Clearing out the loft...and other things

We now had to start a programme of getting the house ready to sell. Outside had just been painted by me before our visit to NS. Rachel started on the inside and I started on tidying the garden and loft.

Ebay became our friend again and vast quantities of my old football programmes have now gone, Rachels albums from the 1980s have all been bought (The Cult, The Damned, The Cramps, Sex Pistols, Soft Cell, Siouxie and the Banshees, Fuzzbox, The Mission, The Pogues) have all gone to a better home. No loss there then I can hear you say.

2 bikes have gone, trampoline has gone, Disney dressing up costumes gone, tap shoes gone.

I have now started work on replacing all the flooring in the house, new taps in toilets and kitchen. Nobody said it was going to be easy !!!!!

Our plan is to put the house up for sale just after Christmas and then keep our fingers crossed. However, if it hasn't sold by summer we will still be going and we will rent it out.

Trip to Nova Scotia August 2010

During our visit on this occasion we stayed at the Holiday Inn In Truro which was quite good quality. A nice swimming pool, fridge, microwave in room. Large TV and living area with sofa and desk and chairs etc.

We were desperate to meet our friends the Shepherds and find out what they had been up to since they arrived back in May. Our Hire Car suffered a burst tyre but after getting the CAA to come out and swap to a space saver tyre we went to visit them. I had to swap the Hire Car and the friendly man at the Budget Car Rental office let us choose a new car which was a Jeep Cherokee......a great car but don't bother hiring one as it GUZZLES gas !!!!

The new Hire Car -------------->

We all went for a drive along the north coast of the Minas Basin through Masstown, Bass River, Portapique and finally Five Islands which was beautiful. We missed out on Claire's favourite cheese factory and will have to save that for another time.

We also had a nice little walk in the seering heat of late August. We went to Victoria Square in the Centre of Truro (over the road from the Atlantic Superstore)



















On Saturday we visited Niiki and Andy and Jack and Gracie (remember them from the New Forest?) at their new house outside Stewiacke. Loved their house and we had a great BBQ, a few beers and a chin wag about Canada.

We also had a visit to Melmerby Beach on a really hot day...a really nice beach with very few people on it.

We also enjoyed the last day of the open air pool at Victoria Park. 28th August. It seemed a bit early closing seeing as we were in the middle of a heatwave.

We decided to look at a couple of houses which were for sale next to each other on East Mountain Road near Truro. Great houses in a great location. We will see if they are still for sale next May.

We had some great evenings with Rob and Claire and also another day out at a beach at Caribou Provincial Park........yet another deserted beach on a hot day.

We were very sad to leave Nova Scotia as it now had begun to feel like home.

Landing 26th August !!!!!!!!

We set off to Heathrow at 4am on Thursday 26th August 2010 in torrential rain and arrived at Terminal 3 at arounf 6.30am where we had booked a meet and greet for our car (Wish we had known about these on previous flights....a fantastic service)



Decided that we would take some duty free over for a party (It was Rachel's Birthday the following day). Rachel thought there was an 'and' between '1 Litres of Spirits' or '1.5 Litres of wine' and so we ended up with some 'extra' duty free !!



The flight, AC861, was fairly uneventful, the movies to choose from were rubbish and the food average but we landed in Halifax on time but at the same time as another plane which increased the queue at the immigration desk somewhat.









The initial immigration officer was very nice and pointed us all to the immigration office close by where we queued again for about 30 mins before being called forward to complete the landing process. We were asked where we wanted our Permanent Resident Cards posting to and whether we had more than $10, 000 cash on us. We were given a 'Welcome to Canada' Booklet .....but disappointingly no flag or hat !!



We were now Permanent Residents of Canada !!!!



We went to the Rental car section and upgraded to an SUV at a really good rate with Budget (Hyundai Sante Fe) and set off to the Super 8 Motel in Truro.

England draw, We win !!

June 18th It had been a bad day all round. A long work day, some bad family news and then I sat and watched England play probably their worst ever game of football in drawing against Algeria in the World Cup.

