(Feb 2012)
On Saturday we received a letter from Canada Immigration in Nova Scotia.
To summarise, they have checked over our visa application and are happy
with the details we have submitted regarding Ailsa's work experience
and qualifications.
This is known as a Positive Eligibility Review (PER)
Our visa application will now be forwarded to the London Visa office for further proccessing.
Presumably in London they will check the ligitimacy of Ailsa's
qualifications, and possibly check up on her work history. Also check
our family's history and police reports etc for accuracy.
If that goes ok, then the next step will be a request for medicals. But I'll update you on that stuff if and when it happens.
House update:
New bathroom suite is in and leak-free, after a few failures, lol.
Bathroom sealant is your friend! Still to sort out some flooring and
maybe some tiling.
I have another batch of laminate from Ikea, so should have the downstairs finished in the next couple of days.
The skip came and I pulled down the garden shed. Didn't realise how big
it was till I hammered a wall away and the roof tried to get me, lol. I
packed the skip carefully so as to get as much in as possible. Job
complete, skip away. Garden is now a boggy mess.
Was thinking
of putting down some wood chips, but I reckon I'll just flatten it and
throw some grass seed down. MUCH cheaper, and folk still like a bit of
grass in their back garden. Ummm, that sounds rude, well, does to me,
lol.
Ailsa is currently over in Burlington doing some training.
She got off the plane in Toronto and Art met her, first stop Tims,
before even leaving the airport. ;-)
She's loving it all over again and she says it now feels like home. Wish I was there :-(
She's off to Niagara today as it's a holiday Monday in Ontario, so I'm
going to try and catch her on the Niagara Falls live cam.
I now
have a large collection of Facebook friends in many areas of Canada.
They make life so much better for me, sitting in our tiny house watching
the rain bounce of our windows, I know there's good things to come, so
thanks guys :-)
I feel pretty bad for some of the folk on the
forum who applied last year but have been denied, because of caps being
reached etc. I really hope their job is on the NOC list in July so they
can re-apply and get the ball rolling.
But it's hard not to be
excited. Our application is moving along quite quickly and I am hopefull
for a completion date before December this year. If we have sold our
house, we could be in a position to get over there for Christmas!
Right, back to work for me. This floor aint gonna lay it's self, although I have on occasion told it to go f*** itself ;-)
Sunday, 30 December 2012
FSW Application posted!!
(23rd Nov 2011)
Yesterday was the big day. The day we posted off our Permanent Residence application to live in Canada.
After checking the application, then checking it again....and once more for luck, we were happy that everything was included.
I booked Fedex to come and pick it up. Now, if you book direct through Fedex, the bill is about £75, for normal delivery. However, if you use an agent, like Parcels2go, it only cost £24.50, and that is for priority mail!. I know, doesn't make any sense.
The driver was here within a couple of hours and was VERY helpful with regards to lables and packaging etc. He actually put it in a Fedex bag for extra protection, then off it went
We've been tracking it's progress online. At the moment, it has left Memphis TN (Fedex Super hub) and is heading, hopefully nearer to Canada, lol.
If I'd used Parcel Farce, it would probably still be in our local sorting office, lol.
We know it's going to dissapear into the void of back-logged applications once it arrives in Nova Scotia, but for now we can be excited as we track it.
Yesterday was the big day. The day we posted off our Permanent Residence application to live in Canada.
After checking the application, then checking it again....and once more for luck, we were happy that everything was included.
I booked Fedex to come and pick it up. Now, if you book direct through Fedex, the bill is about £75, for normal delivery. However, if you use an agent, like Parcels2go, it only cost £24.50, and that is for priority mail!. I know, doesn't make any sense.
The driver was here within a couple of hours and was VERY helpful with regards to lables and packaging etc. He actually put it in a Fedex bag for extra protection, then off it went
We've been tracking it's progress online. At the moment, it has left Memphis TN (Fedex Super hub) and is heading, hopefully nearer to Canada, lol.
If I'd used Parcel Farce, it would probably still be in our local sorting office, lol.
We know it's going to dissapear into the void of back-logged applications once it arrives in Nova Scotia, but for now we can be excited as we track it.
