We had been living in England for five years. My husband was from India. I grew up in Kenya. How were we just going to move out of our old lives and into new ones again? I had just started my new job and I had not even completed my probation period. We had been talking about having a baby soon and would it have to be postponed?

However, we had been waiting for our resident rights to come through for twenty two months. We discussed it at length all through the night and decided to move to Canada!

We first had to determine where in Canada, we were going to live. My brother lives in Vancouver, and it would be nice to go to a city where we had some family rather than none at all. We looked up house prices on the internet and Vancouver was very expensive but we still decided to go there. We had heard from friends and family that Toronto on the East Coast would be too much like London and we really wanted a less hectic lifestyle. We needed to arrange for an apartment to stay, and do some research into the job market. We were quite confident of finding employment because we had worked in the UK for almost four years.

All in all though, it was a daunting prospect- adjusting to a new environment after being so familiar with everything in England.

We need to pack,’ my husband said. How much clutter had we accumulated over the years? Two words- a lot! Thank goodness we were renting our flat and the contract was ending. We did not have the added hassle of trying to sell a house.

Since we were going to just leave the country and resign from our jobs, we decided to take a five month holiday! We were going traveling to Kenya and India. So we handed in our notices, informed our service and utility providers of the move, informed our banks of the temporary change in our address, shipped our worldly belongings to India (to my husbands’ home) and then we announced the move to our friends. To say they were surprised would be an understatement!

I found out I was pregnant when we got to India! There followed doubts and anxiety about me finding work, not getting maternity benefits, worries on how were we going to manage with a baby in a new country. My husband kept focusing on how things would work out for us.

Whilst in India, we filled out our UK tax returns forms and received our tax refunds for the year. It was a nice sum of extra money- unexpected but welcome. We also needed to buy health insurance before we traveled to cover us for three months before we could claim health care benefits in British Columbia.

My brother arranged to rent out an apartment for us in Vancouver. It was a lovely two bedroom place on the fifteenth floor and from the balcony we had a lovely view of the mountains in the distance.

I was four months pregnant when we landed at Vancouver airport. We walked out and took deep breaths of the clear, fresh air! The other thought that hit us was there was so much space! We were so used to the cramped look of London that Vancouver seemed huge!

The first thing we did was to get our Social Insurance Numbers. We then registered with employment agencies, in my case, to get temporary work and in my husband’s to get full time work.

I was fortunate to find work within a week and the project was extended to my due date. I liked the company I was working for as it had a relaxed atmosphere. My husband went to a job finding club, which was a great experience because it helped him prepare a resume (no longer a curriculum vitae!) and helped him make a successful career transition into Human Resource (HR) Management from Hotel Management. He was promoted to HR Manager within five months.

My husband could drive on his UK license for the first three months and within that time he studied for the Knowledge test and then later got his full driving license. So we bought a car, and we bought a lovely house in Greater Vancouver, with a nice garden.
We are settling into our new lives, have made so many new friends. I am planning on working next year after my son is a year old.

Would we do it again? Now that I am here and have seen the lifestyle here- the answer is YES!