Thread: Hello ex-pats

Hi Arrkid

Well thank you, that was a long but fairly informative quote, cheers. I had to laugh at the Manchester bit as we live just at the foot of the Pennines (Littleborough) - north manchester and it rains an awful lot he he. I am beginning to understand about the cost of living in BC, - lots of people have told me the same as you, but I take it you all manage OK though (as in you do not want to return to UK) I think we all have to keep in mind exactly our reasons for wanting to emigrate. We do not want to move for economic reasons at all - in fact we have a comfortable life here in UK, have a small mortgage, a long established steady business, and can afford holidays annually, nice car etc etc etc..... yawn.... but what really draws us to Canada is the lifestyle, the room to breathe, the outdoor life (summer and winter) and possibly more scope for our children in the future.!!! (dreading UK in 10 years time). Does this make sense. I hope so.... Mel

hi andy, i havent had a look on your postings yet, are you in process of pr to canada too?

Hi ya Mel, yes I am bit like sheena – love to have a good old chat! I totally agree with your reasons for coming here. Canada is very much a family oriented country and you will most definitely fit in here. For us (well me really –my oh is taken to the immigration has if she was Canadian already!) I find it really hard at the moment. They say the first 3-5 years will be the hardest to settle, I am 40yrs old, we have no kids, so meeting friends of our own age without kids and all the responsibilities they have with kids is very hard to find. We are lucky we have my oh’s brother and wife and kids are here to absorb our isolation feelings to. I really miss my old mates in England, even though they had families too; they still made time to go out with us. Like I said family is very important to Canadians and will always come priority, and you can’t blame them for that, family should come first no matter what!

Now that I have pulled my heart strings (no sympathy please! – I am a big boy now) J
I can continue.. it is one big learning curve for me though, because of my very strong ‘black country’ accent I find it difficult just to even order a coffee and a bagel at Tim Horton’s! It is mainly the younger generation I have problems with; I just catch them off guard that’s all, but I find myself learning English, well Canadian English all over again! It’s tough at my age you know! J.


So Mel, You will love the space for sure, but what I can’t get my head around at the moment is that all the new build houses going on around here are like English style! Small gardens, fairly big house, but crammed in like terraced houses? I shout at them what the hell is going on? Well we know that don’t we? – Money! Developers have been on their European holidays to get ideas I suppose! Come on. Canada is a big place, let’s spread out!

I still hope I will get my original dream to coming to Canada come true, I envisaged buying a nice little place with acreage (no mortgage), driving a clapped out 4x4 dodge or Chevy pick up truck with my dog hanging its head out the window singing redneck country style songs at the top of my voice – and with the dog howling in tune too! But in reality for us anyway for now, we are financially worse off than we was in UK, (despite us having good jobs here too.) we still have a big mortgage as we did back home I admit we have a bigger house, and detached, (we lived in a poxy semi-detached house but in a nice area back in UK,) so it has been hard, and we don’t have kids – I think we’d be totally broke if we did! J

Having said that, it is still achievable for us in Canada, but we would have to move east to like New Brunswick or Nova Scotia where housing is really affordable, you can get houses with acreage there starting at 45,000 quid! But the work is a little thin there and a lot colder too!

So I have been rambling on again, I am still compiling my little list, and it will be for everyone to look at, I will post it on here. You will probably know must of the stuff already anyway, but I will categorize it so folks can use it as a guide and print it off. Because my oh’s brother was already living here a year before us, he informed us of the mistakes he made before he left the uk to do with the banking etc., so please be patient I will do this weekend some time. Thanks mark.