The "Moving over without a job" conversation
So I decided to have "the talk", you know, the one where you ask your
partner if we are seriously going to emigrate to a new country with no
job.
Don't get me wrong, I would do it without a second thought, but Ailsa has been the bread winner for the last 15 years, and she would have a massive sense of responsibility if we do this.
Here's the situation...
Ailsa - Loads of qualifications, engineering experience, MBA with distinction
Her job will be hard to find, but will be a good wage
Me - Jack of all trades, master of none. Can work on cars, can drive, can wash dishes etc
Bigger scope for me to get a lower paid job to keep us going.
But here's what we have decided:
As mentioned in a previous blog, I have a little business drawing cars. We have decided it would be crazy not to pick this up again. It can be a very reasonable income. One year I managed to bring in £4K per month over the Christmas period. That was with no advertising, so with two of us on the job it could be great.
I only need one room in the house to turn into a workshop, so no need for premises. I'll spend the time waiting on Visa's by bringing the business back up to speed, and drawing lots of North American cars. I also have some new ideas to freshen up the concept.
So the idea then is to get ourselves over there, and get CarArtz set up asap. While I work on that, Ailsa can get out and try and find her dream job, without the stress and pressure of being the sole earner, and without us having to eat into our life savings.
So we are now full steam ahead, no doubts whatsoever.
I have estate agents coming out to value our house, for our proof of funds part of the visa app. Only waiting on a couple of documents, then we're good to send it off to the CIO
I really should tell my sister what we're up to, lol.
Don't get me wrong, I would do it without a second thought, but Ailsa has been the bread winner for the last 15 years, and she would have a massive sense of responsibility if we do this.
Here's the situation...
Ailsa - Loads of qualifications, engineering experience, MBA with distinction
Her job will be hard to find, but will be a good wage
Me - Jack of all trades, master of none. Can work on cars, can drive, can wash dishes etc
Bigger scope for me to get a lower paid job to keep us going.
But here's what we have decided:
As mentioned in a previous blog, I have a little business drawing cars. We have decided it would be crazy not to pick this up again. It can be a very reasonable income. One year I managed to bring in £4K per month over the Christmas period. That was with no advertising, so with two of us on the job it could be great.
I only need one room in the house to turn into a workshop, so no need for premises. I'll spend the time waiting on Visa's by bringing the business back up to speed, and drawing lots of North American cars. I also have some new ideas to freshen up the concept.
So the idea then is to get ourselves over there, and get CarArtz set up asap. While I work on that, Ailsa can get out and try and find her dream job, without the stress and pressure of being the sole earner, and without us having to eat into our life savings.
So we are now full steam ahead, no doubts whatsoever.
I have estate agents coming out to value our house, for our proof of funds part of the visa app. Only waiting on a couple of documents, then we're good to send it off to the CIO
I really should tell my sister what we're up to, lol.
Our intention is to imigrate into Canada via the FSW route, whereby Ailsa would be the principle applicant, and the one who would be making all the money, hopefully, lol.
I thought I'd post up a bit about me and my hobbies/jobs, which sometimes make money.
Most of which are easily transferable to Canada, such as:
CarArtz.com (Closed at present) - Automotive artwork, T-shirts, mugs, mouse mats etc
www.carartz.com
Car resto/engine swap etc
Swapping a 1.6 for a 4.0 V8 :
I would love to build kit cars in a nice big warm garage. Yes, I could do that in Scotland, but realistically there's just not the market, or weather for them over here. By kit cars, I mean things like Cobra V8's etc.
Would also love to get into the Muscle car scene. Need a triple garage for them though, lol.
Welding/Fabrication - Car bodywork, brackets etc
Making new engine mounting points for the V8 project:
Had to make the mount fit around the steering rack:
I would like to have a dedicated workshop, with bigger tools, like lathes, drills, sandblaster etc. Would love to be able to make my own billet alloy brackets and containers.
Driving instructor - I used to do this before we had kids, no reason why I couldn't do it in Canada after some training. I should have more patience and experience now too.
Ideally, we would want to buy a house with a detached large garage/workshop, which would allow me to "do my thing", whatever that may turn out to be.
I found a few that fit the bill on the MLS site, and even mention they have permission to run a business. It's just too expensive to run dedicated business premises these days, might be better in Canada, but in Glasgow it's near impossible for a new company to succeed.
