Canada - British Expat Forum

it's about 2 pm on a friday afternoon and my wife walk's in the door allmost in tears and sighs ,lets go, lets go to canada
AT LAST , iv'e only been saying this for about eight years now and had allmost given up my self ,but that day something happend and she changed her mind
Iv'e been fed up with britain since i worked in the middle east around 1997 when i came back and had a culture shock.
In the middle east people are frendly and polite and the language barrier is no problem as hand gestures get you through.
In britain ,the only hand gestures you get are of the two finger type .

so we have started our quest to emergrate to canada ,iv'e not been on the computer so much in my life and im starting to pick it up quite well now
But we need the invaluable help and advice of the people on B.E.

Im a class 1 heavy haulage truck driver and a HIAB operator with a NVQ in heavy lifting
and my wife is a mobile school cook for the local councel and i would like to know what work is there for us out there and as there are 4 kids coming with us what schools are like and what life will be like for them
p.s. im looking at moving to edmonton or that area in alberta , so thank you all in advance
lee and claire

Lee and Clair: Having read this board for a few years I know that there are many entries from people in the same line of work as you both are. Have a search through and you can read them. I have no direct knowledge but it seems that people in your lines of work have successfully navigated through the immigration process. It can be a long haul though so be patient and stick with it. The end rewards can be wonderful. And I can feel for your frustrations there in the UK. Good luck.

there would be only one thing i could tell you after living in canada for 5 years,,,, dont go,, it is not a good place to be unless you like drinking beer and smokeing drugs all day,,, it is not as good as its made out to be..

tonyb, I'm sure it's impossible to extrapolate your experience to all of Canada, it is after all a vast country. I've been here for years and don't have many friends who drink and only one that I know of who does drugs. Perhaps you weren't moving in the right circles? It's a great place if you have a good job and can generate a good circle of friends, but then that's the same everywhere. It just seems to me that the chances of a great job are somewhat better here than in the UK. Just my opinion.
Graeme

i was a truck driver for 5 years in canada and america,, i did meet allkinds of people, 90% of them totaly untrustworthy, i know this is only my opinion , but i know a lot of English and German people over there who wish they had never gone, but they sold or gave away everything in there own country and feel kind of stuck in canada not wanting to sell up and move again,, canada is a realy nice country but the winters are very hard, its quite poor in places, and there are a lot of drugs, im back in England now been here for 2 months, and looking for the next move, im married to a canadian lady and she wants to move with me,,,, maybe its becouse i was in new brunswick one of the poorer provinces, but as ive said ive seen probable 8 provinces in canada and god knows how many states in america,, ive done it glad i did but dont want to go back again ,,,Tony

tonyb wrote:there would be only one thing i could tell you after living in canada for 5 years,,,, dont go,, it is not a good place to be unless you like drinking beer and smokeing drugs all day,,, it is not as good as its made out to be..

I'm with you on that one Tony, my wife and I feel the same way too. We have been here for around 18 months and desperately tried to make new friends and find things to do, but it seems they only want to get drunk in their man caves and smoke pot. I thought Canada was full of people who made the most of life, so far we haven't found any. I would say our standard of living is no better, if not a little worse than when we were in the UK, but of course now we have no friends or family to fall back on either.

RNR that's unfortunate; conversely I have had quite the opposite experience with lots of friends a few who drink but no drug smokers. Many people I have met have gone out of their way to make me comfortable and one of the group. My standard of living is most likely higher than in the UK and my pension on retirement quite dwarfs the UK one. I think a lot depends on where you go and the circles you move in, but that's just a hare-brained theory.

I have to agree about people going out of their way for you, they are very friendly, but their idea of of how to spend spare time is vastly different to what I has hoping for. I'm sure our location doesn't help the cause either, we were planning on moving west to Kelowna (our original destination) but now we are more concerned that if we do that and still feel the same way, we will have wasted a lot of money and time along with having to start over from scratch again just to save enough money to go back to the UK.

Kelowna is a good place, both my kids live there now, it has a wonderful university and a great college. IT has a nice climate and so attracts lots of elderly folk who seem to spend a lot of time trying to learn how to drive on the main drag through town (Harvey Avenue) with oddly little or no improvement in their driving abilities. Kelowna is like a lot of small cities with some crime, drugs, issues etc but it seems to deal with them all quite well. The valley itself is like a large conurbation going from Enderby in the North to Oliver/Osoyous in the South, lots of neat places to choose from as to where to live. The Okanagan hasn't been hit too badly with the recession and jobs should be reasonable to find. One plus is that Kelowna has a British food shop where I get my aniseed balls, christmas pudding and other old Brit treats I can't live without. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help information wise as I only live 70 minutes from Kelowna and as my kids are there I'm in and out quite a bit.
Graeme