It suddenly occurred to me at the weekend that it was our 5 year anniversary! Not since we landed here, but since we first ever came to Nova Scotia on our reccie. It was this first week in May and the weather was absolutely glorious! As I look out of the window right now I see this year we’re not quite so lucky.
It really was a vital part of our emigration. You should think of it as one of the golden rules and no-one should leave the UK without one. On the other hand, don’t mistake a holiday for a reccie. They are absolutely not one and the same thing. Never think you can live somewhere you have fallen in love with on holiday. Not without some serious research anyway. We’ve all been places and convinced ourselves we could live there and have wanted to escape the dreary everyday conveyor belt of ordinary life. But it’s simply not realistic because unless you have a lottery win, the lifestyle you lead when you get there will be entirely the opposite of what you experienced on holiday.
So in a nutshell, if you’ve never been you should, and if you had a holiday and loved it, come back and experience some reality.
A few things you might want to think about building in to your itinerary are for example, spend an hour or two in a supermarket. Yes I know that sounds bizarre, but we did just that. We took a notebook and pen and went round the supermarket and priced up a ton of everyday products and food. I’m sure people wondered what on earth we were doing but it gave us a good insight into the cost of living.
Get a hire car and do some motoring at rush hour (not that it’s anything like the rush hours I remember). If you have been researching areas and know roughly where you would like to live, try doing the route to the city or Dartmouth depending on where you see yourself being employed. Calculate the cost of gas if your commute ends up being longer.
If you are coming over to also try and gain employment or have some interviews with prospective employers, spend some time before you come formatting your employment history and skills to appeal to North American Employers with our Automatic Résumé template. We will host your new Résumé and also supply a unique sharing URL you can utilise on many levels, for example on LinkedIn or send it directly to employers.
Also don’t be afraid to have a bunch printed and hand them out. We took ours in to all the banking and financial institutions. You never know when it may land on someone’s desk that needs you! If you can, arrange interviews ahead of time and don’t forget your suit!
Let us know what you have planned and if those of you that are already here have any good ideas for things to research, please feel free to comment below and share this blog with your emigration friends and community.
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Myself and my husband are trying to get there, but its so hard
( Nova Scotia would be our port of call and we would love to start a business ourselves. Maybe a B&B. We have always had our own business in the UK, but everything seems so complicating to get our dream to come true.. 
Hi Kaz, the rules of immigration to Canada are changing all the time, especially at the moment as they are trying to shake things up a bit to get rid of some backlogs and attract more people in.
Have you been to Nova Scotia at all yet? If you haven’t already, register up on our home page for our services and we will help you try and get your dream come true as much as we can.
You may have already looked at the site http://www.cic.gc.ca but if not, pay it a visit. It’s a good starting place for answering some of your eligibility questions.
Failing that, I can recommend a couple of very good Immigration Specialists who should be able to give you an idea of whether your quest is realistic or not!
Let me know if you have any immediate questions I may be able to answer for you
Bex