Moving to Saskatchewan: what should I expect money-wise?
April 8, 2009 3:01 PM Subscribe
My husband and I are moving to Saskatchewan (Regina to be more precise) this July (we're from Quebec) and I don't know anything about that province. What should I expect?
We're moving because I found a very interesting job (50K/year benefits, etc.), everything has been signed and we're ready to go. I've just never been there and I don't know what to expect. So here are my questions, any advice/anecdote is welcome:
-Cost of life: how much is a litre of milk over there? What about food and gas?
-I'm used to hydroelectricity, and I've heard that Quebec's energy prices are less expensive than the other provinces. What's it like is SK?
-We would like to rent an appartment to let us get used to our new surroundings, and we still have student loans to pay. I've seen 800$/month for 2-bedroom appartments. It seems quite expensive. Do I need a reality check?
-We'd also like to buy a used car. Should we buy it here (in Quebec) or wait 'till we're there?
That's about it... we're quite excited about it, it's a new experience and we're glad to get out of our comfort-zone. Thank you all for your advice!
We're moving because I found a very interesting job (50K/year benefits, etc.), everything has been signed and we're ready to go. I've just never been there and I don't know what to expect. So here are my questions, any advice/anecdote is welcome:
-Cost of life: how much is a litre of milk over there? What about food and gas?
-I'm used to hydroelectricity, and I've heard that Quebec's energy prices are less expensive than the other provinces. What's it like is SK?
-We would like to rent an appartment to let us get used to our new surroundings, and we still have student loans to pay. I've seen 800$/month for 2-bedroom appartments. It seems quite expensive. Do I need a reality check?
-We'd also like to buy a used car. Should we buy it here (in Quebec) or wait 'till we're there?
That's about it... we're quite excited about it, it's a new experience and we're glad to get out of our comfort-zone. Thank you all for your advice!
I live in Regina. I am not sure about retail prices in general, but people from other places tend to find things here to be cheap - you aren't going to find a lot of boutique-type shops but some are around. Saskatchewan always prided itself on having a low-priced energy bundle when we had an NDP government, but I am not sure that is still the case - my electric bill for a smallish house is about $60 on an equalized payment plan. I pay about $130 for natural gas (equalized) - do not rent/buy a place with electric heat here - you won't like it. We're probably somewhere in the middle of the pack for Canada.
The real estate costs used to be very very cheap but have become pretty high lately - about the last 4-5 years. A decent place in a good neigbourhood is going to be expensive. I think your real estate quote for an apartment was probably about average. There is work here and people are moving here. You'll hear horror stories about certain neigbourhoods in Regina (ie: North Central being named Canada's Worst Neighbourhood) but those problems tend to be overstated. We generate some pretty bad crime stats, but that is in part because people here still think it is worthwhile to phone the cops when bad things happen. There are a lot of homes for sale right now, and quite a number being built... I suspect the real estate market might loosen a bit but that is just my opinion.
Used cars in Saskatchewan should be good, don't bring one from Quebec. We don't use salt on the roads so cars tend to last, and if you bring a car in from Quebec it will need to be safety inspected.. chances are this will be more trouble than its worth. I've noticed we seem to pay a bit of a premium on imported cars here (its not severe - a couple of grand on even on Toyotas and Hondas) but that is probably not worth considering. Public transit isn't very good, but the city is small and not too congested - I don't put a lot of mileage on my car. If you are going to be working downtown parking can be a bit hard to find,
The arts community here is bigger and more active than most places of this size, and we have more restaurants per capita than pretty much anywhere. People always seem to be concerned about the presence of ethnic food... we have lots of Greek, Chinese and SE Asian restaurants. We have two or three decent Indian and sushi places, and I can think of an authentic Thai, Afghan, North African, Jamaican, and Ethiopian restaurant. We are home to what I think is the best brewpub in the world... Roughrider games are blast even if you don't care about football. The U of R is primarily an arts and sciences school but its got some decent fine arts, engineering and education programs. Contrary to the belief that Regina is some bastion of prairie conservatism, Regina has a lot of NDP voters - most provincial seats have NDP mla's and the federal seats tend to elect Conseratives because the boundaries are gerrymandered to favour rural voters.
