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.