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Moving to Canada?
jungleroomx
It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered User regular
It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered User regular
I know by now it's a cliche and trite thing to say that you're going to move out of the country because so-and-so gets elected, but I really feel like it's about time I considered it.
After a relationship I discovered later was horribly abusive, after Trump himself was elected and people that I desperately wanted to have one shred of decency in their souls showed themselves as the direct opposite, after spending 5 years in the military building up some sort of life and moral code based on a few choice things, now I just feel like an idiot who was delusional and everything I kind of used to bring myself out of the gutter was just a complete sham.
Being this naive has left a pit in my stomach and I really don't know what else to do. It also sucks because I know others are suffering worse and I find it difficult to talk about because it just seems... juvenile?
I have issues with guilt-by-association, that being I'm what you'd consider a "country boy" due to not really liking cities, enjoying simple things in nature, liking living in smaller towns and all that other schlock. I'm also a dyed-in-the-wool liberal and someone who believes firmly in what the US government could be. Integrity, the welcoming of everyone, all of that jazz that may or may not have existed nearly as much as I think it did in the past.
Now I just don't fit in anywhere. I look around and it seems like I just cannot connect to anyone, and sometimes I get stupidly hostile over shit that doesn't matter because of it. Because I can't talk to anyone about it without feeling guilty that it isn't as bad as what they're going through on many levels, but it's killing me on the inside. Hell, tonight the Patriots won (my team!) and I couldn't even be bothered to care because of the political associations and how it was making other people feel, imagined slight or not... it's gotten so bad that a sports game is causing people to lose hope.
Yes, my mental health is a concern to me. I'm being treated for anxiety and depression. Funnily enough, I always feel my best when I'm by myself and have complete control over what I do. Maybe that was the abuse, I dunno.
I've thought about moving out of the country as a result. I've talked about it a bit to others, but the reasoning is usually left vague or unspoken. There's something inside me that's calling me up north and it's very, very strong.
Maybe I'll get up there and find out that wasn't the problem, where my location is is only a small part of the issue.
After a relationship I discovered later was horribly abusive, after Trump himself was elected and people that I desperately wanted to have one shred of decency in their souls showed themselves as the direct opposite, after spending 5 years in the military building up some sort of life and moral code based on a few choice things, now I just feel like an idiot who was delusional and everything I kind of used to bring myself out of the gutter was just a complete sham.
Being this naive has left a pit in my stomach and I really don't know what else to do. It also sucks because I know others are suffering worse and I find it difficult to talk about because it just seems... juvenile?
I have issues with guilt-by-association, that being I'm what you'd consider a "country boy" due to not really liking cities, enjoying simple things in nature, liking living in smaller towns and all that other schlock. I'm also a dyed-in-the-wool liberal and someone who believes firmly in what the US government could be. Integrity, the welcoming of everyone, all of that jazz that may or may not have existed nearly as much as I think it did in the past.
Now I just don't fit in anywhere. I look around and it seems like I just cannot connect to anyone, and sometimes I get stupidly hostile over shit that doesn't matter because of it. Because I can't talk to anyone about it without feeling guilty that it isn't as bad as what they're going through on many levels, but it's killing me on the inside. Hell, tonight the Patriots won (my team!) and I couldn't even be bothered to care because of the political associations and how it was making other people feel, imagined slight or not... it's gotten so bad that a sports game is causing people to lose hope.
Yes, my mental health is a concern to me. I'm being treated for anxiety and depression. Funnily enough, I always feel my best when I'm by myself and have complete control over what I do. Maybe that was the abuse, I dunno.
I've thought about moving out of the country as a result. I've talked about it a bit to others, but the reasoning is usually left vague or unspoken. There's something inside me that's calling me up north and it's very, very strong.
Maybe I'll get up there and find out that wasn't the problem, where my location is is only a small part of the issue.
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Back to logistics which I think your kind of asking for, I don't want to damper too much on wanting to come to Canda but it's not as easy as people like to think it is. It's a running "joke" every election time, people will just come and stay here but Canada like any county has Visas/Immigration rules. Visiting short term, is very easy. Going to school up here is very easy. Moving permanently is another story. This came up in a December thread too. Stealing a quote from that thread.
Does any of that apply?
I do have a bach degree and well, not a millionaire and no family.
