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I too once thought of making further inroads into Canada. As mentioned in another thread, years ago, I was accepted off a waitlist to attend urban planning graduate school at the University of Toronto (U of T). It was the only Canadian school I applied to and it was because U of T had great name recognition and because I loved Toronto and wanted to experience more of it. I was most familiar with Toronto at the time, I had and still have relatives living in the GTA, and it was the only Canadian city I'd ever thought of settling in. In the end, I respectfully declined owning to reasons ranging from having already paid a deposit to attend another school closer to home, the belief that Boston and the US in general offered just as good opportunities, the hassles of applying for a student visa, to economic considerations (the time I applied was one of the very few times within living memory that the Loonie actually appreciated against the Greenback and thereby making for a very expensive ordeal in an already very expensive city).
Looking back, did I make the right choice? Graduating from a Canadian school would certainly have boosted my ratings in the point system to obtain residency and find employment in Canada. Graduating from U of T would have allowed me to show to my cousin who did graduate from U of T I could be just as good as her (though she works in the health science field and makes more money than I ever could as an urban planner). Still (and this is not meant to be an offense) I did not trust the Canadian economy enough to make the move. I felt like I was applying in just one state in the US for the limited jobs in that state and I feared that there were already a glut of planners in Canada. Additionally, Toronto has got to be the most popular city in Canada for young people to desire because it is so exciting and energetic. If I settled only in Toronto, not Guelph, not Waterloo, not Cambridge, Hamilton, Kitchener, London or any other less popular city I then had no desire of moving to, wouldn't I have been taking a spot away from a Canadian also desiring the move? Someone tell me if that is true or not. Looking back, I still wonder what could have been had I said yes to U of T.
I too once thought of making further inroads into Canada. As mentioned in another thread, years ago, I was accepted off a waitlist to attend urban planning graduate school at the University of Toronto (U of T). It was the only Canadian school I applied to and it was because U of T had great name recognition and because I loved Toronto and wanted to experience more of it. I was most familiar with Toronto at the time, I had and still have relatives living in the GTA, and it was the only Canadian city I'd ever thought of settling in. In the end, I respectfully declined owning to reasons ranging from having already paid a deposit to attend another school closer to home, the belief that Boston and the US in general offered just as good opportunities, the hassles of applying for a student visa, to economic considerations (the time I applied was one of the very few times within living memory that the Loonie actually appreciated against the Greenback and thereby making for a very expensive ordeal in an already very expensive city).
Looking back, did I make the right choice? Graduating from a Canadian school would certainly have boosted my ratings in the point system to obtain residency and find employment in Canada. Graduating from U of T would have allowed me to show to my cousin who did graduate from U of T I could be just as good as her (though she works in the health science field and makes more money than I ever could as an urban planner). Still (and this is not meant to be an offense) I did not trust the Canadian economy enough to make the move. I felt like I was applying in just one state in the US for the limited jobs in that state and I feared that there were already a glut of planners in Canada. Additionally, Toronto has got to be the most popular city in Canada for young people to desire because it is so exciting and energetic. If I settled only in Toronto, not Guelph, not Waterloo, not Cambridge, Hamilton, Kitchener, London or any other less popular city I then had no desire of moving to, wouldn't I have been taking a spot away from a Canadian also desiring the move? Someone tell me if that is true or not. Looking back, I still wonder what could have been had I said yes to U of T.
From my perspective, having an intelligent, humble, balanced individual like I've found you to be would be a credit to our nation. I think you can't go back and question the choice you made. It was the best choice for you at the time, but Canada is a nation of immigrants. Indeed, with our growth rate what it is, we need more if we want to grow as a nation rather than contract.
So, no I don't think you should have felt that you would have taken a spot away from anyone. If you were among the best candidates and got in and wanted it then all the power to you. Actually, in urban planning I think having a diverse group of individuals from other places outside Canada would actually add to the field here.
I get the economic attraction of the U.S. It's bigger and wealthier and it is your home, but I think you would have found some good opportunities here. Plus our cities are growing quite well and i'd imagine urban planning departments are not having a shortage of work these days.
I sometimes question what life would have been like had I made a different choices. We look back and sometimes second guess, but i've found that we have a tendency to overlook and forget all the reasons at the time that we made these choices. If we don't make great choices, there are lessons to be learned by making bad choices that we need to go through. In your case, you didn't make a bad choice by the looks of it - it seemed the best for you at the time. The hardest choices are often when there are multiple good one's to make!
From my perspective, having an intelligent, humble, balanced individual like I've found you to be would be a credit to our nation. I think you can't go back and question the choice you made. It was the best choice for you at the time, but Canada is a nation of immigrants. Indeed, with our growth rate what it is, we need more if we want to grow as a nation rather than contract.
So, no I don't think you should have felt that you would have taken a spot away from anyone. If you were among the best candidates and got in and wanted it then all the power to you. Actually, in urban planning I think having a diverse group of individuals from other places outside Canada would actually add to the field here.
I get the economic attraction of the U.S. It's bigger and wealthier and it is your home, but I think you would have found some good opportunities here. Plus our cities are growing quite well and i'd imagine urban planning departments are not having a shortage of work these days.
I sometimes question what life would have been like had I made a different choices. We look back and sometimes second guess, but i've found that we have a tendency to overlook and forget all the reasons at the time that we made these choices. If we don't make great choices, there are lessons to be learned by making bad choices that we need to go through. In your case, you didn't make a bad choice by the looks of it - it seemed the best for you at the time. The hardest choices are often when there are multiple good one's to make!
