Here is my brief description of Canada after living here for 10 years:
Cons:
1) SLOW. You will find a lot of things are slow in Canada. Customer services people are slow here. You will notice it at places like cashiers, banks,...etc. You will spend a lot of time lining up here. I guess it's because people are more relax here, that's why their pace are slower.
2) SLOW again. This is the last place for new technology to arrive. If you see or hear any new products out there, you won't find it in Canada at least 1 year or 2 later. Just to give you an example of how outdated we are, our public transportation system is still using little tokens and tickets, or a guy sitting at the gate to collect tokens. Another example, we don't have 3G here.
3) High Tax. You pay lot of taxes here.
4) Shops close early. I live in Toronto. The city is dead after 6:30 on weekdays and is dead on weekends.
Pros:
1) People are friendly and tolerable. They can put up with anything.
2) lots of land.
Conclusion:
If you are looking for a place to retire, Canada is for you. If you are young and looking for an exciting place, with trendy places and ideas, go to Japan, Hongkong or New York. But if you insist to come to Canada, go to Montreal instead.
Hope this helps,
I don't really think you gave fair statements about Canada. Some maybe but not all.
First of all, slow? If you were in customer service getting paid minimum wage how fast would you want to work? As for banks. I bank online (i.e. no line-ups ever). The rare time that I have to actually go into a bank, there is normally a line yes. It is annoying but I just bite the bullet and get it over with.
As for as technology, I have a friend of mine (100% Canadian) whose got a Russian wife. He keeps insisting cell phone models here were had in Russia years ago. He exagerates so much and I tell him to move to Russia if he thinks it's SO cool. Canada has ALOT more going for it than Russia does. I'm not saying that i know Russia like the back of my hand but from the sounds of it, if you're very well off, Russia might be alright. But if you're middle class or less then it's probably rough.
The whole tokens and tickets thing for public transportation is strictly because Toronto doesn't get as much as they should from the provincial and federal government (i.e. public transportation suffers). It's trying to be delt with but governments slack.
We don't have 3G here. We have GSM, CDMA, TDMA, etc. yeah it could be better for sure in that respect.
Taxes, yes be pay ALOT of taxes. don't even get me started. I'm not going to say anymore about that.
Shops do not close early. I live in Toronto too FYI. I mean it really is quite a shame that you can't spontaniously go buy new clothes at 4 a.m. Get real. It's "dead" because you must live in a closet or lead an extremly sheltered life. I've never heard anyone say that about Toronto.
It's a shame that you make Canada sound like a huge senior citizen club. Canada is huge and there's TONS of stuff to do no matter what kind of person you are. There's oceans, rocky mountains, prairies (uuughhhh if you're into that), forests, TONS of amazing lakes, big cities, more forests and lakes, east coast, west coast, farm land (if you're into that), tundra way up north. Because the land mass is so huge, the weather and seasons can vary dramatically.
Montreal is an amazing place. I've been twice and loved it. There's so many different things in Canada. It kind of doesn't do anything justice to compare because it's like compare apples to oranges.