As for jobs, I haven't begun to look outside of seeing what's available in IT/networking.
I don't think it's a terrible reason to move. But I also think you should get a bit farther along in your treatment before you make a move like this. Things like treatment and therapy are best approached from as stable a position as possible. While I know you're itching to get out, I would urge you to stay as long as you think you can because not only is moving a huge stressor at the best of times, but having to find entirely new practitioners as you're finally working things out is destabilizing. For me at least has it has made things a lot worse over the years, and having to go through that process of finding someone new has halted or even reversed progress on a number of occasions.
It's just a thought, but if you aren't far enough along to be able to say with more certainty that location is your problem, especially considering the other issues you're working with at the moment, in my opinion it's probably not a good time to move for it.
http://www.cic.gc.ca/ctc-vac/getting-started.asp
Also you'll want to consider which region you want to move to. Canada is very different from coast to coast. BC is absolutely beautiful, but expensive. Northwestern Ontario has its fair share of small towns and abundant nature, but job prospects are poor. There are pros and cons to every province depending on what you're looking for.
If it's within your means, perhaps take some extended vacations up here (2+ weeks) and just get a feel for different places before going all in on trying to immigrate.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
Yellowknife/NT is preferred. I've looked up the cost of living and everything else, and I'm pretty sure with a decent salary I'd be alright with my VA as added income.
This is a great point and post.
I don't know if I'm particularly scared... I mean, I *am*, but it's less that and more... disappointed? Let down? I don't know. It's kind of like getting your soul ripped out and being embarrassed you were this naive to begin with. Everything I associate with is the same thing that a lot of horrible people associate with. I know I shouldn't judge myself too harshly or even really care about that but in reality, that's a lot easier said than done.
My mental health care is bare bones VA 30 minute talk sessions with a possible pill change at the end. I don't really have anything you could describe as a stable routine with a practitioner. I've seen 3 different therapists in the last 2 years because they're overburdened and that's just kind of how it is.
There are quiet parts of liberal states, and suburbs of liberal cities, that might be easier to transition to than to try to immigrate. Also, if you want to serve the people who are put more at risk by our country's current climate, being white and male and liberal, having your convictions, and voting does a great deal. Its also a bit of a myth that racism doesn't exist in canada, it just sort of plays out differently.
As a person who this election affects a great deal, who lives in a redstate but a hippy town, and has a reasonably solid and pursuable connection to canada (my current jobs office is canadian), and has anxiety thats getting treated, I understand the inclination. Moving up there is just a sort of escapism that I think will make you feel worse when you haven't actually changed much, but went through a whole lot of hoops to do it. I think that location can make a huge difference, but I think there are a lot of opportunities in the states to change your pace.
Very very very few people see the same person for therapy as they do for prescription maintenance.
Really, take the time now if you can, in whatever way you can, to take care of your mental health properly before you make sweeping changes. You have a much better chance of those changes being the right changes if you're making them from as healthy a place as possible.
The only coverage I have/can afford right now is VA coverage because of the amount of bills I'm having to take care of due to the divorce.
And yeah, I found out later that not buying a new set of clothes out of financial guilt because the other person was spending all the money and blaming me... well that was bad.
$2200 phone bill, cable bill in collections, payday loan in collections (that I had to take out to keep our electricity on), etc.
I know my mental health is important but between that and commuting a total of 3 hours a day it's nearly impossible until I settle in Lincoln.
I'm in a red state but a college town. It's a decent burg and I'm looking to move out of the folks place in a month or so, so maybe some clarity will come when I've removed the whole "I'm a failure living with my parents" gets resolved.
Well, I'll be fine once I get rid of the extraneous stuff and put the divorce behind me.
And going back to the questions I quoted, a bachelor degree isn't really considered an "expert in the field" anymore. Like the US, it's basically required now for any kind of position. Because of that, you can't just come yourself. I'm going to second Tube's advice. Look for jobs and hope someone is going to hire you.
Be warned too, the further north you go (and Yellowknife/NT is pretty far north) the less population there is. The less population, the less jobs. You have the double whammy of not being Canadian. Yellowknife is only about 20,000 people. The entirety of the NWT is about 45,000. It is SMALL.
I can't hold any firearm bigger than a small pistol steady because my right shoulder is completely messed up.
