People & Places
Wallace's Canadian Blog January 07
Starting this month, Rachel Wallace - who emigrated to Nova Scotia, Canada, last year with her family - is writing a regular blog just for Emigrate2
I have just put the logs in our 'real' fire, and just in time too: it's -18 today with a wind chill of -31. There are about six inches of snow which Jack (12) and Kerry (10) enjoyed yesterday as they were let off school because the buses had been cancelled.
Ian (46) has just rung me from work - a tug boat near the Bay of Fundy. He is not very happy as it is really rough and he was called in to help with the salvage job of an oil tanker. He was told it would be for only one to two days but is now going to take four to five days. It wouldn't be so bad if he was actually employed by the towage firm, but they are waiting on his certificates being verified in Ottawa before they can employ him.
As for me (42), I am still having fun looking after our new 'dream' house with lake views from nearly every window. It is so hard to believe this house costs the same as our old one in England, but with so much more space, and such fabulous views.
We arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 29th October, two-and-a-half years after applying for a Skilled Worker visa. My sister had put the idea in our heads about four years ago as they had been planning to move to Halifax. We listened to all their reasons for emigrating and figured it sounded like a good idea. We visited Halifax three years ago and loved it.
They ended up moving to Vancouver as that is where the work took them. We decided to visit them to see if we would prefer that side of the country but enjoyed the lakes and trees everywhere in Halifax and the laid-back and friendly attitudes of the residents here. We only ever had the two areas to choose between as we needed a port for Ian to continue working on tug boats.
We enlisted the help of a relocation expert. He was really helpful and, conveniently lived about ten minutes down the road from us in Felixstowe. He is very well informed on what requirements were needed and even contacted us halfway into our waiting period to get us to send further information to the High Commission based on his knowledge of what would help our application.
We had our medicals in March 2006 and received a request for our passports to have our visas put in. We were extremely excited but also horrified. In two weeks time we were due to go and visit my Mum and Ian's parents in Spain, so we couldn't possibly send off our passports. They had to be sent in within 60 days which really is plenty of time but you just don't want to risk anything. As it is we received them in June.
Then began the process of trying to sell our house and get everything booked up. Ian's workplace was on the verge of redundancies, which he even came back to England to try to secure but to no avail. We had our leaving parties, sold our furniture and did loads of car boots. It was quite stressful getting rid of lots of our possessions but nice to know we could buy lots of new things.
Well, that's it for now. Next month I'll write about arriving in Canada, the children starting school, and doctors. Hope Ian's salvage job is going okay!
I'd love to hear from anyone emigrating to Halifax.
Please email Rachel Wallace
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