I normally check my emails every day when I come in from work but on this day I had not bothered. I watched the game and thought an early night was in order....half way up the stairs I thought I would check my emails and logged on .......in amongst the numerous phishing emails encouraging me to log on to a bank account (that I don't actually have) I saw an email from CIC in London. My heart pounded, immediately thinking of what bad news it might contain.

I opened the email and it said:

Dear Mr Wheeldon,

Your application has reached the final stage of processing. Please follow the instructions in the attached letter carefully. Your file number is indicated in the subject line of this email. It is a 'B' followed by 9 digits.

Unless your passport or the passport of one of your accompanying family members (if any) expires on an earlier date, your permanent resident visa(s) will all expire on 15th April 2011.

I knew straight away that this was the good news we had been waiting for.

I sent 4 of these wonderful documents by special delivery the next day to London and they duly arrived back on 10th July with the shiny Canadian Immigrant Visas inside.

Our next step would be to land in Canada before 15th April 2011 and we spent many hours discussing when would be best. August, October or March appeared to be the best options given work commitments and annual leave etc

Ideally we wanted to go in August 2010 as our best friends the Shepherds had been there for 3 months and we wanted to see them and also so we could taste the warm weather that Nova Scotia had to offer. The problem with this option was the ridiculous prices of flights, nearly £3000 with AirCanada and Canadian Affair had all flights booked up.

We considered flying out to Boston and then driving round to Nova Scotia which would have meant 'landing' at the New Brunswick - Maine border at Houlton which wouldn't have been ideal. Then as a result of looking at flights to Boston we stumbled on the fact that AirCanada offer most flights to the US a lot cheaper than flights to Canada and so I contacted AirCanada to see if it was possible to have a stopover in Halifax on way to Boston.

A nice lady at AirCanada suggested we look at booking a multi flight option London - Halifax - Boston - London. We did this and the prices were considerably cheaper than direct flights to Halifax.

We booked the flights, together with hire car, Boston Hilton Hotel for 2 nights, 1 night at the Super 8 Motel in Truro and 6 nights at the Holiday Inn in Truro.

Our landing date would be 26th August 2010.

Houston...we have a problem.....

Excitedly we booked in at the Nottingham DMP (Designated Medical Practitioner) for our immigration medicals. Our appointment was 15th April 2010. Elly had to be medically examined as well even though she wasn't coming to Canada as she was my dependent child........rules are rules.
The medicals were as expected, height and weight measured, urine and blood tests, examination, questionnaire about our medical history, blood pressure and heart check followed by a chest x ray at a local private hospital. All went well until the GP discovered a heart murmur on Rachel which he said would need further investigation. Don't be worried he said !!!!!!!! It was at that exact moment we started worrying.

We wanted the answer straight away but found that even paying privately meant a wait of several weeks. Rachel had an echocardiogram which revealed some narrowing in her aortic valve but this could be monitored every couple of years but might eventually need some surgery....lets hope not !

Anyway after about 4 weeks of anguish our medical results were sent off to Canadian Immigration and our fingers were firmly crossed hoping that we would not be classified as a heavy burden on the Canadian Healthcare System.

Nomination Received ..........

After a couple of months of waiting and worrying about our application we got a wonderful email from Nova Scotia Immigration saying that we had been nominated by the Province to emigrate and that we should now submit our PR application to London within the next 6 months.

This was the great news we had hoped for and we of course were desperate to put everything together straight away but we realised there was no rush as I couldn't retire from the police until the summer of 2011. If we got the timing right we might even avoid having to pop across to Canada to 'land' before I actually retired. The worry with that was the chance that the rules concerning PR applications might change at the drop of a hat.....as they had done several times in the last few years.

We let Christmas 2009 come and go before submitting the next application pack to London. This bundle of papers was a lot smaller than the one we had posted to Halifax but just as important.

<-----Canadian High Commission , Grosvenor Street, London

The first news we received about our application was an email which the fact that we had to include Ellie in the application and have her medically examined even though she wasn't moving to Canada with us. Not too much of a problem, more forms, more photos but at least would give her the option of moving out to Canada later if she wanted.