I can give some info here, I lived 4 years in Yellowknife, there are pros and cons. Be ready to know most of the entire city within a year ( or at the very least, be ready for an entire city to know you/of you) Gossip is currency there to a terrible degree.
The cold, if you have not been thru this level of cold, you aren't prepared. mid winter it can hit -60 to -70 before the wind chill, and during the worst parts of said winter, you will get at most 30 minutes of sunlight a day, it will peep over the horizon for a sliver then vanish again.
Costs you have already looked into so that sounds like won't be much of a surprise ( but they are a lot higher up there).
Some bonuses tho, The Northern Lights are amazing every , single, time, you cannot get tired of seeing them, they are jawdropping af.
The summers are bonkers, whereas you barely got to see the sun during the hellscape that is winter, it makes up for it come summer, it will just circle the sky and look the same whether it's noon or midnight.
Curious, is there specific people/jobs you are after in NT? Northern B.C. would offer a lot of the similar climate without such extreme ends.
friends from school who wound up in China or South Korea in tiny little towns.
Unfortunately actually immigrating to a country is usually a matter of masters (degree), marriage, or money.
There's a specific way of living I'm after.
That is, 12 hours to the nearest city.
I ask because Canada is really big, really spread out, and I've seen estimates that between 2/3 and 3/4 of the Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the Canada-US border, so you may not need to go quite as far as Yellowknife to enjoy a life in the great "out there".
100K+ generally.
The idea of being that isolated is p tempting. I'm a strange individual.
Really poor job market.
Alberta is the other one that meets some of your criteria, though They're basically the equivelant of the deep south in terms of the political spectrum.
Yellowknife might make you insane, it's not a big city, but word travels so fast, because those 20kish people are crammed into about 8 blocks.
Unsure how markets are there nowadays, but maybe look into Fort Providence or Hay River, both about 2-3 hours from Yellowknife, but still on the ferry truck routes so can still get living supplies.
NAFTA provides something of a backdoor if you qualify - and the right bachelors can do that - http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/tools/temp/work/international/nafta.asp
You still need a job offer; it is intended for temporary work and not immigration... but the increments are 3 years at a time and can let you at least get a feel for the place without having to go through the much longer process. Your employer can also skip the LMIA and the process is easier and faster, thus making it easier to find that job
Each province accepts a number of 'eh, whatever' Permanent Residents per year. If you don't care about having the right to vote, this is probably the route of least resistance.
Like @Tube says, if you're serious about this, start looking for a employers in Canada right now and contact them about sponsoring you. Alberta used to be a very good bet, but the economy there has tanked and not yet recovered, so I have to imagine your best bet is looking into Ontario or Quebec.
It is not as impossible as people were making it sound, but it isn't something to jump at reflexively and I would add my voice of caution to those earlier in the thread: moving here will only add extra complications & frustration to your life in the short term. If what you want/need right now is stability & peace, you'll not find it while dashing through the gauntlet of landing permanent residency.
Long term... how do you like the winter? Because winters here are very long, and can be very harsh. Politics of different flavors wax & wane, but every year you can safely bet on having 3~ months of summer and 9~ months of bitter cold. Come November through February, unless you're living on Vancouver Island, you will probably have to shovel your driveway every single day (if you have a driveway) first thing in the morning to get to work. Sometimes this extends into March, sometimes not.
Canadians are not more polite than Americans. No, I'm not just saying that. You won't escape rudeness, racism or sexism by moving north.
Costs of living here are higher than they are in most of the U.S. Not by a lot, but enough that I know snowbirds who are annoyed by it.
Depending on which area of America you're moving from, Canada may seem a bit barren & a bit boring. There is no Canadian analogue to NYC or Los Angeles or San Diego or Houston, etc. The Canadian prairies are not as geologically interesting as the American west. Personally I enjoy the relative quiet, but the culture shock can be extraordinary (several of my family members tried for a long time to settle on a place to live up here, and just couldn't. Things were just too tame for them. And they were from fucking Arkansas).
So, just think about this & how likely you are to be able to adjust, if/while you look for a sponsor, because I'll tell you right now: while getting your PR card is not the easiest thing in the world, the real hard part about moving up here ain't the procedural stuff. The last thing you want to be is one of the many Americans who pours so much time & energy into getting their residency card, putting a down payment on a home, getting a job... and then finding that you now wish you were back home because you didn't think the weather was going to be this bad or how isolating it is to be separated from your traditional culture, old friends, familiar topography, etc.