People will probably be pretty hard on you for deciding to move to Regina but you'lll find the national consensus on what Regina is about was formed about 20 years ago when we were in an economic free-fall and references a place that doesn't really exist anymore.
posted by Deep Dish at 4:40 PM on April 8, 2009
The real estate costs used to be very very cheap but have become pretty high lately - about the last 4-5 years. A decent place in a good neigbourhood is going to be expensive. I think your real estate quote for an apartment was probably about average. There is work here and people are moving here. You'll hear horror stories about certain neigbourhoods in Regina (ie: North Central being named Canada's Worst Neighbourhood) but those problems tend to be overstated. We generate some pretty bad crime stats, but that is in part because people here still think it is worthwhile to phone the cops when bad things happen. There are a lot of homes for sale right now, and quite a number being built... I suspect the real estate market might loosen a bit but that is just my opinion.
Used cars in Saskatchewan should be good, don't bring one from Quebec. We don't use salt on the roads so cars tend to last, and if you bring a car in from Quebec it will need to be safety inspected.. chances are this will be more trouble than its worth. I've noticed we seem to pay a bit of a premium on imported cars here (its not severe - a couple of grand on even on Toyotas and Hondas) but that is probably not worth considering. Public transit isn't very good, but the city is small and not too congested - I don't put a lot of mileage on my car. If you are going to be working downtown parking can be a bit hard to find,
The arts community here is bigger and more active than most places of this size, and we have more restaurants per capita than pretty much anywhere. People always seem to be concerned about the presence of ethnic food... we have lots of Greek, Chinese and SE Asian restaurants. We have two or three decent Indian and sushi places, and I can think of an authentic Thai, Afghan, North African, Jamaican, and Ethiopian restaurant. We are home to what I think is the best brewpub in the world... Roughrider games are blast even if you don't care about football. The U of R is primarily an arts and sciences school but its got some decent fine arts, engineering and education programs. Contrary to the belief that Regina is some bastion of prairie conservatism, Regina has a lot of NDP voters - most provincial seats have NDP mla's and the federal seats tend to elect Conseratives because the boundaries are gerrymandered to favour rural voters.
People will probably be pretty hard on you for deciding to move to Regina but you'lll find the national consensus on what Regina is about was formed about 20 years ago when we were in an economic free-fall and references a place that doesn't really exist anymore.
posted by Deep Dish at 4:40 PM on April 8, 2009
Feel free to ask me anything else, you can contact me on mefi-mail and I'll send you my contact information. Regina is a good place, but it doesn't hurt to know someone :)
posted by Deep Dish at 4:44 PM on April 8, 2009
posted by Deep Dish at 4:44 PM on April 8, 2009
I'm from Saskatchewan originally, but haven't lived there in a while. I have relatives who live there still though, including some in Regina (I lived in Saskatoon). Things I can tell you for certain:
- housing. $800 for a good two bedroom isn't entirely out of line, though if you look harder you should be able to find something cheaper. How is your credit though? There are a lot of cheap like borscht houses to be purchased in Regina. The family (mine) was tossing around the idea of buying 3 or 4 houses there last year as income properties since at the time you could buy an OK house in a not terrible neighborhood for under 75K, which would make a mortgage payment in the $550/mo range and we were thinking we could rent them for a modest rise on top of that, which the rental market seems to bear out.
- Car: If you don't yet have one you might just want to wait to get one there. If you buy one in Quebec and bring it in to SK, in order to get SK plates on it you'll have to get it inspected and if it's a used car (and you know how used cars can be) and anything's out of whack that might be a significant cost to get it certified. On the plus side, SK insurance is cheap compared to most other provinces thanks to the way SGI (Sask. Government Insurance) works. Gas is about the same +/- 10c a liter as anywhere else.