If nothing else, I will be able to earn my keep just by maintaining the house. Been noting down all the prices people are paying for things like plumbing work, building etc. Looks like the service industry are paid well and kept busy.
The sun is almost out today. Better go out and wash the Boss's car. She's back home tomorrow from another week in England. Nothing against England, but she'd rather be working near home :-(
D.
(July 2011)
We completed our family Recce trip to Canada in July 2011, and the results are as follows:
Family thoughts...
Ailsa: "I don't want to go home"..."sob sob"
Me: "I now have a shitload of work to do back home before we can move"
Ross: "awesome!"
Kyle: "It's ok, can we go home now?"
So, 3 out of 4 isn't too bad.
In our two week trip (three weeks for Ails) we did the following:
Ailsa worked for a week in her Canadian branch of her current employer.
We lived with friends in their "average family home" in the south west of Hamilton. We spent most evenings discussing the cost of living etc
Ailsa spoke to a bank mortgage advisor
We spoke to a realtor
We Visited Niagara, Montreal and Ottawa
We viewed 10 homes for sale
We drove around many surrounding areas to "get a feel"
We visited local schools
And the big one, we became addicted to Tim Hortons!
Findings:
Ailsa loves working in Canada. The burlington branch are very family aware, and have many occasions throughout the year where family are invited to work BBQ evenings, and a once a year work funded trip to places like Canada's Wonderland.
The family we were living with were also once immigrants, but from over 20 years ago. Their current home is a couple of years old and is in a newer area of Ancaster Hamilton.
Open plan Kitchen/living/dining area, 4 bedrooms, utility upstairs, full basement, double garage. Pretty much exactly the size we would like, but we would prefer an older house in a more mature area.
Even just 2 minutes along the road and there's more established areas that we like..
We decided on a budget of no more than £350K for a home. Any more than that and we would'nt have any money left to hang curtains, I mean "drapes"
You could easily get a nice large home for £250K or less, but you really have to decide how much of a snob you want to be with regards to area and schools, lol.
Mortgage wise, as a new-comer you may be expected to put down a 20% deposit on a house, so we would be looking at $70,000 up front, which would pretty much wipe out our entire savings once we sell our shoe-box in Scotland. We might just rent for a year, which would mean we could save up more of a deposit, and hopefully after a year the deposit required would be reduced as we were no longer newbies.
That would also give us a better idea of the area we were living.
There are many other monetary factors you need to be aware of when choosing a house and area. Property tax can be quite expensive. I think the family we were staying with pay over $4000 a year, and you also have the usual utility bills such as electricity and water. Bare in mind summer can be hot and dry, so if you want to keep the lawn green, you'll need the sprinkler on every night.
Here's something that won't occur to many of us in the UK...
We would class a house built in the 70's are relatively young. My mum's last house was a 120 year old semi and was in pretty good nick.
Because of Canada's extreme temperature differences between summer and winter, we are talking 60 degrees, their houses come under much more stress. Because of this, the life of the average canadian home is much shorter than that of a house in the UK. Many are built from wood rather than brick because wood can adapt to the differences better than brick and cement. But then wood has it's own set of potential problems.
So my point is, it is sometimes cheaper to tear down and rebuild a 40 year old home in canada, than to try and maintain it.
View over Hamilton..
style="display: block;" alt="" />
Going for a drive:
I made Ailsa drive around for a while, and I took some pictures, to get a feel for, and remember, the area...
Our trusty steed for the recce:
Home Styles:
We looked at a few different home styles.
New build - We found that a lot of the new detached homes were designed more to look good inside than for functionality. There was a lot of wasted space in some of them. For example, there might be a wide staircase, and at the top there would a large area of landing with no real purpose other than looking spacious. All this really does is reduce the size of the bedrooms upstairs. There are other obvious design cosmetics, like MASSIVE ornate windows inside a walk-in cupboard, the only reason for this is that the window formed part of the front of house appearance from the street.
But the thing we hate about the new homes is the way they are all built in a line with about 2 feet between each.