The next news we had was our medical requests which arrived in late March 2010. We were given 45 days to have the medicals done and move to the next stage of the process. We left it a few weeks before booking in to the DMP (Designated Medical Practitioner) in Nottingham.

The date of the medicals was set for 15th April 2010.

Putting together our application

We returned to the UK after a great trip to Nova Scotia and knew that we had to continue and apply for permanent residence visas. We were confident that we would receive the Letter of Identification from Corda in due course and so we started collecting together all the paperwork required for the initial application to Nova Scotia Immigration in Halifax.
Finally after several weeks of rooting round in the loft, asking HR at work for proof of what I'd been doing for the last 20 years etc, we had all the necessary paperwork (127 sheets of A4 !!!) and we posted off everything on July 27th 2009. The letter of Identification had been sent directly to Halifax from Corda to await our application.

BE................ That is wwww.britishexpats.com now became a big part of our lives and provided us with loads of useful information and a few laughs along the way. It also allows you to help others who might be thinking about starting out down the same route. We had become members a couple of years before, but now we had applied all the things people were saying became that much more important.

A day out with the Mounties

Whilst in Antigonish I had arranged a day out

with Staff Sergeant Paddy McNeil from the local RCMP station.

What a welcome he gave me !! I met everybody at the station before dashing off with him to the Dr John Hugh Gillis High School to watch a mock fatal traffic accident.

All Grade 12 students and staff of the witness a mock car crash in the parking lot of the school.
The mock crash was presented by MADD (Mothers Against Drink Drivers) Canada, the Antigonish Detachment of the RCMP, the Antigonish Fire Department and Emergency Health Officials to show the consequences of drunk driving. I met with lots of local people including the school vicar.

Later we visited Paddy's house and he showed me lots of First Nation art that he had collected whilst serving in more northerly climates in Newfoundland and Labrador. He had a Timber Wolf Fur on one wall which was very impressive. Paddy also gave me some of wine to taste later that evening !!

The very low numbers of crimes recorded and the even lower number of prisoners arrested was very reassuring to see.

All in all it was a great day out with some nice people. I left with the wine and a carrier bag of Royal Canadian Mounted Police memorabilia.

Whilst up that end of Nova Scotia we popped up to the Canso Causeway and dipped our toes into Cape Breton, although in actual fact we didn't go too far and we only stopped for a coffee in Port Hawkesbury before returning to Antigonish.

Before heading home we caught up with Rob and Claire again in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia - alongside the Bluenose II a replica of the famous ship that appears of coins in Canada.

Hello is that the Canadian Coastguard?

The big attraction of staying at South Side Harbour was the proximity to the sea and the things that float that were at the house.

Rachel and Claire found out that they were potential medallists for London 2012 (No not kayaking....wine drinking !)

One day Rob and I rigged up the yacht and decided to put our extensive training and my 8 years in the Royal Navy to the test.

As you can see it was flat calm or at least it was when we started out. After gaining some confidence and looking like real sailors by spinning round the island and stopping the yacht, we decided it was time to take the kids out for a sail.

They loved it and we started to pick up speed as the wind picked up. We then thought we would sail along the coast and out of view of the ladies onshore. (This would turn out to be our first mistake) The wind picked up some more and the sails started to strain and we really were ripping along very quickly.

Time always goes quickly when you are enjoying yourself and we had forgotten we had been out of view of Rachel and Claire for over an hour. We had also failed to notice the Force 8 winds that had blown up.

We eventually sailed back from our epic voyage (Captain Cook eat your heart out) and into view of the house......we moored the yacht only to be informed that we had been literally only a few minutes away from having the Canadian Coastguard out. !!!! We laughed about it (well me and Rob did).

South Side Harbour.............

After a couple of days we travelled up the Trans Canadian Highway to Antigonish where we had booked a house by the sea for a week. It came complete with a 17 foot yacht, its own beach, canoes and kayaks. The house was called Dar ix XemX and was absolutely fantastic. Our journey there was like something out of a film. We turned off a main road along a side road....drove for miles......and miles...turned on to yet another side road.......and finally came across the house sat there looking gorgeous. We went up to the front door (which was open)....classical music was playing from somewhere inside the house and there was a gigantic axe wedged into a log next to the front door. Hitchcock would have been proud of this scene !!!!!

