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“We woke up in the morning, and we heard the results on the news, and the first thing we said was, ‘let’s move to Canada.’ ”

Sarah Woolley, a 38-year-old British paramedic, is describing the morning after the Brexit referendum in June 2016. She was living in Chelmsford, U.K., an hour’s drive from London, with her husband, Stuart, likewise a paramedic. They expected their house would devalue by £80,000 ($135,000) once Brexit takes effect in 2019, and they were both anxious about the economy and disturbed by rising racism.

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“It suddenly became okay to make racial comments about people in the street,” says Stuart, 33, “to say what would have, a few weeks before, been wholly unacceptable.”

I associate the country now with just sadness and bleak memories

Accepted to the provincial nominee program in British Columbia, the couple moved to Fraser Valley, B.C. Stuart moved last December, and Sarah followed in January. They have no children but do have two cats, which Sarah sent to Stuart on a flight by British Airways.