Canada for a year: where to live?

[An_Gadai]

I’m not a skier. Not into any other sports. I like going for walks. I like city life. I like reading books. I like going to bars and I love live music. I like good food.

[swampspruce]

Perfect then. Food is easy; any city in Canada will have a good foodie scene with lots of diversity. IIRC, Winnipeg has the greatest number of restaurants per capita in N. America. If you want to avoid the worst of Canadian winters I would recommend Vancouver, Montreal, Kingston or Halifax. For live music, Halifax is pretty hard to beat.
as far as not knowing anyone, isn’t that the point of going somewhere new? Try new things and meet new people? I really believe you can’t make a bad choice. BTW, don’t believe everything you see on TV. :0) Otherwise, I’d be basing my opinions of Ireland on Father Ted reruns…Drink!

[Stately_Greek_Automaton]

To add to the chorus, any of the major cities sound like they’d meet what you’re looking for. Even a number of smaller cities have vibrant city centres, at least by North American standards. I’ll plug Peterborough since it hasn’t been mentioned. Transit is rather bad, but while living there I was able to bike anywhere in town in half an hour or less. Not quite commuting distance to Toronto, but there is regular bus service and there’s noise about train service being in the works. It’s very much a college/university town, so it’s very vibrant for its size, plenty of downtown nightlife, good used bookstores and cost of living is low compared to pretty much anywhere else in Canada.

@Yeticus_Rex

So is Sidney’s climate comparably closer to Vancouver, BC, or Los Angeles/Santa Barbara, CA which is considered Mediterranean? Living here in Southern California, I am having a hard time understanding anything on the coast north of San Francisco as being Mediterranean. The Pacific Northwest is much more temperate, more rainfall, overall cooler regardless of season, and cloudier overall. “Cool Mediterranean” climate is loosely used for anything in the drier parts of the Pacific Northwest coast, but more realistically, they are more comparable to Oceanic Climate:

Sidney’s closer to Vancouver’s climate, of course. That said according to the map here, both Vancouver and Sidney have a climate comparable to parts of Southern France. Calling the climate Mediterranean isn’t completely out of the question.

[Rodd_Hill]

@Stately_Greek_Automaton

To add to the chorus, any of the major cities sound like they’d meet what you’re looking for. Even a number of smaller cities have vibrant city centres, at least by North American standards. I’ll plug Peterborough since it hasn’t been mentioned. Transit is rather bad, but while living there I was able to bike anywhere in town in half an hour or less. Not quite commuting distance to Toronto, but there is regular bus service and there’s noise about train service being in the works. It’s very much a college/university town, so it’s very vibrant for its size, plenty of downtown nightlife, good used bookstores and cost of living is low compared to pretty much anywhere else in Canada.

Sidney’s closer to Vancouver’s climate, of course. That said according to the map here, both Vancouver and Sidney have a climate comparable to parts of Southern France. Calling the climate Mediterranean isn’t completely out of the question.

And you really, really need to be clear on the differences climatically, geographically and culturally between Sidney, British Columbia and Sydney, Nova Scotia. Not only are they 4600 kms apart, one has the Tar Ponds and one doesn’t.

[Sunspace]

And if you go to Peterborough, you can visit the Liftlocks, see the Canoe Museum, study Ojibwe at at Trent University, meet my aunt, and see the house where I spent the first seven years of my life!

[Quartz]

As a matter of interest, how are you managing to get a work permit?

[Ibanez]

Head west. Anywhere west of Ontario. Calgary, Vancouver etc…

[An_Gadai]

@Quartz

As a matter of interest, how are you managing to get a work permit?

There’s the International Experience Canada 1 year work visa available to Irish people aged between 18 and 35. This year they’re issuing 5,350 of the visas. I’ve no idea how many applicants there’ll be but I imagine it is significantly oversubscribed so there’s no guarantees.

[Northern_Piper]

The West is Best!

Western Canadian employers court the Irish

Faced with a massive skills shortage and a surge of job openings, Western Canadian employers are looking to an old source for new workers: hard-up Ireland.

This week, two delegations of employers – one from Saskatchewan led by Premier Brad Wall, the other headed by British Columbia and Alberta construction industry representatives – are making a push to entice Irish citizens to leave their economically devastated country and come to Canada, as the ancestors of more than one in eight Canadians did generations earlier.

[Cat_Whisperer]

My husband’s company (a construction management company) went shopping for workers in Ireland in 2007 - the results were satisfactory, he says.

[Nunavut_Boy]

Not sure if you’d seriously consider the north or not, but I have it on good authority that 5 hospital IT jobs are going to be posted soon. The job would be mostly supporting Meditech. Pay would be pretty good, and I believe that subsidized housing will be available.