- Power: If I am reading SaskPower's report correctly, looks like it's about 8c/kWh for power there. Here in BC, it's 6.5c/kWh, and it looks like it's 7c/kWh in Quebec? Shouldn't be excessive in difference. Most of Saskatchewan's power is coal or natural gas, like the big thermal plant outside of Estevan, but there's also Diefenbaker dam, which is a hydro station.
as ethnomethodologist says, it's cold. In January especially, holy f*ck is it cold. I remember going to high school and waiting 20 minutes for the bus in -40C weather. Fortunately this only persists for a couple of weeks, then it's right back up to a balmy -20C. There are "chinooks" that hit the prairies in midwinter from time to time, that bring warm air from the Pacific region, and when one of those hits temperatures can go to 0 or even +2 to +4. It's not unheard of to see people out sunbathing or walking around in t-shirts and shorts when that happens. Chinooks usually last 3 - 5 days.
Another thing to keep in mind is the humidity or lack thereof. Not sure where you're from in Quebec, but a lot of the urban areas of Que aren't all that far from large bodies of water, similar to the west coast in Vancouver (where I am now) and as a result there's a lot of moisture in the air. Not so out there. You will notice the dryness, and when getting used to it, some people occasionally get nosebleeds, etc. Most places have humidifiers to help, which also keeps the static electricity under control.
There's also a lot of dust in summertime. Not dust storms or anything like that, but just expect there to be a lot more dust accumulation than you're used to.
And rain is a not too common occurrence. But it makes up for it's lack of frequency by amping up the intensity when it does come. Out here in BC we never get a really cool electrical storm like I used to see in SK.
People are nice and friendly in general, and Regina's a nice city. There is a bit of property crime in Regina though, so be aware of that and keep valuables out of sight in locked cars, etc.
Overall, it should be quite an experience if you've never lived in the prairies before, so have fun! If you like, you can also MeFi mail me with follow up questions or anything else you want to pick my brain over.
posted by barc0001 at 4:45 PM on April 8, 2009
- housing. $800 for a good two bedroom isn't entirely out of line, though if you look harder you should be able to find something cheaper. How is your credit though? There are a lot of cheap like borscht houses to be purchased in Regina. The family (mine) was tossing around the idea of buying 3 or 4 houses there last year as income properties since at the time you could buy an OK house in a not terrible neighborhood for under 75K, which would make a mortgage payment in the $550/mo range and we were thinking we could rent them for a modest rise on top of that, which the rental market seems to bear out.
- Car: If you don't yet have one you might just want to wait to get one there. If you buy one in Quebec and bring it in to SK, in order to get SK plates on it you'll have to get it inspected and if it's a used car (and you know how used cars can be) and anything's out of whack that might be a significant cost to get it certified. On the plus side, SK insurance is cheap compared to most other provinces thanks to the way SGI (Sask. Government Insurance) works. Gas is about the same +/- 10c a liter as anywhere else.
- Power: If I am reading SaskPower's report correctly, looks like it's about 8c/kWh for power there. Here in BC, it's 6.5c/kWh, and it looks like it's 7c/kWh in Quebec? Shouldn't be excessive in difference. Most of Saskatchewan's power is coal or natural gas, like the big thermal plant outside of Estevan, but there's also Diefenbaker dam, which is a hydro station.
as ethnomethodologist says, it's cold. In January especially, holy f*ck is it cold. I remember going to high school and waiting 20 minutes for the bus in -40C weather. Fortunately this only persists for a couple of weeks, then it's right back up to a balmy -20C. There are "chinooks" that hit the prairies in midwinter from time to time, that bring warm air from the Pacific region, and when one of those hits temperatures can go to 0 or even +2 to +4. It's not unheard of to see people out sunbathing or walking around in t-shirts and shorts when that happens. Chinooks usually last 3 - 5 days.
