Going to Canada eh ?

The other week we finally got customs clearance on our un accompanied luggage and had to get it from Calgary. The company that had it wanted $1150 to deliver 11 very small boxes from Calgary to Red Deer.

Fortunately Pete’s firm loaned him a truck and we went to fetch it for only the cost of the gas (petrol) and another day off work.

The rest of that day was spent un packing and finding homes for things. The only casualty was one of the O gauge trucks that got squashed. There were a few things we had brought that now found we didn’t need. For example a set masonry drills, all the houses are wooden so no bricks to drill. Scart sockets, all the video signals here are on phono’s.

Conversely there were things I thought I had packed that weren’t there, for example ski hats, no big deal as they are plentiful here but annoying. We also ended up with 2 copies on Andrew’s school photograph when one should have been left in the UK.

This one is for our Canadian readers on how some things are done in the UK. That way you may understand our surprise at some things over here.

Topping up a mobile phone (Cell phone)

Either put your Bank card in an ATM and enter your phone number, or get a re usable top up card then in any supermarket or garage hand it to the assistant. They swipe it in a machine and your phone is topped up.

Buying a Second hand car

To be on a British road a car must have

a) Road Tax approx 3 to $400 a year. This stays with the car when it is sold.

b) An MOT certificate. Each year cars over 3 years old must have mechanical test similar to your out of Province test. Cost $88 per year. This also stays with the car when sold.

c) Insurance same as over here and it stays with the driver. The computer systems of the insurance companies, the MOT test station and the licensing authority are all linked so you can not tax a car that doesn’t have insurance and MOT certificate. The police now have number plate recognition built into their camera systems and they can tell if car passing them is insured or not. They have power then to confiscate it and have crushed.

d) Number plates front and back

So back to buying the car.

Once you have paid the seller and got an insurance cover note you can drive it away if it has valid tax and mot. The seller then mails his registration form to the licensing authority saying he has sold it to you. The number plate stays with the car, and is not a lifelong item kept by the owner. A bill of sale is not required and you don’t have to line up at your local registry before you drive away.

Buying a House

Note English law on this is different to Scots law which is more binding on both parties.

A buyer makes a verbal offer through your estate agent. Both buyer and seller only deal with one agent but each have their own solicitor (lawyer).

The seller has to have a home information pack detailing various points about the property including the thermal efficiency of the insulation.

The solicitors then swap forms to do with proof of title and stuff but it is not until exchange of contracts that the buyer actually has to put up any money. Until this point either side can back out with no come-back indeed the seller can accept a higher price from another buyer . We were kept hanging on for 3 months by one guy who said he wanted to buy but when it came down to it he didn’t have any finance arranged.

On this one we much prefer the Canadian method!

Food shopping

Don’t expect the till operator to pack your bags for you and usually the most conversation will be “Do you have a loyalty card?” and ” enter your PIN (please is optional)” The other way is to shop on the internet. The major food supermarkets will pick and pack your order and deliver it within a 2 hour time slot to your door for an extra $10.

This we miss.

Driving

Is on the left in the UK.

Roundabouts (traffic circles) are everywhere. Any one planning to drive in the UK should visit Sylvan Lake for some practice, especially as this is the only roundabout for hundreds of miles around.

Traffic lights have an extra position. After Red and before Green there is a Red and Amber as a sort of get ready to go, and they are always arranged vertically.

Red means stop in all circumstances you can’t turn on the nearside if nothing is coming.

The settlements of Red Deer, Blackfalds and Lacombe all grew up along the Calgary to Edmonton Railway. The Railway company was required to build a station or siding every few miles to open up the country for settlers to move in. Lacombe was a popular destination for many and it at one time was bigger than Red Deer until a local farmer and Clergy man gave some land to the Railway company to encourage growth. The gentlemans name was Gaetz and the main Avenue in Red Deer carries his name. Any relation to Bill I asked ? no different spelling they said.

