People & Places
Canadian visas and more
Debbie (46), Mike (55) and Clare Collins (21) emigrated to Grimsby, Ontario, in March 2004. Kate Baddeley asks the questions and Debbie provides the answers
Why did you decide to emigrate to Canada?
It wasn't an overnight decision. My sister, Julie, married a Canadian in 1992 and we'd made regular trips over to see her and her two children that came along. We grew to enjoy the lifestyle and people and saw what great prospects Canada had. We first looked at the prospect of emigrating in 1996, so we attended a seminar in Newbury and the emigration consultant basically told Mike that his trade as a 'shopfitter' wasn't recognised as a trade. If he'd been 'labelled' as a Millworker or Cabinet maker they could put him in the right category for the application. I could have had a chance to qualify as a secretary, but it all seemed a bit hit and miss so we went away and started up our own business instead!
How easy was the visa process?
This was fairly easy looking back, but still took two-and-a-half years from start to finish and because we are not 'spring chickens' we were concerned we could get refused for being too old, but age turned out to not be an issue. We used the services of an immigration consultant, who was absolutely superb. We were worried about getting caught up in a change of immigration policy and how it could affect our application. So we attended the Emigrate exhibition at Sandown in March 2003 and literally hounded one of the officers and pleaded for them to issue our visas! They said they would look into it and a couple of weeks later the visas popped through the letterbox!
Why Canada?
We love the expanse of the place: the straight, wider roads (with no cars parked outside houses!), larger homes/plots and obviously the diverse and extensive landscapes – you name it, this country has it. We love the politeness and friendliness of the people. Bearing in mind this is a multi-cultural nation, we've got friends and business associates now who are not only Canadians, but Dutch, Portuguese and even Argentinian. We do tend, though, to gravitate towards the British immigrants for obvious reasons, but we've found many, many Canadians with British descendants and they love to talk to you about Britain and tell you where their families come from and ask if we know them!
Why did you choose to live in a place called 'Grimsby'?
We chose Grimsby because of its small town feel. Although it has a population of 30,000 it's spread over eight kilometres between Lake Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment. It has had massive residential and commercial growth in the last five years but has now ceased due to the geographic position of it as mentioned above.
Did you rent or buy at first?
We actually purchased our house before we arrived. Although we love the house, it was not the best decision we made. After much frustration, we received our visas at Easter 2003 and they wanted us to land by mid August that same year! I think they made an error, but we weren't going to challenge it as we'd waited so long for them, so we came and landed in June 2003. That's when we saw the house and made an offer just two days before we returned to England! When we got back we put our house up for sale and started to wind down our commercial shopfitter business as we had been running for the past seven years. Then the vendor in Canada took the house off the market! Our house was taking an age to sell so we swapped agents and it sold in the October, but shortly after we sold, our real estate agent in Canada emailed us to say the house we viewed in the summer in Grimsby was going back up for sale!
It was then a mad transatlantic negotiation to pick up where we left off to try to purchase it again! We did get it but had to come over in early December to be present at the home inspection and sign all the paperwork, but of course, now it was winter and the place looked vastly different! Not that we still didn't want it but in hindsight we should have viewed it more times and asked more questions. We found many problems with the place. We finally moved over and into the house in March 2004.
Where are you from in the UK and how does Grimsby compare to where you used to live?
I am from Kent, Mike, my husband is from Worcester but together with our daughter we lived in Hungerford, Berkshire, for 18 years prior to coming to Canada.
Hungerford is a small and beautiful town, but over the years, you end up knowing so many people who soon learnt each others business! It was a great place for Clare, our daughter to grow up, but kept her sheltered from the real world!
Personally, I feel there is still too much 'class distinction' in the UK, which you rarely find here in Canada. It doesn't seem to matter if you are a home cleaner or a lawyer, Canadians don't treat you any differently. In most eating establishments, for instance, you can go dressed in your shorts.
It still makes me smile to see bank tellers sitting at their stations in their regular clothing (no uniforms) without any protective glass screens between you, drinking their mug of coffee and chatting to clients about their families!
How has your lifestyle changed since you emigrated to Canada?
We have learnt to slow down and take in more leisure time, mostly spending times at BBQs and gatherings in each others homes, because although Canadians like beer, they don't spend hours and hours in drinking establishments like they do in UK. They tend to socialise with their family and friends in their own homes. This is probably because there isn't a 'pub-on-every-corner' here and also because the drink- drive penalties are very harsh.
