We flew from Manchester Airport to Calgary via Toronto. The
flights were fairly uneventful. The only thing to comment on really was that as
we were entering Canada in Toronto we had to clear Customs and immigration
there. This meant that we had to queue for 30 minutes for Passport control and
then wait a while longer for our luggage which we had to take through customs
and then put on another conveyor belt for the connection. While in practice we
did all this with time to spare as we only had a short time window to do all
this in (1hr 50 minutes) we were a little nervous about it, hoping that
everything would go smoothly. Having said that, as it was a recognised
connection, in theory they 'should' have held the flight if there had been a
problem. Jayne Wisdom from Canilink met us at Calgary airport and took us to Steve's sister's house (who was away with the rest of the family at a soccer tournament that both of the children's teams were playing at in Edmonton) which was to be our base for the next fortnight. We stayed up as late as we could to try to get used to the 7 hour time difference and went to bed around 10:00pm (after taking herbal sleeping tablets to help us sleep through).
Saturday 5th June: Back To Top
We woke up at 7am feeling really please with ourselves for sleeping so well (effectively to 2pm). Jayne picked us up at 9.45am to go and collect our car. We also had to collect another English couple who were out for 1 week to try and get a job lined up as they wanted to emigrate via the PNP system. They were from the North West like us but had come in on a different flight.
Once that was done we headed off to TD bank to re activate our savings account and put in the money from our car-boot sale a few weeks previously. We had opened a saving account using the last of our money on a previous trip but as it had been dormant since then when we had tried to put some money in a few months ago we had discovered it had been marked as inactive. We'd tried to re-open it from the UK without success. The way around this is to go on-line regularly and check the balance. If we don't do this for 6 months it will again be marked inactive.
In the afternoon we headed off to look at new show homes in the Chaparral area of town. The houses were
gorgeous and we fell in love with one of the designs
(called Infusion by Jayman) and
if our application was passed the medical stages then we would have been tempted
to initiate picking out a plot of land and designing the home ready for us to
move into when we landed. But unfortunately we could only do a fact finding tour and look at
what you get for your money over here and quite frankly it is much more for your
pounds without a doubt!!!!Sunday 6th June: Back To Top
Today we went to the South Centre shopping mall (off MacLeod and Anderson) and looked around. We wanted to get an idea about the cost of furniture to help us decide if we should ship our stuff out or we should buy new. We made a rough inventory of the things we would need in terms of pieces of furniture by looking around Steve's sister's house and then headed off to get an idea.
We started at Sears and The Bay and made a note of an average price of the beds / white goods etc.. We then had a look around the other shops and stopped for lunch at the food-court. We were still not feeling 100% after the flights and the change in altitude / atmosphere (we had forgotten how dry it is and this takes a few days of headaches and painful nostrils until you get used to it) but were drinking plenty of water to try to overcome this.
In the afternoon we braved the rain to go to The Brick (further north on MacLeod) to compare furniture prices. Things here were generally cheaper (and probably the quality a little less too but still adequate). We came away with the impression that we would be much more likely to be able to do a 'whole house supper deal' type thing with The Brick and get a decent discount.
In summary we estimated that if we were to buy EVERYTHING we would need for a 3 bedroom house in Calgary it would cost is about CAD20,000 if we shopped at Sears and the BAY but if we were careful and shopped around this figure would be much reduced (we discovered later that Canilink would be able to supply us with a discount voucher for The Brick which would probably allow a further saving).
Off-setting this against the cost of shipping all our stuff out, plus the money we should be able to make selling our things in the UK (which we recognise would not be much) and the less tangible issue of starting again with OUR new furniture around us as we start a new life rather than a combination of furniture that has come from our separate histories, our inclination is to only ship out clothes, crockery, cutlery, pots & pans and glassware (as we spent a large amount of cash on good quality products a couple of years ago), sports equipment (Skiing, Climbing and Camping equipment) and the PC (which has a dual voltage power supply so will work in Canada if we get the right cable).
Monday 7th June: Back To Top
We started the day by driving North to Cochrane, we wanted to see how far out it is and if it was too isolated. Our impression was that it was a bit far out for us to be able to settle there, perhaps in a few years when there is a decent mall it would be OK but not for now.
In the afternoon we visited a new community called Cranston. We went to several show homes near the start of the community and then headed further into the community as there were some more there. Here we came across another Jayman house and spent probably an hour chatting to Debi the sales rep there (having told them we already had a Realtor arranged). We learned a lot about the community. Within about 50 feet of the show home there was the start of the Trans Canadian walkway ... along the ridge of the Bow River Valley.
As the community expands it will grow along the ridge so that we will be able to buy a lot in a year or so's time and still be able to be close to the ridge with the view across the Bow river and with the Rockies in the background. Beautiful. Some people later in our trip commented that this community would probably grow to be very big in future. While we accept this is true we do not see it as an issue. One problem with some of the other communities is that they have a 'main drag' down which all the cars go until they peel off to the area of the community they are looking for. This means that there is high volumes of traffic through the centre. In Cranston we were told (and checked it out on the map) that they are planning several entrances, not only the one which currently exists (off the Marquis of Lorne trail) but also entrances off the Deerfoot moving south. This means that the congestion that is seen (or at least envisaged by us) in other communities should not materialise in Cranston.
Tuesday 8th June: Back To Top
This morning we spent a couple of hours with Ian and Jayne and they gave us some ideas about how we could best utilise our research time here .They also pointed out the pit falls of a new build when you first land as well as the time it takes to get it all sorted (about 9 months). They confirmed that Jayman are a good quality builder but that there were also others of the same standard that we should look at. When we asked what are the cheapest cars to insure they told us to look at the Cavalier (which we had hired) or the Dodge Caravan. However we didn't get round to going to look at cars on this trip.
In the afternoon we went back to look at the Jayman house (Infusion) in Chapperal
Wednesday 9th June: Back To Top
