About

Why should you read this

This blog is about helping other people who are immigrating to Canada and just to share what we have been through. Admittedly, we also referred to other blogs and discussion forums to prepare our applications or wherever we did not have the information at hand. Invariably, other people's experience and knowledge helped us throughout our own process as we applied their lessons learnt.

We are very grateful to the forum members who helped guide thousands others, in the grueling application process, where the margins for error is small. Many spent thousands of to-be Canadian dollars in consultant fees and I noticed many were not so satisfied with the service quality. For us, we felt we could manage our own applications and it was not that difficult.

Henceforth, hopefully this blog will help others find any relevant information into their own situations, especially if they are managing their own applications.

Our background

We worked in a service oriented industry in HK and MrHKer is a Software Engineer while MrsHKer is an established Product Sales and Manager in Pharmaceuticals. Coincidentally, our National Occupational Classification are quite generic and in line with the 2017 Canadian skills in demand.

Was leaving HK hard?

It sure was. We grow attached to the places we call home. We have friends and family; we loved the way of life, we love the people we had around us, we love the city. We did not plan to immigrate until the option was on the table, ie when we got the PR papers ready. Only then, when we decided to immigrate, we had planned for 2 years later, ie 2023. 

However, that vile thing called COVID made things complicated and we left earlier (if you read the blog, you might notice we had to wait another year for our PR papers to be renewed and we might not be afforded another renewal). 

Is Canada worth it?

A resounding 'YES'. We have a new start. We start from the bottom. The way of life is not dissimilar from what we had, many people and other immigrants are very welcoming and we love everything 'made in Canada' here. It's such a beautiful place too, and we can never be grateful enough  to God we could immigrate to this welcoming place. All is not rosy - we are pointing at you, Canadian Cold Winter, but this is just 1 aspect of a multi-faceted country.

Where are we now?

Our port of entry was Toronto. We stayed with friends there and quarantined even we did not have to (as we're fully vaccinated with 2x Pfizer doses). Afterwards, we travelled a bit. We had looked into settling in Montréal or Ottawa, as they are heavily bi-lingual but instead we moved to the province of Alberta, where it is believed there are many fellow HKers in Edmonton (the capital city), Airdrie and Calgary.