Canadians take leisure time very seriously – be it fishing, boating, hockey, skating, walking or cycling – everyone does something! That was the one thing we noticed with the cold and snowy winters, how everyone seems to go mad once the weather breaks in May – frantic gardening, BBQs, going to 'cottage country', to the lakes, walkers, cyclists! Even my husband now wears shorts everyday, even to work!
What are your plans for the future? Will you stay in Canada?
We're going to stay for sure. Nothing will make us go back now. Don't get me wrong, it's not a picnic at first. It's exciting, but you soon realise you're not on vacation anymore and you've got to make a living. Our daughter Clare did struggle as when she came here kicking and screaming at the age of 18 and has threatened to go back home many times, which we fretted about, but she's stuck it out and has a job, made new friends and lives with her boyfriend and now says things like 'man' and 'dude' in conversation! She turns 21 this week and we're going to have a big party.
Do you have any advise for those who hope to emigrate to Canada?
Go for it! Do your homework! Subscribe to Emigrate Canada (I still do even though we're here now!) and search the Internet.
For those with young children, they have the best life here. Education is good and there is so much for them to do – no kid should get bored with all the activity schemes here. I don't think I've met and impolite, inconsiderate kid of any age here yet (well, the odd spoilt brat, perhaps!).
I might be making all this sound like heaven on earth, but Canada does have its faults, but nothing like the stresses and strains and future we didn't want to endure in UK.
Have you settled into your new home? Are you enjoying working and living in Canada? Tell me about the business you set up?
We have been in our house now for 2.5 years and we love it, but it is now proving to be headache because it is so large – on a half-acre plot. It takes a lot of cleaning, maintaining and gardening to keep it up to scratch. We did it because we could, basically! We never thought we would have afforded a 3,000 square foot house with 13 rooms (not including the basement) on this much land in all our life! We've spent some money renovating it and now we're looking at a plot to have a house built, which will still be a lot less money than our three-bedroom semi in England was worth!
We are working hard running our own home renovation business. Since it started in September 2004, we haven't stopped. We were lucky that a few residents in the area give us that chance after seeing our local paper advert and then Oct ober 05 we had an article done on us in the local Grimsby News about our business we set up after coming from England and we've flown ever since! Mike is skilled carpenter, but is all-rounder good at most things DIY. It's resulted in outdoor work like fences, desks, pergolas in the summer months and basements, kitchens, bathrooms in the winter. He has earned a reputation in town for his quality work and reliability at very competitive prices. We're now getting a lot of repeat customers and word of mouth recommendations. Mike does the graft and I do the admin and collecting money! Seems to be working so far! We've decided that although Mike is pretty good at selling his services, Canadians have some faith in that we're British and that they will get the service and quality they are looking for. We've come across a lot of 'cowboys' here and if you have the skills of the construction industry and good work ethics, you will make a good living in Canada.
What are the benefits of living in Canada? Obviously we still have to work and pay taxes like any other country, but we like the expanse of the place - wider roads, slower driving (mostly!), bigger homes/land, politeness and general consideration and lack of class distinction. And the leisure time which we're slowly coming to terms with - Canadians take it very seriously as I mentioned before. Every week something else strikes me 'that would never have happened in UK' i.e., the lady working at the bakery section coming out from behind the counter and offering cookies to the kids; the bank tellers with no glass screen between you chatting to her customer about the grand-kids (this can be annoying if I'm in a rush!) and people in cars just stopping dead on busy street if they see you are trying to cross the road downtown and finally, people selling stuff on their front lawns that doesn't get nicked!
How does the cost of living compare?
Wages are obviously lower, then so are the cars and houses and everyday stuff like petrol and toothpaste! Car insurance is horrendous, but then we are being classified as 16 year old new drivers because they won't recognise our UK driving history. This is now decreasing and been told we should be at full no claims with other drivers after being here three years. Also surprisingly our property tax, utility, telephone etc is on a par with UK but we believe more competition and demutualization is needed here especially with cellphone companies; we get charged on these bills if someone phones us!!
Do you miss anything about the UK?
Truthfully, only our families obviously and Marks & Spencer!! But then we seem to get more visits from family out here now than when we lived in England!
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