I’ve been in Canada since July on a Working Holiday Visa.
In our media, Canada is always portrayed as a dream country. Yes of course, it’s beautiful here (Rockies, nature) but it also has a lot of downsides.
The quality of food is incomparable to my home country and the food prices are even higher here.
I thought rent prices back home were high, but here (except for small towns on the prairie), you have to share an apartment with 3 people and still pay the same amount as getting a 2-bedroom apartment alone back home.
Then 5 weeks of paid vacation + 11 paid holidays (weekends are generally free, there is no business open at Sundays), when you’re sick, you’re sick, but you still get paid.
Canadians are polite that is true, but what I’ve noticed is that people often make false promises just to be nice.
Making friends here as a foreigner is challenging and perhaps I’m homesick being on the other side of the world.
I’m considering abandoning everything and flying back home. While at first it was really nice here (especially the traveling in the summer), the drawbacks are becoming apparent.
Additionally, my education isn’t recognized here and honestly I don’t want to work at Tim Hortons or Walmart just to „survive“ and with much lower QOL than in Europe.
But on the other hand, I’m afraid of missing out if I fly back home now.
Idk what i should do :(
Any suggestions?
Are you from Poland?
You are basically listing all of the reasons why I LEFT Canada and came to Poland instead.
In Canada, the groceries are terrible quality, with very little variance in brands and choices. Don’t even get me started on the “bread”. I looked for good bread for over a decade and never found it. MOST bread here in Poland is amazing.
The house prices were just beginning to grow where I lived, but at this point you can kiss any chance of living somewhere “nicer” (AKA not the prairies/winter wasteland) goodbye. Nobody is able to afford owning anything anymore in the nicer cities, that’s a time long past.
10 days vacation?! It takes 2 days to fly out anywhere from Canada! That leaves you with 8 days a YEAR, which most people dip into if they don’t have sick days to use.
And the weather… omg. I don’t think I can ever return to 6 month winters as cold as -55C. I got here to Poland in May, it seemed like summer already… then it continued to be summer in my mind until middle of October. End of October and November were beautiful, warm fall months- super cozy and enjoyable. I am told April is already nice and warm. That’s almost 7 months of ideal weather, I can’t even believe it… Where I am from in Canada, it still sometimes snowed in May, didn’t warm up until middle of June, then already tapered off by mid August early September if we were lucky, at which point the nights get cold, etc. And good luck picking a non-storm week or two to enjoy your measely time off in the nice months.
Many people are putting on a mask in Canada, acting differently around different groups of people- which I can’t stand. The environment shouldn’t dictate your personality- and that’s what seems to happen with Canadians. Polish people are just who they are, everywhere. They don’t play masks.
But the deciding factor for me was definitely SAFETY. The safety in my Canadian city was always a terrible thing- stabbings all the time, theft, attacks, murder capital of Canada, yada yada. I am so traumatized by the whole situation there that I am constantly looking over my shoulder and being paranoid here… only to see families and women walking around at 10 pm, no problem. It is so much safer here. So much more lively, so much more alive than downtown in Canada. Downtown in Canada was empty except for people uncomfortably walking to their destinations or homeless populations begging. SO MANY BEGGARS. I’ve seen 2 here, in half a year.
So yeah… consider all of your options and don’t believe the grass is greener in the west. The grass is dead and brown and freezing cold for 6 months.
Thank you also for your insight, no i am from Austria but have a few friends from Poland back home. I traveled a lot in the beginning in Canada and have now settled in a 60k town on the prairie, but I think that was a mistake. It’s a bit depressing here in winter, despite how beautiful the prairie was in the summer.
I know that winter hasn’t really started yet, the coldest it has been so far is -20.