Cannot rep you again, Fusion! Thanks for the sincerely thoughtful response. You're absolutely right that I cannot go back and question the choice I made. That by the way is known as a "sunk cost" in microeconomics, a cost incurred in the past that cannot be recovered. It's funny that we've all probably incurred many of these throughout our lifetimes and its the notable ones that stick in our minds. And yes, Canada is definitely a country that greatly values skills and knowledge. I think the more educated, skillful, and talented one is, the more competitive he/she will be. For instance, look at Rick Leary, the current CEO of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). He started off as a token attendant at our transit system in Boston, worked his way up, was my boss's boss for a number of years, obtained three degrees including one from prestigious Harvard, moved to Canada to help run the York Region Transit Authority, and is now doing quite well running the TTC. On top of that, after living in Canada for 10 years, Leary in 2019 gained something that should be as valuable as platinum - Canadian citizenship! (No word on whether he dropped his American citizenship) So where there's a will, there's a way as they say.
If you're talking about America as "no one" that statement is perceptibly true and I'd guess that Canada and most other countries have always known that some Americans have felt that way, I'd say for at least 400 years.
But in the here and now I think what YOU are doing is you're confusing being aggressively undiplomatic and spiteful with being honest. That isn't honesty, it's just boorish ignorance behaving like a mean little bull calf growing horns and looking for a fight in a China Shop and leaving a mess of BS behind. If you think you're being honest through your blatant provocation and lack of diplomacy you are only being dishonest with yourself.
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ChevySpoons
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It worked for me earlier. Wait, just checked it a few hours later; and I couldn't get it either. Weird.
At any rate, when I did get to see it, it basically boiled down to, "Why don't Canadians want to move to the United States?"
It was met with answers ranging from the mild and inoffensive, "Because we live in the best place on Earth," to loud guffaws, often accompanied by, "Good Lord, who would want to live in a s**thole place like that?" And everything in between. The usual reasons were cited: healthcare, better social safety net, less gun violence, and so on. Of course, there was understanding for those Canadians who went to the US for better and more lucrative chances with work (think actors, musicians, other performers; or physicians and scientists). And there were admissions that some posters were snowbirds, who wintered in Florida and Arizona, but who expressed no desire to move there permanently.
The responses were mostly from Canadians, and it was Quora, so in some ways, it was a self-selecting group (Canadians, resident in Canada, who are Quora members).
Me, personally, I wouldn't move to the US, unless a very good opportunity presented itself. Admittedly, I work in a field where transferring credentials between the two countries is possible, but not very easy, and usually requires additional coursework and exams. So it would have to be an extremely good opportunity in a location that I'd actually want to live in. Doesn't matter anyway; I'm happy here.
Huh? What did I do to be deserving of quoting in this way?
I think perhaps he just doesn't know how to do multiple quotes here so he quoted my post and then copied and pasted your whole post but then didn't offer a statement of his own.
I'm in a house with two thirty-something guys, neither of whom has ever been to the US and have never considered leaving here. Neither, it seems, do any of their friends. That is definitely a weird statement.
I assume you mean never been to the US to live?
Because it would be really weird to have a largish group of young adults in southern Ontario who have all never visited the US.
I guess for some it's more difficult to travel to the US.
Here it's just a 90 minute drive from Downtown Vancouver.
I can see Mt Baker in Washington State out my living room window
Not from here. 2 hours to Buffalo to the west, about the same to the Thousand Islands to the east.
The bf's siblings all do various amounts of winter stints in Florida. The sons might just not have ever had the interest. BF hitchhiked all over Canada and then Europe when he was 20 and 21, and hasn't left Canada since. He is 71 now.
But I lived less than 400 miles all my life from Canada, and I didn't come up until I was 59, even though I had traveled farther distances south and west. Nobody ever told us you guys were here!
Not from here. 2 hours to Buffalo to the west, about the same to the Thousand Islands to the east.
The bf's siblings all do various amounts of winter stints in Florida. The sons might just not have ever had the interest. BF hitchhiked all over Canada and then Europe when he was 20 and 21, and hasn't left Canada since. He is 71 now.
But I lived less than 400 miles all my life from Canada, and I didn't come up until I was 59, even though I had traveled farther distances south and west. Nobody ever told us you guys were here!
I think the dynamics on the west coast are just different.
For people in Seattle, many know Vancouver and Victoria. Many cross border friendships etc.
You see a lot of Washington State, Oregon and California plates driving around Vancouver, especially in tourist season.
Many Americans do cruises out of Vancouver, like it and come back.
For people here in Vancouver it's an easy drive to Seattle, but many drive to Portland, San Fran, Palm Springs, and LA. I've done it many, many times. It's also a short flight.
Everyone's circumstances are different. My travels are quite different than those of my siblings, but then I had the freedom to do so.
My grandparents were world travellers, and as I kid I loved watching their home movies and slides. Grandpa was a camera buff, so there were a lot of them! I think that influenced me a lot.
Went on my first out of country trip by myself at age 17.
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(though she works in the health science field and makes more money than I ever could as an urban planner). Still (and this is not meant to be an offense) I did not trust the Canadian economy enough to make the move. I felt like I was applying in just one state in the US for the limited jobs in that state and I feared that there were already a glut of planners in Canada. Additionally, Toronto has got to be the most popular city in Canada for young people to desire because it is so exciting and energetic. If I settled only in Toronto, not Guelph, not Waterloo, not Cambridge, Hamilton, Kitchener, London or any other less popular city I then had no desire of moving to, wouldn't I have been taking a spot away from a Canadian also desiring the move? Someone tell me if that is true or not. Looking back, I still wonder what could have been had I said yes to U of T.
