her address.
Thanks
Gryph
Feb 8th 2008, 5:12 pm
#9
Lost in BE Cyberspace
Joined: Jul 2006
Location: Cochrane, Alberta
Posts: 7,861
Re: Email to a friend
Very good 'article' Solarfish - we can identify with huge chunks of your text
Feb 8th 2008, 6:29 pm
#10
BE Enthusiast
Thread Starter
Joined: Feb 2007
Location: Canmore, AB
Posts: 345
Feb 8th 2008, 6:56 pm
#11
little snowy owl
Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 6,921
Re: Email to a friend
Strawberry Lift is known as a beginner's lift.
It does go pretty slow, and it you wave with sufficient urgency at the lift operator at the top (and they are paying attention
) they will further slow or even stop the lift for you to climb off! 
It does go pretty slow, and it you wave with sufficient urgency at the lift operator at the top (and they are paying attention
) they will further slow or even stop the lift for you to climb off!
Feb 8th 2008, 7:48 pm
#12
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Apr 2003
Posts: 3,015
Re: Email to a friend
Yes, I thought it was an excellent article and lots of it would apply to other places than Canmore.
I especially noted your comments about remembering all the good things about England -- and forgetting the bad! I think that is so true. I do it even now and have been in Canada for almost 40 years.
I guess that is a natural tendency for people to do that. After all, if we all remembered the bad things - no women would go through birth a second time!!!
I especially noted your comments about remembering all the good things about England -- and forgetting the bad! I think that is so true. I do it even now and have been in Canada for almost 40 years.
I guess that is a natural tendency for people to do that. After all, if we all remembered the bad things - no women would go through birth a second time!!!
Feb 8th 2008, 7:57 pm
#13
Now on Vancouver Island
Joined: Feb 2005
Location: Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Posts: 6,935
Re: Email to a friend
Originally Posted by lizwil98
After all, if we all remembered the bad things - no women would go through birth a second time!!!
Feb 8th 2008, 9:46 pm
#14
Pea Brain
Joined: Jun 2005
Location: TBD
Posts: 6,005
Re: Email to a friend
The only way to speed up the process is to have an employer offer you a job and be willing to assist in the immigration process principally through LMO (look it up in the BritishExpats wiki if you don’t know what this is). Put simply, if you don’t have a Canadian employer who is willing to prove to the Government that they need you and can not find a Canadian employee to do the same thing, then you will not get here in less than 4 years.
That's a little too simplistic, and not wholly accurate - there are various ways to move here within a few months, either via a Work Permit application to start a business, or via the investor route.
That's a little too simplistic, and not wholly accurate - there are various ways to move here within a few months, either via a Work Permit application to start a business, or via the investor route.
Feb 8th 2008, 10:08 pm
#15
BE Enthusiast
Thread Starter
Joined: Feb 2007
Location: Canmore, AB
Posts: 345
Re: Email to a friend
I would also suggest that those in a position to follow the business (as I know you did) or investor route are quite rare because it takes a combination of money, ability and balls that not everyone has! I have not looked for statistics to back up this suggestion but I'm sure they are available somewhere.
I never saw this as anything like a comprehensive article, or even an 'article', but if it provides value to others in its current form then that is fine by me. I certainly am not looking to compete with the numerous other excellent sources of information on this site that are far more complete.