Older 2 story detached home - This was our favourite. Maybe around 20 to 30 years old. Square shaped home with attached double garage to the front. Most had finished basement with either extra bedrooms or rec-rooms and work-shops
The first one we looked at had a complete student rental appartment in the basement. Two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom and lounge. Many families will rent this out for some extra income during the school seasons, not a bad idea.
Side split
I thought this was going to be my favourite style of home, but sadly it is not. They generally only have half a full height basement, with the other half being crawl space. They are also usually much older houses.
Single level home (bungalow)
We only looked at one of these. It was an older home, and to be fair it was quite nice. I hated the kitchen. It was an old style and very little work-top. It had a fully finished basement, but it had odd things like a "bedroom nook". It was weird, lol.
These were all "open houses". This happens on Saturdays or Sundays between 2pm and 4pm. The owners basically leave the house for a few hours and allow their realtor to show the house to anyone that wanders by. If this was Scotland, you would need to install CCTV in every room
City Visits
Niagara:
Very touristy, but no more than you would expect and hope for. We went on Canada day, so we knew we would need to pay a lot for parking. Worked out at $20 for the day, not too bad. The falls are just as you would expect. Lots of water rushing off a cliff
I would love to see it in winter with the snow and ice.
We had a brilliant meal at the Edgewaters restaurant over-looking the falls. Not the cheapest meal we've ever had, but good sized portions and very tasty.
After dinner it was time to head over to the mini golf for the kids, then down to the river for the fireworks and light shows
I was amazed at the amount of different peoples all sitting on the grass near us. Canadian, Chinese, Indian, African, European and a family of Mormons complete with horse and carriage all happy to be part of this great Canadian day.
Montreal:
I have to say, I'm not keen on France, so our trip to Montreal was not filling me with joy. My feelings were not wrong. I really didn't like Quebec, and once you get it in your head that you don't like something, it's very hard to change. I took some nice photo's of the architecture, but that's about all I liked. Sorry Frenchies.
Hmmmm, for a place I didn't like, I seem to have taken an awefull lot of pictures, lol
Ottawa:
Ottawa however is awesome. We had a suite on the 21st floor over-looking the city. Decided to make some pizza's in our oven, but had a bit of a disaster when the pizza drooped and dropped cheese on the element causing a "little smoke" and setting off the smoke alarms on the whole 21st floor, oops.
At the same time, one of the kids had walked through the flyscreen on the balcony and jammed the door so we couldn't open it enough to let the smoke out Oh how we laughed
Had to stop off for some world famous Beaver Tails, YUM!
And then some street performers entertained us for a while.
So we saw the first light-show of the year on the parliament building, which was awesome, and then did the guided tour the next day. Also saw the Museum of civilisation and the war museum before we headed back to Hamilton.
Driving in Ontario:
I found the driving style to be fairly laid back. Saw the odd nut-case, but in general it was fairly easy going. I like the fact thet the pedestrians are given right of way when crossing the road, unless the UK where they are seen as targets.
We did get caught in a jam on the way back from Ottawa when we were driving through Toronto. 10 lanes went down to 1 lane
Took about 3 hours to get through, but everyone seemed quite patient, and allowed you to cut in without too much grief.
I asked later if the traffic system was a bit crap, or if it was just traffic volume. Turns out that Canadians like to drive, a lot!
Shopping
There's huge differences in prices from one shop to another. It was hard for us to try and get out of the "but we're on holiday" attitude, but when our bill in Walmart came to $92 for some sweats and juice, I had a major re-think.
There's shops like "No frills" where you can buy the same items much cheaper, and "Dollarama" is excellent for kitchen stuff and craft items
Gas (petrol) is obviously mush cheaper than here, but it's all relative. Once you live there you will stop relating everything to pounds value equivalent.
Fastfood is cheap and plentiful. Tim Hortons not only does coffee, but breakfast and other yummy food at a good price.
We had a look in a thrift store while the kids were at "Lazer-tag". Loads of great items in there for a few dollars, and a great place to buy furniature for your new home when you're just starting out.
The people
We were paying particular attention to the way people spoke to us and to those around us. When we were in Florida, it was obvious that most of the service industry staff were being paid to be nice. We didn't really see this In Canada. All were friendly and helpful, and it didn't feel forced.
We had a get-together with many of the neighbours on a couple of evenings (drinks on the driveway), and got a real feeling of what it was like to live in Canada, the good and the bad.
