My eBook, How To Immigrate To Canada For Skilled Workers: The Authoritative Guide To Federal And Provincial Opportunities is available now on Amazon and other online retailers. Get your copy of the essential guide to Skilled Worker class applications today!

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Also available is my new eBook, "How To Immigrate To Canada In The Family Class: The Authoritative Guide Including Québec And Super Visa Opportunities". Get it at Amazon or the other e-retailers noted above.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

More online resouces - Toronto

As promised, here's a few more links to good news and information sources. Those of you outside the Big Smoke may not get all the value out of these, but since I'm Toronto bound as a lot of you are too...

Torontoist - Toronto news, culture, events and everything else
680 News - All news radio from Toronto
City TV/CityNews - Downtown Toronto's popular TV news source
BlogTO - Arts, music, fashion, film, dining...this blog has the pulse of the City

I'll keep them coming. Please comment with your own favorite lists!

Monday, September 21, 2009

In honor of TIFF - a few Canadian movies to love

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has just concluded and since I'm not feeling particularly polictical this month, I thought I'd share with you a handful of Canadian films (and US films with Canadian content) that you might want to consider checking out. Nothing serious here, as you will soon be able to tell, but I'm sure you'll be entertained.

The envelope, please...(the Netflix envelope that is!)

The Rocket - the story of Mauirce Richard, the greatest hockey player of all time!
The Sweater - Roch Carrier's short story of growing up in St. Justine, Quebec, animated by Sheldon Cohen
Les Boys - French Canadians, hockey, what more could you ask for?
Men With Brooms - A lighthearted comedy/romance with curling too.
Mystery, Alaska - Gladiator meets the NY Rangers. Sure it's a US film, but it was made in Canada!
Slap Shot - Roy Hill's hilarious minor league carnival wouldn't be complete without the song, "A Little Bit South of Saskatoon."
Strange Brew - SCTV makes good, eh? More stereotypes than you can fill a canoe with.
A Christmas Story - yes, Canadian film makers at work with Ralphie and the Red Rider rifle.
Atanarjuat - an Inuit legend of an evil spirit causing terrible trouble

What films have you enjoyed?

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Losing your illusion - right-wing Canada

Every country has what we in America call "right-wing zealots". Canada is no exception. These are folks who subscribe to a very black and white view of the world, who regard immigrants with suspicion, who advocate closed borders, "get tough" policies and generally lack compassion for others.

Whenever there is a report on an immigration issue in The Star, these folks come out of their bunkers in droves to comment, stepping up anonymously and hiding behind monkiers like "Canada for Canadians" and "George W Bush".

In a recent article, The Star reported on a case for the UK involving a Canadian woman who was kicked out of the UK and wont be able to return for two years (when she's 21) under a law meant to protect the forced (arranged) marriage of young women to older men (a non-western tradition). She is 19, he is 28.

Sure enough, out come the vultures, ready to feed:

"Canada needs to stiffen our laws too. I am a Canadian citizen (single male) and I have been offered money in the past from a woman wanting to get married for citizenship. I wound (sic) how often that happens?"

"Canada wants to let in more people to support the aging population and pension plan, but at what cost? A good percentage of the people getting in don't want to work or are out rite criminals."

"Canada too should follow Britain in stopping this `business' of bringing spouses from one's native country. Canadian men go to their native India and Pakistan or wahtever and exploit people's craze there for foreign tag. They marry their daughters to them. What happens after that is well documented. Also, this practice doesn't encourage integration in local societies. Wake up, Jason Kenney."

While there are many, MANY who will welcome you to Canada as an immigrant, don't be surprised that there is also a very vocal contingent who wants nothing to do with you. It's always been this way, and always will be. Don't let it discourage you!

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

The Best in Canadian Blogging

If you are looking for the best blogs Canada has to offer (besides this one :)), then you can do no better than to check out those listed at the Canadian Blog Awards web site. Though the 2009 awards season has not started yet, there's still lots of great finds here. Every topic from the political to the personal, sports, photography, entertainment and culture and much, MUCH more is covered in the nominees.

And maybe when the polling opens again for 2009, you can throw a nomination my way too :).

- Cheers!

Monday, September 07, 2009

Scouting the web - Canadian immigration news

I found a nice site tonight I thought I'd share with you all. http://www.canadaimmigrants.com/ is dedicated to those looking to come to Canada to work and covers a lot of bases. It's focus however, is "to provide an interdisciplinary and collaborative site, where the analysis and discussion about discrimination against highly skilled immigrants in the Canadian job market can articulate effective proposals to eliminate systematic racism."

This is a great goal, but I stumbled onto them because they also happen to keep regularly up on immigration news. If you're looking for a sampling of the buzz about immigrant issues, they are certainly a good bookmark to add. Check out their news feed here. The only thing I'd like to see with their effort is a link back to full articles. You can always plug the headings into Google and get the whole thing I suppose, but it would be better if they simply linked us in.

I'll do a full survey of immigration news providers later this month.