It is a shame that the towns that were started by the rail now shun it. There are no passenger services any more. The tracks no longer run through the towns, Red Deer station is now offices and Blackfalds has disappeared with out trace. There are however many freight trains often 100 wagons or more always these are double headed with two locos coupled back to back. (looks like they didn’t get around to designing double end locomotives like we have in the uk). Most of the main lines are single track and I have yet to work out where the passing loops are.

The area between Blackfalds and Red Deer is criss crossed with many lines as both the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian National Railways serve the area. There is no equivalent to OS maps here so we are yet to work out which lines connect to which.

Well almost anyway

1 Cans of de-icer. The spray cans we are used to in the UK are not available over here. I guess one small can would only last a few days. Instead you buy larger bottles of screen wash that shouldnt freeze in the pump and should clear the screen.

2 Garden forks. After visiting several garden centres and tool outlets we had seen plenty of spades and shovels but no forks. When we asked around we got a few blank looks and offers of pitch forks. Eventually the lady in the library told us where to look. We now have what in England would be called a potato fork with flat tines, a bit small but does the job.

3 Sausages. Actually there is a wide range of types and flavours, Wieners, Bratwurst, Smokies and others. Flavours include curried chicken and turkey but we haven’t yet found one that tastes like the ones back home. This is unfortunate as with David’s limited tastes this has removed one of his main foods.

4 Olbas oil. This is Lin’s main medication for colds and similar and she has now used up the supplies she brought from the UK. We did track some down in a health food shop, it was very expensive and not quite the same formulation .

5 Garden Bulbs. During our tour of department stores and Garden Centres we were struggling to find any spring bulbs. Then in one of the Freebie papers that was delivered we saw an ad for Canadian Tire selling bulbs. In we went asked where the bulbs where only to be told” no we won’t be stocking any in this branch.”

” So why did you advertise them then ?” “…. Erm dont know. ”

We found some in Walmart and spent yesterday getting blisters planting them. It looks like the garden borders have not been touched for nearly 2 years as the soil is compacted and full of weeds. So we are waiting for winter to kill everything off and will start again in the spring.

The new home is a bit like a large caravan to look at except that it would never have had wheels and would have moved on a low loader to the site.

Heating is by gas there is a water heater just for the hot taps and a furnace providing hot air for the room heating. It is a sign of the climate that the incoming cold water pipes have heating wires on them to prevent the pipes freezing in winter.

In many ways the facilities are better than some houses we have had. There are 3 bedrooms, the master bedroom has en suite bathroom and walk-in wardrobe/closet. The washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, cooker, fridge freezer and built in microwave were all included in the purchase. David has his own bedroom and bath room at the far end of the home and the middle is taken up with a large kitchen dinner and adjoining lounge.

Penny adjusted quickly to the new surroundings. After being kept in for a few hours she made no sign of running off and seems totally unaffected by the 4th change of address she has had this year.

For the first week we had no phone. The vendors had been slow to cancel their internet connection and for some reason this caused the phone company to mess up the connection of our number to the new address.

The cable company performed well turning up on the appointed day to make the connection for TV and internet and then coming back a few days later to add more sockets so Dave could watch TV in his own room. Then we noticed a snag. Half our channels were missing. It turned out, that at the old place we had been getting more than we had paid for, and to upgrade the service to what we had been used to would cost an extra $45 per month. So for now we make do with the odd 40 that the basic package gives.

In the original plan Lin was going to be doing her big truck driver training the week of the move and so Peter would be on his own. With this in mind we rented a lock up storage and a U-haul van from over the road and so all the heavy stuff was moved out the Saturday before the move date,

As it transpired Lin postponed her Air Brake and Driver training courses so that she could organise government funding for the courses. Just as well, because there was a lot of running around to be done.