Professor Chris Galea owned the house and he had left us a note (and some wine) to welcome us.

We could see bald eagles swooping overhead and the scenery was just stunning.

Rob, Claire, Sophie and Ross joined us at this point and had fallen in love with Canada and Nova Scotia and announced that they wanted to live here too !!!!!!!!!!!

Our Research Trip......

I like to look back on it as a holiday but in actual fact it was quite hard work. We had visits booked with Colchester Regional Development Agency (Corda), Truro Elementary School, Bruce Berry to look at some houses, RCMP in Antigonish, Truro Police and the Canadian Red Cross.



We flew from London Heathrow to Halifax on AirCanada......nice flight and didn't seem very long at all. The first thing that struck me at Halifax Airport was how quiet it was.....and how friendly people were. The man with a kilt on who welcomed us to Canada and handed us a luggage trolley was a sign of things to come.


We were the only people in the Car Hire hall and when we were completing the paperwork for our car Rachel said she didn't like the colour of the car that Hertz were trying to give us... so we got a great upgrade to a nice SUV GMC Envoy.

We drove north on Highway 102 towards Truro and it was hot (28C) but we saw hardly any cars. We stayed next to a gigantic indian at the Super 8 Motel









































After a decent sleep we ventured into Truro ready for our meeting with Margot at Corda. As soon as we got out of the car we were spotted as 'out of towners' by a local guy who came over and shook our hands, told us where the best coffee could be found and if we needed any help to pop into his shop. What a fantastic start !!! Is everybody this friendly we asked ourselves? It turned out that they were.



We met Margot at the Olde Coffee shop on Inglis St and had a great chat about our intentions and future application.

We drove out of Truro later towards Tatamagouche and experienced very rural Canada....we were looking for a beach on the north coast but took a wrong turning and missed it !

We drove past Ski Wentworth which looked like it might be fun with some snow down.

Our next meeting was with Bruce Berry who is a local Real Estate Agent who agreed to take us around the areas he thought we might like.

We went round some very nice houses in Truro and had a drive out to Economy and Masstown.


Meanwhile the Shepherds were flying across to Halifax and spending a few nights in Halifax before meeting us later in the week at the rental house near Antigonish..................................

The Shepherds fancied a holiday.........

Its now time to introduce you all to our good friends Rob and Claire and their children Sophie and Ross who lived near us in Chesterfield.

We had known each other for a long time and had been on many holidays together, both before and after we had had children. We had had some great times on a Gulet in Turkey, various camp sites in France and Italy and a fantastic Christmas in Florida.

Having started to plan our recce trip to Nova Scotia it naturally followed that we would ask Rob and Claire if they wanted to join us for a holiday. We planned to book a week at a nice house by the sea and if possible do a little sailing. Who turns down the opportunity for a holiday !!!!

We had made some appointments with contacts we had made in advance with CORDA, Truro Elementary School, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canadian Red Cross and Bruce Berry a local real Estate Agent in Truro. Rob and Claire decided that they were going to do some exploring of Nova Scotia themselves and then meet up in Antigonish after a few days at the house we had rented.

We booked our flights on Air Canada from Heathrow to Halifax on 22nd May 2009 and Rob and Claire booked to fly out a few days later.

The Emigrate Show 2009.......

March 2009 arrived and we took some good advice and drove down to Sandown Racecourse to the Emigrate Show and ensured we made contact with Margot Begin-Gillis who was there representing Colchester Regional Development Agency, CORDA.

Whilst down the 'smoke' we also popped down to Pudding Lane in London because Gabi was doing a project at school all about the Great Fire of London. It was the girls first visit to London and we did the quickest whistle stop tour of central London you have ever seen !!

The girls also wanted to see Windsor Castle and so we had a pleasant drive through Windsor Great Park and had a nice lunch in Windsor.

Margot had indicated to us that our next step should be a visit to Nova Scotia to make some contacts and see what it was like for ourselves.

