Hurry, Hard! I love curling

Team Manitoba is kicking a** and taking names in this year's Scotties Tournament of Hearts Curling Championship thanks in part to Kaitlyn Lawes

Right now, the TV is tuned to TSN for The Scotties Tournament of Hearts Curling Championship going on in Kingston, Ontario. I really enjoy curling. For those who have never encountered the sport before, you can think of it as "chess on ice". Take it away, Wikipedia:

Curling is a sport in which players slide stones across a sheet of ice towards a target area which is segmented into four rings. It is related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard. Two teams, each of four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called "rocks", across the ice curling sheet towards the house, a circular target marked on the ice.[2] Each team has eight stones. The purpose is to accumulate the highest score for a game; points are scored for the stones resting closest to the centre of the house at the conclusion of each end, which is completed when both teams have thrown all of their stones. A game may consist of ten or eight ends.

The Scotties tournament highlights the best women's players in the sport and they are a blast to watch. Give your Canadian cultural awareness score a boost by learning about this wonderful sport. It's the next best thing to hockey!

Ever changing Toronto

What will I remember from my first couple of years in Toronto? Construction cranes. Looking out my window, I can count seven, working on three office buildings, two new condos, a hotel, and the Union Station renovation. This city is under construction. You can't get away from it. The Toronto I first visited twelve years ago doesn't exist any more, and the Toronto I'll know in a couple years will be nothing like the one I know now. Maybe by then, the construction will have moved from right outside my window though! 

Immigrating to Canada - big city or small town?

A lot of people who consider immigrating to Canada wonder where their best opportunity to settle is: a big city like Toronto, or a small town like Yellowknife? Of course there are arguments in favour of either answer.

Big city pros:

• Lots of employers - In Toronto, there are thousands of employers and thousands of jobs available, if you have the right skills and experience. 
• Lots of support and integration resources - There are many non-profits to help you settle and find work, housing, transportation and get your life started in your new country.
• Large immigrant populations - Toronto's Chinatown alone is comprised of over 500,000 people. The city is truly multicultural.

Big city cons:

• Lots of competition for jobs - For every job, there are potentially dozens, if not hundreds of applications.
• Expensive to live in - big cities cost big money to live in: not only for housing, but for food and services as well.

Small town pros:

• Less competition for jobs - smaller populations mean the employee pool is much smaller too.
• Can be less expensive to live in (depends on location) - rents (primarily) and the general cost of living are more manageable in small towns. This is not the case, however, if the small town happens to be in a remote part of the Northwest Territories.

Small town cons:

• Fewer employers - Some towns are "company towns" with only one major employer. If you can't work there, you might not be able to find a lot of other opportunities.
• Fewer integration resources - Settlement services tend to be located in larger population centres. You might have to travel to one to get the help you need initially.
• Smaller immigrant communities - It's likely in smaller towns that you wont find as many people who speak your native language, or share your traditions. There are, however, a number of small towns that grew out of and maintain strong heritage traditions from their populations.

So that's just a very high level idea of some things to think about when you consider where in Canada you want to live. I encourage you to learn about each of the Provinces and Territories - their histories and the current opportunities they have to offer. You may just find the perfect fit!

No matter what you may have heard, it still snows in Toronto

Frozen Inner Harbour, Toronto

evening snow storm at the Lakeshore, Toronto

The Star - Ottawa’s immigration backlog wipeout illegal, lawyers argue before Federal Court

Nicholas Keung writes:

Canada violates the Charter and discriminates based on country of origin, say lawyers seeking to strike down a law that threw out thousands of applications.

The Federal Court has been asked to strike down legislation passed by the Conservative government last year to wipe out immigration backlogs because it breaches the Charter of Rights and the rule of law.

Lawyers representing 1,000 people affected by the move to toss out nearly 98,000 immigration applications allege that the Tory government had discriminated based on the national origins of the applicants.

Read the rest of the story here