I discovered a great website called http://www:canadianparents.com.  If you go to the message boards and scroll down, there is one for Nova Scotia.  I found this useful as I could ask the Canadians.  We didn’t know about commuting times, the true weather in winter and the road conditions so I posted on this website and was not only given lots of useful information but had some kind offers to meet up, show us around the towns we were looking at and giving advice on schools, day care etc from people who lived there.  This was also heartening at a time when I had begun to realise that we were due to become Norman No Mates family (except the one Canadian family who we’d met camping but we had to limit ourselves as stalking might be inappropriate!).

The only way to meet people is to get out and about.  Children lead us into life by starting school and preschool plus having their activities which has always been one of the simplest ways to meet people.  Someone was given the advice that you should go and introduce yourself to your neighbours.  This sounds daunting but it is actually taking control.  Life will not come to you; instead you have to go out and find it. Being brave becomes part of life and this is one of the reasons we wanted to emigrate.  We wanted to challenge ourselves, take ourselves out of the comfort zone and feeling scared is part of that.  Being armed with information will help you feel more confident and don’t forget, Nova Scotians are on the whole a friendly bunch who will spare the time to help - another reason we moved here.

The first year we were worried about the winter and how we would cope.  In fact, we were more organised than our Canadian neighbours since we were so paranoid.  We found that once we had the right clothes and the right tools we could relax.  I’m going back to the old girl guide addage “be prepared”.  We wanted four seasons and we certainly got it - sometimes all in the one day just as a bonus!