So, I live in YK right now, and I've been telling Jungle a bit about it in D&D [chat], and I don't want to start an argument, but, I mean, the shortest day of the year is the winter solstice on the 21st and you get at least 4 hours of light. We're not that far north. We do get 24 hours of light from about late June to mid August, though.
The coldest it's been since I moved here was -52 C (-61F) for a day, and that's happened twice. Today it's -16C. Been a very mild winter, to be sure. Usually we hit -30 and stay below it from about December to February. Been way warmer this year.
I think YK may be quite a bit larger than it was when you were here - I don't feel any more connected to my neighbours than I did in Calgary, there isn't really any more gossiping than any where else I've lived about people. It's pretty easy to be isolated here, though, just because there aren't the varied community groups that normally form in cities.
It's 22,000 people, hardly grows (Like, <1% per year, I think), people come and go.
The danger to moving here is nobody just sort of tolerates, or kinda likes YK. You either love the fuck out of it, or hate it with the passion of a thousand suns. It's the end of the road, isolated, and sometimes very, very cold. It's also dry, a climate similar to Calgary's, which works for me, but some people can't stand. The nearest large city is Edmonton, a 16 hour drive away. If you do try to drive out of the city, there is nothing for hundreds of kilometers but forest.
I love it here, though, despite any of that. I have zero regrets about coming here. It's a great town if you can find your place in it.
That's awesome if so, was really the main complaint I had living up there besides the cold.
So, don't believe this post about Alberta... It is one of my favourite parts of the country, and I have lived in various parts. Edmonton can be kind of terrible, but Calgary is a pretty awesome city. That said, you seem to have no interest in living near a city.
You may want to visit Yellowknife before deciding to relocate there. Personally, I think it is a shithole, but I love large cities... So take that as you will. However, the weather, the mosquitoes and the screwed up day/night cycle are something you need to experience before settling there. On paper it can all seem quite romantic, but it can be very taxing to deal with. This is especially important if you already have mental health issues, as the constant sunlight or dark can really screw with your head. Additionally, you may have issues finding work in the IT sector there.
It really sounds like you have a lot of personal issues that you need to work through beforehand. Your life sounds incredibly unstable at this point, and you may want to sort that out before relocating in such a dramatic fashion. Canada isn't the land of milk and honey, we have our own issues, and our own culture. As The Ender said, we are not all polite and happy, that is a stereotype.
It's also worth flagging that many of the remote and/or northern areas of Canada have very limited access to mental health supports. We're not talking "drive an hour to the big city" limited either. This is more "there is one mental health professional who flies into the area for one week of the year" limited. If your mental health is one of the reasons you are considering immigrating, it's definitely worth taking the time to make sure a community that you are moving to will have adequate supports to help you out. For what it's worth (coming from a stranger on the internet), I would echo comments from others that you should focus on your health first and your location second.
Just sayin'.
I haven't had to make use of any mental health facilities here in YK, but the rest of it has been pretty good. Hospital is good, and is getting a huge expansion as we speak. Can't find a GP that stays, but I could never find a GP in Calgary, either, so that's not unusual. I work in the IT sector up here, for the big telecom. It's hard to find staff that are a) competent and b) want to (or willing to) live in Yellowknife. So if you're both, you'd probably do okay. Just make sure you have a line on a job before you move up here. It's expensive as helllllll to live up here and you don't want to try to live on savings when a cheap shithole apartment is still going to cost $1200 or $1300 a month.
And I'm not sure how many times I have to say, at no point is YK just constant darkness. The shortest day is still 5+ hours of daylight.
Constant is an exaggeration, but making 5 hours (~2 of which is twilight) sound like a lot is misleading. I have experienced it (although for a short time) and found it disorientating. But then again, it doesn't have the same impact on everyone.
'cause NZ seems to fill most of your criteria, and seems to be a lot easier to immigrate to than Canada.
Auckland would be the main hub for IT jobs, and while there's still a lot of nature around here, other parts are a lot more nature-centric.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
we had fuck all mosquitoes last year, I think I got bit.. once.. not sure what will happen this year though.