Canada is in the UN's 2017 list of the world's happiest countries. Today a Kiwi in Canada tells us about her experience moving there.

Before we left New Zealand on January 19, 2002 (myself, my husband and our three kids, ages 14, 11 and 9), I did enough research on Canada to fill a small encyclopaedia. I probably knew more about Canada than most Canadians.

Sadly, the one thing I didn't research was hourly rates of pay. Turns out the minimum wage in Canada is significantly less than New Zealand. Was then and still is now.



We first landed in Sydney, Nova Scotia, where I found a job as a bank teller, earning the lowly sum of $9 per hour, and that wasn't the minimum wage by a long shot. At that time, it was around $7.10 - a ridiculous amount by anyone's reckoning! How could anyone possibly live on that?



On top of that, because Canada is covered by ice and snow for anything up to 6 months of the year, many businesses close "for the season", leaving the workers in a state of limbo.



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123RF In May 2004, we packed up the household and moved to Saint John, New Brunswick.

To counter the lack of working income, Canadians pay into a provincially-run Employment Insurance scheme, known to one and all as EI. Employees who lose jobs through no fault of their own, or are laid off seasonally, are entitled to up to 52 weeks "pay", paid bi-weekly (they don't know what a "fortnight" is here) at a rate of 55 per cent of their former income, up to a cap of $547 per week, provided they have worked 700 hours prior to applying for the benefit.

In Nova Scotia, it's called "pogey", presumably because you bounce from pay to pay. Nova Scotians have lots of unusual words, many of which left us scratching our heads.

They also do things differently. Everyday things you take for granted, like car insurance (hellishly expensive – we paid $350 a month for car insurance when we first arrived, because we were considered new drivers in Canada), or just opening a bank account. Nothing seemed as straightforward as it was in New Zealand.



So many things simply didn't make sense. Canadians are happy with this and don't question it. They also like to form long lines and just wait. Kiwis are too impatient for that sort of nonsense.



We took to hitting ourselves in the head with an imaginary brick, there were so many obstacles and senseless procedures put in our way. As an example, the banking system here is at least 15 years behind New Zealand, or was when we arrived. It has caught itself up a bit since that time and has become a lot more electronically accessible. Cheques are no longer the standard method of payment, but are still widely used.

GEOFF ROBINS Banking in Canada is at least 15 years behind NZ.

As someone who had formerly made all regular payments directly from my bank account, be it to pay the power bill, or deposit money into my kid's bank accounts, coming to Canada where even something as simple as setting up an automatic payment to our new landlord was not an option, trying to get our heads around how things were done here was extremely difficult.

As for the landlord, we had to provide him with 12 post-dated cheques for the year. I hadn't written a cheque since I don't know when in New Zealand.

The job my husband had been offered in Sydney, which was the reason we moved there, had unfortunately fallen through. The company was in serious financial trouble. We didn't learn of this till we arrived. We had sold our house and everything other than what we could fit into a 20-foot container before we left New Zealand.



We had no house to go back to, even if we could have afforded to go back.



Because we were new to the country, we were not entitled to any form of assistance until we had been there six months. As part of the job offer, my husband's employer had agreed to put up the CAD$18,000 ($19,660) we were required to have in the bank in order to immigrate, but that never happened. Because the company had gone bust, there was no money for us.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

WINTER

We had arrived in Canada, in January 2002, to a winter such as we'd never experienced, and had very little money. The house we had rented had an old coal-fired furnace that had been converted to oil.

Even though we kept the thermostat at around 14C (almost at freezing point according to anyone who came to visit – they like their houses to be around 25C here), we'd sit and watch the oil gauge drop. To fill an oil drum was around $300. It would last a while…but $300 when you don't have it, is still $300.



After three months I found work at a bank. My husband had managed to find work at a call centre, but it really wasn't a job he enjoyed.



Sydney has a very high unemployment rate, and much of the work is seasonal. We had chosen it as a place to go because he'd been offered the job, but also because it was similar in size to Paraparaumu, where we had left.



We stayed there for two years, the hardest two years of our lives. To add to our financial woes, our oldest daughter who was 14 when we arrived in Canada had a lot of trouble adapting to her new home. She was subjected to bullying and her self-esteem plummeted. She went from an excellent A+ student in New Zealand, to very poor.

iSTOCK Calgary is a "big, busy city".