Another thing to keep in mind is the humidity or lack thereof. Not sure where you're from in Quebec, but a lot of the urban areas of Que aren't all that far from large bodies of water, similar to the west coast in Vancouver (where I am now) and as a result there's a lot of moisture in the air. Not so out there. You will notice the dryness, and when getting used to it, some people occasionally get nosebleeds, etc. Most places have humidifiers to help, which also keeps the static electricity under control.
There's also a lot of dust in summertime. Not dust storms or anything like that, but just expect there to be a lot more dust accumulation than you're used to.
And rain is a not too common occurrence. But it makes up for it's lack of frequency by amping up the intensity when it does come. Out here in BC we never get a really cool electrical storm like I used to see in SK.
People are nice and friendly in general, and Regina's a nice city. There is a bit of property crime in Regina though, so be aware of that and keep valuables out of sight in locked cars, etc.
Overall, it should be quite an experience if you've never lived in the prairies before, so have fun! If you like, you can also MeFi mail me with follow up questions or anything else you want to pick my brain over.
posted by barc0001 at 4:45 PM on April 8, 2009
Perhaps I can give a data point on the housing costs thing. There is a decent house in a bad neigbourhood in Regina I tried to buy (to live in) about four years ago. My offer was $59K and the house went for something like $62K. That house is on the market again for $167,000 with no upgrades that I can see (the listing says it has a new furnace).
There is a house on my block which was about $59K back then, and its about $180000 now, again no significant upgrades.
posted by Deep Dish at 4:59 PM on April 8, 2009
There is a house on my block which was about $59K back then, and its about $180000 now, again no significant upgrades.
posted by Deep Dish at 4:59 PM on April 8, 2009
I worked in Regina for awhile last decade. The weather can be nasty in winter, like much of Quebec. It gets hotter in the summers. The cost of living is very low, though the selection of shops is also low. For example there are, if I remember right, about four shopping malls of useful size. Crime is a problem, but it's all property crime, not the worst concern. You'll want good locks, and a ~$200/yr monitored alarm is not a bad idea.
You don't say where you are from in Quebec. If you are from a smaller city or town, you will probably enjoy Regina, which is small/quiet and "boring" in a pleasant way. People are textbook-Canadian friendly. It is a city you can walk across from city limit to city limit in a single day -- and heck, that's recommended if you enjoy hikes.
If you are from Montreal, however, you may be in for some culture shock. Late-night anything is rare, and music/theatre/culture choices are limited.
posted by rokusan at 7:14 PM on April 8, 2009
You don't say where you are from in Quebec. If you are from a smaller city or town, you will probably enjoy Regina, which is small/quiet and "boring" in a pleasant way. People are textbook-Canadian friendly. It is a city you can walk across from city limit to city limit in a single day -- and heck, that's recommended if you enjoy hikes.
If you are from Montreal, however, you may be in for some culture shock. Late-night anything is rare, and music/theatre/culture choices are limited.
posted by rokusan at 7:14 PM on April 8, 2009
barco001, Regina is MUCH too far from the Rockies to get chinooks. Chinooks don't even make it to Red Deer (or, for that matter, to Edmonton). Regina can indeed benefit from westerly flows, but so can Winnipeg.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 7:33 PM on April 8, 2009
posted by ethnomethodologist at 7:33 PM on April 8, 2009
I would take the property crime advice in this thread seriously, but this is an aspect of Regina life that has improved quite a bit in recent years.
posted by Deep Dish at 7:47 PM on April 8, 2009
posted by Deep Dish at 7:47 PM on April 8, 2009
Husband and wife team here - both born and raised in small towns within an hour of Regina and have spent the majority of our adult lives in Regina.
- the most important answer - the best brewpub in Canada that Deep Dish mentioned but didn't name is Bushwakkers.
