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.