The school curriculum was entirely different to what she was familiar with, and she really struggled, and became extremely depressed. We had a couple of very frightening episodes involving overdoses where we didn't know at the time if she would pull through.

If I have any advice for anyone planning on a big move, it would be, do it before your kids are teenagers, or wait till they are in their 20s! Our two younger kids seemed to adapt reasonably well, but not the teenager. That truly was hell!

In May 2004, we packed up the household and moved to Saint John, New Brunswick. My husband had found work there and I managed to transfer with the bank. It was the best possible move for the family.



After a while, we were able to buy a house and for the next six years, had a calm happy existence.



ON THE MOVE



In 2009, my husband was laid off his job. He worked at that time in the steel industry, and there had been a sharp downturn in steel. Saint John is a steel manufacturing city, so this affected a lot of workers.



Consequently, many people were in the same boat, and were out job-hunting, but there were no jobs to be had. After three months, and after applying to other provinces, he was offered a job in Calgary, Alberta.



He and I drove across the country and got him set up in an apartment. I flew back to Saint John and left him there. It was the day of our 29th wedding anniversary. That was hard. After all we'd been through, we now had to face living apart.



Over the next two years, our older daughter found herself a nice young man and got married, then came our first Canadian-Kiwi grandchild. Our second daughter decided to join her father in Calgary so he wouldn't be lonely, and our son then left home to attend university in another city. It was time for me to head west to join my husband. We put our house on the market, but it didn't sell so we found tenants for it.



It took thee years to find a buyer, but it did sell eventually.



Our granddaughter was just seven weeks old when I made the move. It was very hard saying goodbye to her and our daughter, especially since she was just a new mother and would like to have me around.



My husband flew home to help with the move, so for the second time, we drove right across the country, this time in winter, in a U-Haul truck, towing a car.

GETTY IMAGES Niagara Falls is replete with icicles and a glistening layer of ice every winter.

I didn't want to move to Calgary. It is a big, busy city, so told my husband I would go as far as Regina, Saskatchewan. I had friends there, and had arranged a transfer with the bank. There was lots of work there for him and the cost of living was cheaper. We found a place to rent and I spent three months in Regina on my own until he was able to find a job and join me there.

Regina is 4000km from Saint John. There was no jumping in the car and going for a quick visit to see my kids or grandchild.

Things went well for a year or so, then my husband was offered a very good job with a company in the potash industry. It meant he had to relocate to Saskatoon, three hours north of Regina, but as it was contract work, it was better for me to stay where I was and continue my job, and he would come home every second weekend, or I would go visit him. Once again we were living apart. Him in Saskatoon, me in Regina and our kids in Calgary, Saint John and Halifax where our son was now at university.

123RF Downtown Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

We were spread right across the country. I would tell people the Kiwis were taking over Canada province-by-province.

Our son was accepted for the ROTP, Regular Officer Training Program with the Canadian military. They paid all this tuition and living expenses while he was at university studying pharmacy, and on his graduation from there, became a Captain in the RCAF. He was a week or so short of his 23rd birthday, and at that time, was the youngest captain in all 16 Nato countries. Yes, we are inordinately proud of our boy. Canada has been very good to him. He never would have got that sort of an opportunity in New Zealand.

My husband's contract with the potash industry finished in 2015, and he was transferred by the company he worked for to the oil sands of northern Alberta, right up in the frozen north. He would fly in, live on a work camp for two weeks and then fly out and be home for a week. Many, many people live this lifestyle. It's hard on families and it's hard on the workers being away from them. The money is good though.

CHANGE

That brings us to January 2018. My husband has been offered a job in Regina, which he will start in April. We are both very much looking forward to that day. For one thing, it will mean we'll both be in the same place for our 38th wedding anniversary in May. We've missed a few anniversaries in the nine years that we have been living apart.

I wonder what it will be like living together again. It's been a while. Things change. People change.

So, what do I make of life in Canada?

The people are wonderful, well 99 per cent of them are. There are bad eggs here like everywhere else.

I have made some wonderful friends whom I love dearly. We now have three beautiful Can-iwi grandkids and two great sons-in-laws. We have a lovely new home and are looking forward to retiring in a few years.

We went to hell and back when we first got to Canada, but that old saying of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is oh, so true. We fought our way back and we made it.

Canada is home, and we love it here.

Are you a Kiwi living abroad? Share your stories of life in your new home. Email us at travel@stuff.co.nz.

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