YOUR QUESTIONS
- milk costs maybe $5 for a 4L jug? I know when my wife and I spent a year in Ontario, the milk seemed way more expensive there - our theory was because the land was so much more expensive so they didn't have big dairy farms like out here. (I could be wrong on that though.)
- groceries are probably the same as anywhere else in Canada roughly with some things being more expensive, some less, some harder to find and some easier. Gas was 95.9 the last I looked but seems to fluctuate daily. It's always more expensive in summer. Oh, and there are a couple stations owned by First Nations bands just outside the city that are usually 6-10 cents cheaper per litre. (I think there's one in the city now too but haven't been to it.)
- my understanding is that Saskatchewan tends to have some of the cheapest utilities in Canada because all of our major suppliers are government owned - SaskPower, SaskEnergy. This goes for phone service (SaskTel) and car insurance (SGI) as well. Liquor stores are government owned so the selection isn't always the greatest and we tend to have a few bigger liquor stores rather than a store on every corner like I found in Alberta where they're privatized.
- I have no idea what apartments are going for these days but $800/month seems on the low to mid range I'd guess. All depends on the area, the landlord (Boardwalk is the big player here) and what you're getting of course.
- buy your car here as others have said - avoid the inspection cost (and any repairs that are needed) plus we don't have salted roads so older vehicles are often cheaper but in better shape.
OTHER OBSERVATIONS
- politically, as Deep Dish alluded to, we tend to have a socialist NDP culture in our cities and a conservative majority in our rural areas.
- housing prices have jumped incredibly in the last three years - from the time we bought our house in 2005 until today, our house has more than doubled. We're in a working class /middle class neighbourhood in the north part of the city.
- not too disagree with Barc001 too much but we don't really get a lot chinooks here - that's more of an Alberta thing. Our winters are long and cold. We usually get at least one and possibly more stretches of -40 weather through the winter. Windchill makes it even colder.
- the south end is known as the "desirable" part of town and is very white collar - both the University and the Parliament are in that end of town.
- the east end is where all the big box stores are and it has also experienced phenomenal growth in the past decade.
- our downtown isn't a complete ghost town in the evenings but it isn't thriving either (though there are lots of people working to change that)
- transit isn't great as someone mentioned but if you have a car (seconding buying here), everything's 15 minutes away and the traffic's never too bad (although getting worse as the city and province booms)
- forty-five minutes northeast of Regina is the Qu'Appelle Valley which is one of Saskatchewan's best kept secrets - people drive through and think "oh, it's so flat here!" and ten minutes north of the #1 highway is a scenic paradise.
- you didn't mention if you're francophone or not but we do have a pretty active Francophone community and it was recently announced that a new French-only high school will be built (I believe right now, all French students go to a single school from K-12)
- we have a reputation for being some of the friendliest people in the country (many of us in "the big city" of Regina have small town roots and values.) The flip side of that is people can be suspicious of outsiders and people I've known from elsewhere have said it took work to feel accepted here. (The newcomers' personality is probably a big part of this too of course.)
If you haven't already, type "Regina, Saskatchewan" into not only Google but YouTube, Flickr, WikiTravel, etc. etc. and you'll get more insight into what it's like here.
If you want to get a sense of what people in the province are talking about, I'd recommend the Sask Blogs aggregator.
Can I ask where you got work? Oh, and yet another offer to feel free to contact me with any other questions you may have.
posted by Jaybo at 7:52 PM on April 8, 2009
- the most important answer - the best brewpub in Canada that Deep Dish mentioned but didn't name is Bushwakkers.
YOUR QUESTIONS
- milk costs maybe $5 for a 4L jug? I know when my wife and I spent a year in Ontario, the milk seemed way more expensive there - our theory was because the land was so much more expensive so they didn't have big dairy farms like out here. (I could be wrong on that though.)
