What Was it Like Moving to Canada?
Question: What was it like moving to Canada? Jennifer, Lethbridge Alberta We had been together about a year when Mel started interviewing for tenure-track jobs. He really was excited about McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario because it is well-known for its research in evolutionary psychology. He knew several of the professors and thought it might be a great job for him. There are 3 universities in North America that excel at evolutionary psychology: UC Santa Barbara, McMaster University, and the University of New Mexico. He did his PhD at UC Santa Barbara and NM wasn’t hiring that year, so McMaster really was a very exciting opportunity. He was very excited about the job offer and it seemed right for him. I didn’t think it would be wise to put him in the position of choosing between me and the job. I agreed to check it out since I had never been to Canada before. “We’ll need to live in Toronto,” I said. We visited in April and I fell in love with all the amazing old houses in Hamilton–a city of about 500,000 people. We were pretty sure we were coming–in fact we met with a realtor while we visited and put in an offer on a house. It was a go. We bought a house in a little town which eventually amalgamated into Hamilton. Moving to Canada has been amazing, challenging, occasionally annoying, and it is becoming home. We seem to have gone through stages. In the first couple of years we were fairly anti-American and pro all things Canadian. We were adventurers. In the next few years we flip-flopped and were annoyed by some things Canadian and became more patriotic about the US than I ever expected to be. We were homesick. Now I feel like I have found a comfort level with my two countries and I love them both with all their up-sides and down-sides. The Five Weirdest Differences to Get Used to Between Canada and the US There are...
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