So, we’ve started looking at moving to Canada again. Where once we had a simple plan*, we now have a diffuse vague notion with a definitive desired endpoint**. The thing is complicated by the fact we would like to end up near Kathryn’s family, but Kathryn’s family are near BC, and BC is expensive.
On the other hand, being anywhere in Canada means that visiting Kathryn’s family becomes much cheaper, wherever we land up (well, I suppose, if we went to very far northern bits of Nunavut or the Yukon it might feasibly still be similarly expensive, I’ve no idea, but they’re kinda more remote than we were thinking).
The thing is also complicated by the fact we’ve looked at a lot of Canadian towns and been unimpressed by the architecture***. I think something I need to get used to is that I’m not going to be seeing Tudor timber frame buildings on shopping streets anymore. And that stone and brick architecture is something that I’m just not going to be looking at so much. But there are things I think are attractive that you can do with timber frame buildings, and a lot of the ones we’ve seen have just been butt-ugly****. Or dull.
Obviously we’re not going to rock up and buy a house. That would be dumb. But since I’ll be signing my life away for indentured servitude in a deal to get money to move over there, we want to land up somewhere we’ll like, and since it’s going to be probably for 3 years (otherwise we have to pay back the forgivable loan) then it better be somewhere where we can start putting down some roots.
Having been treated to the oldness of Toronto when I visited (which has some gorgeous neighbourhoods) and having seen Vancouver, trying to find somewhere which fits with my European sensibilities*** and Kathryn’s Craftsman style desires, and fits our feeble income, is proving to be challenging.
Indeed, our selection criteria for places to consider is basically:
– Has a hospital with some sort of Emergency Department.
– Has something cultural going on such that we can feed our love of culture.
– Has not hideous property prices.
– Is lesbian friendly.
– Is fairly rural.
– Is not hideously far from a decent size city (to get our fix of museums and theatre occasionally).
– Looks pretty.
Opens up a lot of the country, then excludes a fair swathe of it as well. We’ve basically looked at random small towns the country over…. Still poking at it is fun :)
* Move to Vancouver, BC.
** Move to Canada, we’d like to be somewhere fairly rural.
*** And I realise this is wholly cultural, and because of where I’ve been brought up.
**** Which is not to say that there aren’t pretty houses, but the areas we’ve randomly looked at have either been utterly gorgeous and completely impossibly remote (with no hope of employment) or butt-ugly boxes.