You can tell a lot about the people from the animals that live nearby...
Conclusion:
Obviously we have only seen a small slice of living in Canada, but it was enough for us to decide it's where we want to live.
We completed our family Recce trip to Canada in July 2011, and the results are as follows:
Family thoughts...
Ailsa: "I don't want to go home"..."sob sob"
Me: "I now have a shitload of work to do back home before we can move"
Ross: "awesome!"
Kyle: "It's ok, can we go home now?"
So, 3 out of 4 isn't too bad.
In our two week trip (three weeks for Ails) we did the following:
Ailsa worked for a week in her Canadian branch of her current employer.
We lived with friends in their "average family home" in the south west of Hamilton. We spent most evenings discussing the cost of living etc
Ailsa spoke to a bank mortgage advisor
We spoke to a realtor
We Visited Niagara, Montreal and Ottawa
We viewed 10 homes for sale
We drove around many surrounding areas to "get a feel"
We visited local schools
And the big one, we became addicted to Tim Hortons!
Findings:
Ailsa loves working in Canada. The burlington branch are very family aware, and have many occasions throughout the year where family are invited to work BBQ evenings, and a once a year work funded trip to places like Canada's Wonderland.
The family we were living with were also once immigrants, but from over 20 years ago. Their current home is a couple of years old and is in a newer area of Ancaster Hamilton.
Open plan Kitchen/living/dining area, 4 bedrooms, utility upstairs, full basement, double garage. Pretty much exactly the size we would like, but we would prefer an older house in a more mature area.
Even just 2 minutes along the road and there's more established areas that we like..
We decided on a budget of no more than £350K for a home. Any more than that and we would'nt have any money left to hang curtains, I mean "drapes"
You could easily get a nice large home for £250K or less, but you really have to decide how much of a snob you want to be with regards to area and schools, lol.
Mortgage wise, as a new-comer you may be expected to put down a 20% deposit on a house, so we would be looking at $70,000 up front, which would pretty much wipe out our entire savings once we sell our shoe-box in Scotland. We might just rent for a year, which would mean we could save up more of a deposit, and hopefully after a year the deposit required would be reduced as we were no longer newbies.
That would also give us a better idea of the area we were living.
There are many other monetary factors you need to be aware of when choosing a house and area. Property tax can be quite expensive. I think the family we were staying with pay over $4000 a year, and you also have the usual utility bills such as electricity and water. Bare in mind summer can be hot and dry, so if you want to keep the lawn green, you'll need the sprinkler on every night.
Here's something that won't occur to many of us in the UK...
We would class a house built in the 70's are relatively young. My mum's last house was a 120 year old semi and was in pretty good nick.
Because of Canada's extreme temperature differences between summer and winter, we are talking 60 degrees, their houses come under much more stress. Because of this, the life of the average canadian home is much shorter than that of a house in the UK. Many are built from wood rather than brick because wood can adapt to the differences better than brick and cement. But then wood has it's own set of potential problems.
So my point is, it is sometimes cheaper to tear down and rebuild a 40 year old home in canada, than to try and maintain it.
View over Hamilton..
style="display: block;" alt="" />
Going for a drive:
I made Ailsa drive around for a while, and I took some pictures, to get a feel for, and remember, the area...
Our trusty steed for the recce:
Home Styles:
We looked at a few different home styles.
New build - We found that a lot of the new detached homes were designed more to look good inside than for functionality. There was a lot of wasted space in some of them. For example, there might be a wide staircase, and at the top there would a large area of landing with no real purpose other than looking spacious. All this really does is reduce the size of the bedrooms upstairs. There are other obvious design cosmetics, like MASSIVE ornate windows inside a walk-in cupboard, the only reason for this is that the window formed part of the front of house appearance from the street.
But the thing we hate about the new homes is the way they are all built in a line with about 2 feet between each.
Older 2 story detached home - This was our favourite. Maybe around 20 to 30 years old. Square shaped home with attached double garage to the front. Most had finished basement with either extra bedrooms or rec-rooms and work-shops
The first one we looked at had a complete student rental appartment in the basement. Two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom and lounge. Many families will rent this out for some extra income during the school seasons, not a bad idea.
