It’s official now - we’re leaving London. Both Jen and I have lived in the London area for our whole lives, so it’s kind of hard to say goodbye. We have picked the Ottawa area as our new home, although we haven’t found a house yet. I have visited Ottawa numerous times in the past couple years and I absolutely love it there. There are substantially more tech companies there, which will hopefully make it easier to find the perfect job. Ottawa also seems to have a lot of recreational things as well, like proper rock climbing gyms. The kids are very excited to make new friends at a new school, although they’re also sad to leave everyone behind. I’m sure it will take a few months to get everyone settled in, but we’re all excited about the fresh start in a new city and we can’t wait to get there. Now we just need to find jobs and a place to live. 
September 8th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Good luck Jon.
I did the same (UK/Surrey to Ottawa) in 2006.
Never looked back. Love it here.
Cheers, -Alan
September 10th, 2008 at 5:34 am
I’ve also moved thousands of miles in the past: Barcelona (Spain) -> Canary Islands (2001) -> Balearic Islands (2006), and finding a nice place to live in those destinations has been always the harder task for me. Fortunately, I got it though
Good luck and take it easy
Regards.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:31 am
A friend of mine moved there 18 months ago from Ottawa to allow his wife to take a great job there. He has a great resume but after 13 months of searching and being told he needs French and/or Security clearance or he couldn’t get the job they came back to Toronto where he got three job offers inside a month. So if you haven’t already do some research on this, government towns are not always easy to break into from an IT perspective.