Despite having travelled around the world in the Royal Navy I had never been to Canada and the prospect of just visiting was exciting enough, never mind the prospect of living there !

A meeting in the New Forest..........

We started researching Canada and in particular Nova Scotia in September 2007 and quickly found the BritishExpats.com (BE to its friends) was a fantastic source of information. At this time Canada accepted Federal Skilled Worker Visa applications in hundreds of occupation categories including the police.

We calculated our points total and submitted our application to London for processing. Several months passed before our hopes were dashed by a change in the Canadian Immigration Act which drastically reduced the number of occupation categories and of course the police had been removed. Our application was sent back unprocessed together with our application fee. :-(

Whilst we had been waiting we went on a family camping trip to the New Forest. We stopped at the Forestry Commission campsite at Holmsley near Bransgore.

Totally by coincidence whilst chatting on BritiahExpats I had mentioned the fact that we were going camping in the New Forest and found that Nikkidreaming and Flogger (aka Nikki and Andy Lewis) lived in the village of Bransgore. We met at a local pub whilst we were there and chatted about Canada and their chosen route via the Nova Scotia Provincial Nominee Programme. This chat over a pint and a meal was to prove extremely useful later after we had received our bad news about our application being rejected.

The sadness was soon forgotten when we embarked on our new attempt to start a new life in Nova Scotia.

The Community Identified Stream aspect of the Nova Scotia Provincial Nominee Programme entails demonstrating that you have strong links to the local community in Nova Scotia and also that you can bring something to the local community and stand a good chance of settling there.

Nikki and Andy had mentioned that they had been on a research trip to Colchester County area and this was the area they were thinking of settling.

Our focus switched to this area and the town of Truro in particular.

Deciding on which road less travelled to take

Potential francophiles?

After spending a lot of my life travelling the 7 seas in the Royal Navy and more recently on family holidays around the world, I knew that I had an adventurous part of me that would need satisfying when I retired. Also being an Aquarian, my wife knew that my moon was apparantly crossing something or other in Mars and that meant probable trouble !!

Initially, after spending several holidays in France (mainly Brittany) we had settled on buying a property with some land there and then as a result of that decision spent night after night searching French property websites.

Change of heart

It is difficult to say exactly when we changed our mind but I think it changed when we saw some British expat children on television trying to settle in a French school.........it made us switch track and look for our adventure in another english speaking country.
Our options were narrowed by the fact that Australia and New Zealand only offered visas to those aged under 45 !!
At this point I dug out a book from the loft I had had since I was a boy called 'British Columbia'

Canada is a Big Country

Not sure why we looked at Nova Scotia but I was intrigued by a place across the Atlantic I knew very little about but had place names like Halifax, Chester, Liverpool, Windsor, Oxford and Truro.
My wife started to look at land and property prices (and studied the historical weather data like she was doing a Masters Degree)

The Robert Frost Influence

.............and so we decided to take this particular fork in the road.

My all time favourite poem (which I have above my desk at work) is by the American Poet, Robert Frost



TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Gentle Introduction........

Rachel, Gabi, Charlotte and Myself

Just thought it would be a good idea to start a blog about our immigration to Nova Scotia....mainly because there might come a time in the future when we forget why it was we actually decided to leave the UK !!



Our family is myself Dean, my wife Rachel, James, Alexander, Eleanor, Charlotte and Gabrielle (Gabi for short)






James, Alexander and Eleanor (in the second photo)
are my children from a previous marriage and are not moving to Canada with us but hopefully they will visit regularly and who knows might decide to move across in the future.


James and Alexander followed in my footsteps by joining the Royal Navy and are enjoying themselves travelling the world and Eleanor has just completed her GCSEs at Lady Manners School in Bakewell.

Charlotte is 10 years old and Gabi is 7.

We live in Chesterfield, Derbyshire and my wife and I both work for the Derbyshire Constabulary....I am a Detective Chief Inspector and my wife works in our Force Control Room as a Communications Officer (answering 999 calls and using the radio).

I can retire from the police in the summer of 2011 and that is the reason many years ago we discussed what we wanted to do and where we wanted to do it.