- groceries are probably the same as anywhere else in Canada roughly with some things being more expensive, some less, some harder to find and some easier. Gas was 95.9 the last I looked but seems to fluctuate daily. It's always more expensive in summer. Oh, and there are a couple stations owned by First Nations bands just outside the city that are usually 6-10 cents cheaper per litre. (I think there's one in the city now too but haven't been to it.)
- my understanding is that Saskatchewan tends to have some of the cheapest utilities in Canada because all of our major suppliers are government owned - SaskPower, SaskEnergy. This goes for phone service (SaskTel) and car insurance (SGI) as well. Liquor stores are government owned so the selection isn't always the greatest and we tend to have a few bigger liquor stores rather than a store on every corner like I found in Alberta where they're privatized.
- I have no idea what apartments are going for these days but $800/month seems on the low to mid range I'd guess. All depends on the area, the landlord (Boardwalk is the big player here) and what you're getting of course.
- buy your car here as others have said - avoid the inspection cost (and any repairs that are needed) plus we don't have salted roads so older vehicles are often cheaper but in better shape.
OTHER OBSERVATIONS
- politically, as Deep Dish alluded to, we tend to have a socialist NDP culture in our cities and a conservative majority in our rural areas.
- housing prices have jumped incredibly in the last three years - from the time we bought our house in 2005 until today, our house has more than doubled. We're in a working class /middle class neighbourhood in the north part of the city.
- not too disagree with Barc001 too much but we don't really get a lot chinooks here - that's more of an Alberta thing. Our winters are long and cold. We usually get at least one and possibly more stretches of -40 weather through the winter. Windchill makes it even colder.
- the south end is known as the "desirable" part of town and is very white collar - both the University and the Parliament are in that end of town.
- the east end is where all the big box stores are and it has also experienced phenomenal growth in the past decade.
- our downtown isn't a complete ghost town in the evenings but it isn't thriving either (though there are lots of people working to change that)
- transit isn't great as someone mentioned but if you have a car (seconding buying here), everything's 15 minutes away and the traffic's never too bad (although getting worse as the city and province booms)
- forty-five minutes northeast of Regina is the Qu'Appelle Valley which is one of Saskatchewan's best kept secrets - people drive through and think "oh, it's so flat here!" and ten minutes north of the #1 highway is a scenic paradise.
- you didn't mention if you're francophone or not but we do have a pretty active Francophone community and it was recently announced that a new French-only high school will be built (I believe right now, all French students go to a single school from K-12)
- we have a reputation for being some of the friendliest people in the country (many of us in "the big city" of Regina have small town roots and values.) The flip side of that is people can be suspicious of outsiders and people I've known from elsewhere have said it took work to feel accepted here. (The newcomers' personality is probably a big part of this too of course.)
If you haven't already, type "Regina, Saskatchewan" into not only Google but YouTube, Flickr, WikiTravel, etc. etc. and you'll get more insight into what it's like here.
If you want to get a sense of what people in the province are talking about, I'd recommend the Sask Blogs aggregator.
Can I ask where you got work? Oh, and yet another offer to feel free to contact me with any other questions you may have.
posted by Jaybo at 7:52 PM on April 8, 2009
ethnomethodologist, call it what you like, but the effect was that mattered to us. It'd be -20 or -25 for weeks, and then all of a sudden... Boom! temperature overnight goes from freezing your ass off to around 0 to a couple of degrees in the positive. This persisted for a few days, then we were dumped right back into the deep freeze for weeks more.
Maybe it's not a real chinook as defined here as it never got that warm, and according to that map it never reaches Saskatchewan, but it was nevertheless very welcome and something to be enjoyed when they come.
posted by barc0001 at 7:54 PM on April 8, 2009
Maybe it's not a real chinook as defined here as it never got that warm, and according to that map it never reaches Saskatchewan, but it was nevertheless very welcome and something to be enjoyed when they come.
posted by barc0001 at 7:54 PM on April 8, 2009
I'm from Saskatoon originally, though I've been living in Seoul for the last couple of years. My brother just rented out his one-bedroom basement suite, though, and he charged $750. I'm sure he could've gotten more; he got 15 calls after one day of advertising. Housing in SK has gone up significantly, even in the past couple of years.