Side split
I thought this was going to be my favourite style of home, but sadly it is not. They generally only have half a full height basement, with the other half being crawl space. They are also usually much older houses.
Single level home (bungalow)
We only looked at one of these. It was an older home, and to be fair it was quite nice. I hated the kitchen. It was an old style and very little work-top. It had a fully finished basement, but it had odd things like a "bedroom nook". It was weird, lol.
These were all "open houses". This happens on Saturdays or Sundays between 2pm and 4pm. The owners basically leave the house for a few hours and allow their realtor to show the house to anyone that wanders by. If this was Scotland, you would need to install CCTV in every room
City Visits
Niagara:
Very touristy, but no more than you would expect and hope for. We went on Canada day, so we knew we would need to pay a lot for parking. Worked out at $20 for the day, not too bad. The falls are just as you would expect. Lots of water rushing off a cliff
I would love to see it in winter with the snow and ice.We had a brilliant meal at the Edgewaters restaurant over-looking the falls. Not the cheapest meal we've ever had, but good sized portions and very tasty.
After dinner it was time to head over to the mini golf for the kids, then down to the river for the fireworks and light shows
I was amazed at the amount of different peoples all sitting on the grass near us. Canadian, Chinese, Indian, African, European and a family of Mormons complete with horse and carriage all happy to be part of this great Canadian day.
Montreal:
I have to say, I'm not keen on France, so our trip to Montreal was not filling me with joy. My feelings were not wrong. I really didn't like Quebec, and once you get it in your head that you don't like something, it's very hard to change. I took some nice photo's of the architecture, but that's about all I liked. Sorry Frenchies.
Hmmmm, for a place I didn't like, I seem to have taken an awefull lot of pictures, lol
Ottawa:
Ottawa however is awesome. We had a suite on the 21st floor over-looking the city. Decided to make some pizza's in our oven, but had a bit of a disaster when the pizza drooped and dropped cheese on the element causing a "little smoke" and setting off the smoke alarms on the whole 21st floor, oops.
At the same time, one of the kids had walked through the flyscreen on the balcony and jammed the door so we couldn't open it enough to let the smoke out
Oh how we laughed Had to stop off for some world famous Beaver Tails, YUM!
And then some street performers entertained us for a while.
So we saw the first light-show of the year on the parliament building, which was awesome, and then did the guided tour the next day. Also saw the Museum of civilisation and the war museum before we headed back to Hamilton.
Driving in Ontario:
I found the driving style to be fairly laid back. Saw the odd nut-case, but in general it was fairly easy going. I like the fact thet the pedestrians are given right of way when crossing the road, unless the UK where they are seen as targets.
We did get caught in a jam on the way back from Ottawa when we were driving through Toronto. 10 lanes went down to 1 lane
Took about 3 hours to get through, but everyone seemed quite patient, and allowed you to cut in without too much grief.I asked later if the traffic system was a bit crap, or if it was just traffic volume. Turns out that Canadians like to drive, a lot!
Shopping
There's huge differences in prices from one shop to another. It was hard for us to try and get out of the "but we're on holiday" attitude, but when our bill in Walmart came to $92 for some sweats and juice, I had a major re-think.
There's shops like "No frills" where you can buy the same items much cheaper, and "Dollarama" is excellent for kitchen stuff and craft items
Gas (petrol) is obviously mush cheaper than here, but it's all relative. Once you live there you will stop relating everything to pounds value equivalent.
Fastfood is cheap and plentiful. Tim Hortons not only does coffee, but breakfast and other yummy food at a good price.
We had a look in a thrift store while the kids were at "Lazer-tag". Loads of great items in there for a few dollars, and a great place to buy furniature for your new home when you're just starting out.
The people
We were paying particular attention to the way people spoke to us and to those around us. When we were in Florida, it was obvious that most of the service industry staff were being paid to be nice. We didn't really see this In Canada. All were friendly and helpful, and it didn't feel forced.
We had a get-together with many of the neighbours on a couple of evenings (drinks on the driveway), and got a real feeling of what it was like to live in Canada, the good and the bad.
You can tell a lot about the people from the animals that live nearby...
Conclusion:
Obviously we have only seen a small slice of living in Canada, but it was enough for us to decide it's where we want to live.
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