We had only signed the mortgage papers a few days before the move, and only got to meet the lawyer the morning we were due to move out, and had to vacate by midday. Time was already tight when we discovered we couldn’t get in the new place because we didn’t have a key.

Previously we had been able to come and go using the electronic combination lock on the front door. However, on this was the day the batteries decided to run out, and so the device “failed safe” which in its eyes meant it stayed locked. Thats ok said the vendors realtor there are some keys hidden in the shed. And yes there were but they were keys for the wrong locks. At this point the U-haul van refused to start and the landlord turned up to do the moving out check on the flat, and our frozen food was possibly thawing out as we were between homes.

Eventually the vendor agreed to pay for a locksmith to get us in and a man from the U-haul franchise came and gave the van a jump start. We still had a lot of moving to do and the landlord was still bitching about marks we didn’t remember making but at least we were on the move.

Unable to cope with the elephants that lived in the upstairs flat we gave notice at the end of August and asked to move out by the end of September. Our landlord eventually agreed to release us from the contract and we set about trying to find somewhere to live.

Not wanting to end up in the same predicament as before we looked for half duplexes (semi detached) rather than flats (appartments, suites, condos). We were already a few weeks into our notice period when a friend at work suggested we try and get a 100% mortgage on a small place as this may work out the same as paying rent. This is what we did after a few false starts.

We had seen a park home site nearby with one or two properties up for sale and so tried to arrange a viewing. First we had to find a realtor to show us the property. It seems that over here any agent can show any property and that when buying you have your own agent doing your buying and the vendor has a separate agent doing the selling. Both agents are paid by commission from the seller.

So first find your agent. We responded to one advert for a property in the park only to find it had been sold. We asked the agent if she knew of any others for sale and if she could recommend anybody for a mortgage as our bank had not been very forthcoming.

The conversation between Avril and Lin must have gone something like this.

“Hello we have recently arrived from England ”

“Oh yes I am from there originally”

“Which part?”

“West Sussex”

“Me too where in West Sussex? ”

“Shoreham ”

“Me too”

We used to live on Shoreham Beach”

“Me too”

“I was born in Southlands Hospital”

“Me too”

There the coincidences ended but Avril was able to recommend a mortgage broker at the Bank Of Montreal and was able to show us 1 Broadway Village even though it was listed by another agent.

After we had viewed the property and decided we wanted to make an offer, things began to get weird and frantic. In Canada offers have to be in writing and Avril came back to our flat to write the offer even though it was quite late at night.

Any conditions attached to the offer are also put in writing with time limits so that the offer fails if the time has passed and the condition not withdrawn.

Then even more unusual you have to put down how you are going to finance the purchase ie x% deposit, y% mortgage and with the offer you have to write a cheque for part of the deposit to go with the offer. At this point I was wishing the same applied in England given the amount of time we were kept hanging on by one buyer who claimed to have the financing sorted out but did not.

Our offer had 3 conditions attached.

1 subject to getting a mortgage arranged

2 subject to approval by the Park management (it turned out we knew them already)

3 satisfactory property inspection report (not survey that means something else over here)

Our initial offer was rejected so we negotiated over the price and once agreement had been reached we had to meet up with Avril to initial all the changes to the written offer. It being a Sunday afternoon we met in the Car Park of a Boston Pizza place and initialled the documents leaning on her car.

As the various conditions were met we had to sign a document to say the condition had been withdrawn and this seemed to produce another set of “clandestine” meetings, at one point we even had to ask the lady in the garage to witness our signatures on a form before we faxed it off to the agent.

It seemed that most of the leg work was done by the agent before we even spoke to a lawyer (solicitor means something else over here) and despite the frenetic pace that everyone was working at we were never going to get the conveyancing done by 30 Sept. Fortunately the property was vacant and there is in Canada a term called tenant-at-will, whereby you can rent the property at $40 per day until the paperwork is completed. Fortunately the vendor agreed to this and we were able to move in the same day we had to vacate the flat.