Also, yes, I'd say the people are nice.
posted by smorange at 9:55 PM on April 8, 2009
Also, yes, I'd say the people are nice.
posted by smorange at 9:55 PM on April 8, 2009
I lived in Regina from 1976 to 1995 (born and raised there), and in Montreal from 1999 until 2008. So while I can't comment on the current economics of Saskatchewan, I feel qualified to comment on what would stand out to a Quebecer. :)
It may be a dry cold, but Saskatchewan in winter will be colder than anything you've ever experienced. Hypothermia is a real risk, enough that there are often weather warnings about the extreme cold (as in, it only takes a few minutes exposed skin to freeze). In Regina, having a car means using a block heater so it'll start in the morning, and carrying jumper cables or getting a CAA membership for those times when you can't plug in your heater and your engine dies!
Uncomfortable weather aside, the landscapes in Saskatchewan are often spectacular. Summer days are incredibly long and sunny, with huge blue open sky over the flat, flat plains. Winter days are often bright and clear. You can even sometimes see the Northern lights from Regina.
There is a significant aboriginal population in Regina, so the culture is more prominent than in Quebec's cities. You may find people are generally more informed about aboriginal issues, however prejudices from both sides can exist.
Have you ever seen the show Corner Gas? Every little town in Saskatchewan is kind of like that, with Regina being kind of like a little big town. :)
posted by exquisite_deluxe at 1:55 AM on April 9, 2009
It may be a dry cold, but Saskatchewan in winter will be colder than anything you've ever experienced. Hypothermia is a real risk, enough that there are often weather warnings about the extreme cold (as in, it only takes a few minutes exposed skin to freeze). In Regina, having a car means using a block heater so it'll start in the morning, and carrying jumper cables or getting a CAA membership for those times when you can't plug in your heater and your engine dies!
Uncomfortable weather aside, the landscapes in Saskatchewan are often spectacular. Summer days are incredibly long and sunny, with huge blue open sky over the flat, flat plains. Winter days are often bright and clear. You can even sometimes see the Northern lights from Regina.
There is a significant aboriginal population in Regina, so the culture is more prominent than in Quebec's cities. You may find people are generally more informed about aboriginal issues, however prejudices from both sides can exist.
Have you ever seen the show Corner Gas? Every little town in Saskatchewan is kind of like that, with Regina being kind of like a little big town. :)
posted by exquisite_deluxe at 1:55 AM on April 9, 2009
Response by poster: Thank you all for your helpful comments!
For those who asked, I'm from Quebec City. I don't think we'd be comfortable living in a city as big as Montreal or Toronto, so I think we'll be ok in Regina. Perhaps I'll miss having a wide variety of shops around, but as long as we have a bookstore that sells books in English and access to English movies (things we don't have here and that we long for) we're happy!
DeepDish: Thank you so much, I'll certainly keep your offer in mind if I have other questions :)
posted by invisible_woman at 6:57 AM on April 9, 2009
For those who asked, I'm from Quebec City. I don't think we'd be comfortable living in a city as big as Montreal or Toronto, so I think we'll be ok in Regina. Perhaps I'll miss having a wide variety of shops around, but as long as we have a bookstore that sells books in English and access to English movies (things we don't have here and that we long for) we're happy!
DeepDish: Thank you so much, I'll certainly keep your offer in mind if I have other questions :)
posted by invisible_woman at 6:57 AM on April 9, 2009
« Older Married Filing Jointly - how do we correctly fill... | Help me buy a new notebook computer! Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 3:38 PM on April 8, 2009 [2 favorites]