Settlement

It was my first visit to Canada in June 2017, and I visited 2 big Canadian cities, Winnipeg and Vancouver. Actually, we didn’t realize our next home would be in Canada. Anyhow, immigration was just a dream at that time.

On May 1st 2018, I started my real Canada immigrant journey with my husband and daughter. From 2018 to 2019, I had my education at the University of Manitoba. It took half a year to finish my basic language learning. Then I participated in a business and administration program. At that time, my husband had found a job as his major, and my daughter studied in an elementary school. After I finished the program, I found it was too hard to find a proper job for me in that city. In addition, my family needed me more, so I chose to go back to my family. If I could go back to that time, I think I should try to find a job. Even though it was a low salary job, I could improve my speaking and get some Canadian job experience at least. Making a good balance between family and job is not easy for newcomers.

At the end of 2019 and the first of 2020, Covid pandemic happened. Covid pandemic changed a lot of people including me and my family. My best friend went back to home country who came to Canada at the same time as us. I know she made a big decision between an adventure in Canada and a familiar life in home country. In addition, my husband was laid off by his first company after coming to Canada. It was a crisis for us. Moreover because of the pandemic, our permanent resident application was being processed out of time. We didn't know what the result was like and worried about it for a long time. Under the pandemic plus the coldness of Manitoba, we had to live with our savings before and waited for everything to get back. If the pandemic didn’t happen, we would definitely come back to visit our families and miss them so much. Actually I bought flight tickets which were canceled by the flight company in 2021. Because of the pandemic, many flights were canceled and never recovered until now. If the pandemic didn’t happen, I should have gotten my driver's license earlier and might have found a job in Winnipeg. To be honest, I love the city of Winnipeg. If my husband and I could both find jobs there, I would love to stay there. In January and March 2022, my daughter, my husband and I separately got permanent residence in Canada. Considering better education and job opportunities, we decided to move to Ontario after we encountered the third coldest and snowiest Winnipeg’s winter in the past 100 years in the winter of 2021.

In early July 2022, around Canada Day, we said farewell to our Winnipeg’s friends, neighbors, my daughter’s best friends and classmates. We set off to Oakville. Oakville’s prestige in education is best known among us new immigrants. So we got rid of other choices in Ontario and Oakville became our destination. From July 2022 till now, we settled down in Oakville. We bought an old house with a loan from a bank and did a lot of renovation for it. And my husband found a job with his former experience. I appreciate that I can get a language learning chance in LINC to continue to improve my English. I bet that we will face more challenges on the immigrant road. Life is interesting, and god likes making jokes to human beings. If we didn’t choose immigration, we would have a totally different life.