Argh! Frustration!

Gosh! The irony is sort of funny! I'm originally from Vancouver Island, which is technically only 35 miles away, but a huge leap in terms of lifestyle etc. found in Vancouver. I've found living here for the past 3 years difficult. Vancouver is a gorgeous city, scenery-wise, but we've found that the reality of living here is not easy. The active lifestyle is definitely promoted, but most people I know can't access it because stuff life skiing or what have you is just too expensive. It's also really hard to meet people here; it's like people are always waiting for a better offer or something. LOLLL We don't know whether this is due to the population being fairly transient (a newspaper poll done recently rated the Greater Vancouver population at over 50% moving on after 2 years of living here). It's a really odd anomoly that seems to be specific to this city. Even the people who were born and raised here agree with it. Hmmm. And it seems that unless something will directly affect you, the apathy here is rampant. It's depressing. If we could afford it and I was more fluent in French, we'd move to Montreal in a heartbeat. Great city, great people, a lot of fun, a definite arts/cultural option. Although the weather can be a bit scary.

I bet I'll miss Vancouver when I leave, too, though. it is very pretty.

T

That's funny - I'm in Victoria and after having lived all over the place couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

I've only lived here for about two years, but both my girlfriend and I can hardly wait to get back after being away in other parts of the world whenever we go on vacation. She's originally from Sweden, and really enjoys it here more.

The lifestyle here is fantastic. While sure, there's other places I could live and certainly other cities I enjoy, this is the only place I've ever felt glad to come back to - There's never the dissapointment of "Oh, the vacation's over."

Personally I'd hate living in Vancouver (nice to visit though). Just too much rain, too many people and the traffic is horrendous. But I like the size and relative 'remoteness' of the island. Again, liek you said even though it's only like 40 km or so away, it still maintains it's isolation fairly well. And if you want the ammenities of a big city, hop on the ferry and there you go.

Anyways - My 2 cents for what they're worth. I hope whatever your plans are, they work out.

Yeah...I'm pretty desperate to get back too. I have lived in 3 continents, NA,Europe and now Asia and I must say there is no place like home-sweet sweet Toronto-GO JAYS!

doesn't the UK allow common-law or conugal partner sponsorship? I thought they did.

How about a 2 year working holiday visa? Can you apply for leave to remain from that? I'm not sure how those work, but I have a couple of friends currently in England on working holiday visas.

Could always just bite the bullet and get married. UK spousal visas only take a day to process at some UK consulates, or only a week at others, and have work authority immediately upon entering IIRC. Just go get married at city hall, its relatively cheap.

Hi, and thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately, I'm too old (I'm 40) to qualify for most of the programs available, including the working holiday one. As well, although my Brit partner and I have been together for almost 2 years, we've only been able to live together for the past 10 months. And while we plan on spending the rest of our lives together, both of us would rather get married because we want to get married, not because we *have* to, if that makes sense. Which we do, but not at this time. He had a fairly bad experience with marriage 5 years ago (it lasted 4.5 months). There's still some baggage there he needs to deal with. But you never know. We've talked about it. It's not the most horrible idea in the world, but neither is it under ideal circumstances.

Who'd have thought it would be so frigging difficult for two people belonging to the Commonwealth to stay together in the same country! Grrrr!

Teel

try Canada/US! it took my husband and I nearly 4 years to get to live together. we didn't really want to get married either just to satisfy immigration but for me to move to the US, that's the only way to do it. They don't have common-law here. And Canada wouldn't let him in.

I don't regret getting married, but it would have been nice to do it on our terms and on our time, not the stupid governments And then have to wait for their stupid paper pushers to boot! before we could even live together.

Yep, England much easier for that! One day, a week tops!

I think the only way to get around it would be to marry. It doesn't have to be pricey...you could just get a civil service and not tell anyone. Try to think of it as a paperwork thing and nothing else...