Highlights of our Canadian Working Holiday This week another milestone was reached as we celebrated 18 months in Canada. As always the time has flown by and we wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on some of the best things we’ve done in the last 12 months. So here we go, in no particular order, 6 of our favourite things from this year: 1. Showing … Continue reading Looking back on 18 months in Canada
Our guide to getting an Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) card So you’ve arrived in Canada, and are living in Ontario on your IEC working holiday visa. Hopefully you’ve come with some travel insurance that’ll cover you in case of any immediate medical emergencies (you shouldn’t have got handed your visa at the border without the insurance!). But what about those non-emergency medical things, which … Continue reading Accessing health care in Ontario
Activating our second IEC work permits at Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls An IEC working holiday visa can only be activated at a Port of Entry to Canada. This means that if you’re already in Canada you have to leave the country and come back in again. In 2014 we chose to do this by taking a trip to Seattle. This time we decided to go for the … Continue reading Our experience flagpoling at Niagara Falls
Something very exciting happened last week. This box turned up: The box in question is the economy chocolate box from The Flying Chocolate Company and it rather appropriately arrived on our first Canadian anniversary last week! Launched at the beginning of September, The Flying Chocolate Company specialises in, you guessed it, flying good old British chocolate to deprived expats around the world. I stumbled across them on twitter … Continue reading The Flying Chocolate Company
At work Stewart is known as the master of freebies due to our ability to sniff out a good bargain. Just last week whilst at High Park he suddenly disappeared as he made a beeline for a Lays crisps promo van! Since living in Toronto we’ve made the most of what’s on offer for free, saving us money (for more holidays), whilst still enabling us … Continue reading 8 things to do for free in Toronto
That time we got featured in The Telegraph When Rossi Thompson got in touch with us via Twitter (follow us here) to ask if we’d like to be interviewed for an article she was writing for The Telegraph we were pretty excited. When we discovered it was about what makes us grumpy as expats we weren’t sure we could help after all. Lack of decent chocolate was the only … Continue reading What makes expats grumpy?
A tourist’s perspective of Toronto through the City Sightseeing double-decker bus tour Red double-decker city sightseeing buses. We’ve all seen them. Every city worth its salt seems to have them, and Toronto is no different. I recently had the opportunity to try out Toronto’s sightseeing bus, a 2 hour loop around downtown Toronto, but which also goes as far north as Casa Loma. Each bus … Continue reading City Sightseeing Toronto bus tour
Exploring Hogtown – pork, history, architecture and graffiti with Urban Adventures Hogtown, the Big Smoke, Toronto the Good, T.O., T-Dot and The 6 are just some of the nicknames that Toronto goes by. In a bid to learn more about the city behind these names, we embarked on Urban Adventures’ When Pigs Fry tour, lead by the excellent guide Mike, which focuses on the first of … Continue reading When Pigs Fry – a walking tour of Toronto
So today is our 6 month anniversary since leaving the UK to come on our Canadian adventure. Doesn’t time fly! The good news is that in the past 2 weeks our respective parents have both booked trips to come and visit us (fortunately not at the same time…), and we can’t wait to see them again! To mark our 6 month anniversary, we decided to look … Continue reading Looking back on 6 months in Canada
Here at Brown Bear HQ we were recently honoured to be asked to write a contribution on our experiences for a Canadian working holiday eBook. The eBook in question is written by Gemma from the excellent offtracktravel.ca. Gemma’s website is full of useful tips and inspiration on travelling to Canada’s lesser known parts. Last year, her and partner JR went on a 5 month road trip … Continue reading Canadian working holiday eBook – recognition for Brown Bear!
Brown Bear Travels 