Airport Road!

After our holiday in the July the October break was looming and on an impulse I decided to take myself and my 2 girls back to Ontario. The girls were at that stage aged 7 and 14. Its not the first time I've taken the kids off without hubby. The last time we hit Spain at Easter and it was pouring with rain as we drove around to the sound of the 'Fun Boy 3' and 'Bananarama'! This time I contacted Great Escapes in Collingwood to see if the house we'd tried to book previously in July was free and it was! So with house booked, tickest booked and hire care booked we were off!
We flew on a practically empty Air transat flight from Newcastle to Toronto. This was because it was the last flight of the season. Coming in to land at Toronto I suddenly panicked......why had I brought the girls over 3,000 miles for a weeks holiday to Canada and in October when I could have popped over to Spain and been on the beach in the sunshine? Not only that but I'd never even been to Collingwood before! However this would be the least of my problems!
Tired after the flight we waited at passport control. I'd chosen the queue with the female officer as she appeared less intimidating......funny how appearances can be so deceptive!
Once we'd been called I gave her the passports and she asked if I had a letter from the children's father giving me permission to take them out of the UK...aargh! When I said I didn't she asked if I could prove they were my children. For a split second I thought of showing her my cesarean scar but found that my mouth had taken over and I was demanding that the girls tell her who I was!! I was so sure she was about to put us on the next flight home that I suggested she ring my husband in the UK. She told me to go through to the area behind the huge glass window (obviously this was so the audience of airline passengers could continue to watch my drama unfold!). The next officer was thankfully very sweet and explained how children disappear all the time. She said she would allow us in but that if we did not catch our return flight an alert would be put out for the children!! I was shaking like a leaf. We grabbed our bags and arrived at the car rental booth where the poor woman behind the counter asked how I was doing so I took that as my cue and poured out my heart to her!!!! She must have taken pity on us because there were squeals from the girls as we collected the car.... a real chick car, the type hubby and son would have hated!




Now all we had to do was find Airport Road..........

Trip 2 continued....

It was the meeting up of family that suddenly opened our eyes up to a way of life that we could only dream about in UK. We were to meet them at a beach on Lake Eerie. It sounded like an impossible feat as we had never been there before and the beach stretched for miles. I have no idea how but we literally arrived on the beach right beside them all!!! It was a Sunday in mid July and the beach was pretty full. My brother in law (BIL) turned up with chairs, sunshades, 2 huge ice boxes and of course a barbeque!! Whilst he cooked chicken legs I ignored the warm tuna sandwiches feebly packed in my bag!! The kids swam, played ball and dug in the sand until the sun started to go down. My BIL told us that when they had lived in Canada before moving over to USA this was a typical Sunday for them before work the next day. As the sun set everyone packed up to head home and not one piece of litter was left on that enormous stretch of beach much to the dismay of a few flocks of hungry seagulls!! Now isn't that the perfect way to start the working week?

We enjoyed the remainder of our holiday and all too soon it was time to return to the UK. I was surprised to find that my eldest daughter was determined to return one day to live in Canada and that she had decided she wanted to attend University in Toronto!! On that flight home I could never have imagined that this was just the start of a permanent move to Canada!

Trip 2

Arriving at Pearson Airport and then driving down the QEW was quite surreal. It was like we had never been away! Our rental house wasn't going to be available for a couple of nights so we were staying in the owners rental apartment in Niagara. I have to say that the area where the apartment was based did border on 'tacky' but we were too tired to really care. Our first task was to try and actually enter the apartment through what was obviously a busted front door....all our bashing of said door eventually brought a resident to our rescue!
The apartment was really nice but the following morning we woke to a real nightmare situation....the bedroom with me, hubby and the then 6 year old was swarming with flying ants!!! They were everywhere; in the beds, the luggage but worst of all my poor kids hair!! Slamming shut the bedroom door we headed to Niagara centre and an available mobile phone network (my mobile only worked in USA so we needed to be near the border!). After a quick call the owner moved us to another apartment and we fell into Perkins for pancakes and coffee!
The kids got to see the Falls, drag me onto the way too high Ferris wheel and managed to cost us a small fortune thanks to Niagara's ridiculous hike up of prices (they must see us tourists coming!!). Eventually we moved into the house and it really was clean and spacious. We spent the rest of the trip exploring the usual tourist traps...Canada Wonderland, Toronto zoo, Kitchener as well as meeting up with family who we hadn't seen for years.........

13 years!

Between 1993 and 2006 we often considered moving to Canada but it was never anything more than a thought. In order to work there we would both need to retake exams which was something neither ofnus felt prepared to do. We did consider other countries; Spain, USA, New Zealand but nothing came of them. New Zealand was simply too far away and the USA would always take second place to Canada.Spain, although a short flight away, had a language barrier and the culture didn't suit us. In fact Canada was the benchmark and no other country ever came close. Had we known that we would eventually be moving there we wouldn't have tortured ourselves so much!

In 2006 we booked a holiday to Ontario, our first since 1993! By now my sister in law had moved to the US so we needed a holiday rental property. I trawled the internet for days and finally found a fab 5 bed roomed house in a place called Collingwood. I emailed the owner and we immediately clicked...like we'd known each other for years. She was English , having emigrated a couple of years earlier. We booked the house and the flights for that July. Unfortunatley a few weeks later we got an email from the owner saying she would have to cancel the booking as the builders of her new home had let her down and they would need the renatl to live in for a few more months. By now we were emailing quite a bit and I completely understood that these things happen. The upshot was that we eventually found another rental near Niagara on the Lake....

Hello Ontario

Our first ever trip trip to Ontario took place in 1993. Me and hubby took a 3 year old and 15 month old to stay with his sister in Brantford....well I think that's the name of the town! As we came into land I remember looking out over this vast country that I knew nothing about and immediately loved it (lol!)....bizzare or what?
Ontario reminded me of the US but whilst it seemed to have the convenience of America it also had the greeness of England and wow was it clean!! We spent 3 weeks doing every tourist trip we could; Niagara, Toronto, Seaworld, London, Kitchener...you name it we did it!! But we also lived the Canadian way of life....barbeque in the garden, supermarket shopping, playing in the park....bliss! It was easy to envy my sister in law and when it was time to head home me and hubby both felt Canada would be a great place to live.
It wasn't meant to be though...we we're just settling in to marriage, kids, jobs, mortgage etc and moving over 3,000 miles away to start over just wasn't feasible. Little did we know then that it would be another 14 years before Canada would become feasible and that we would decide to emigrate!!

The start of the journey

Have decided to start this blog to document my move to Ontario, Canada. I suppose I'm looking ahead to the day when I'm a grey haired old granny and have to explain to my grandkids why me and the family moved from UK. I expect my memory will be shot by then so I'm relying on this blog to explain everything to them!
The 'journey' actually started more than 14 years ago although the immigration process began in May 2007. Over the next few weeks I will have to backtrack to present day otherwise this blog will make little sense......