Expedition Canada

House Moving Still Up There   Thu Mar 10th  Seal watching Jack watching seal off Hopkins Landing In the context of all that is going on in Europe it is inconsequential, but I can confirm that house purchasing/moving remains one of the top of life's stressful events.  Not helped when the transaction transcends borders and large sums of money need to be moved.  It's made worse when the exchange rate goes 2.5c against you the day after contracts after exchanged!  In house purchase terms that is a lot of money.  The money is somewhere between my Wise £ account and Wise CAD account, while they carry out money laundering checks, all quite legitimate, but not a quick process.   I wonder if Russian Oligarchs had this much problem moving money around.  One suspects not!  The good news is that the rate has improved and is only 1.2c down - but who knows where it will end up by the time it's sitting in our local attorney's account.  T...

The Canada Connection Sat Mar 5th Canada, according to local news reports, has the second largest Ukrainian population outside Ukraine.  It has therefore been mainstream news across all the networks and local news stations.   This blog was impossible to put together without thinking about what is going on in Europe.   After 35 years working in a news environment,    I remain a bit of a news junkie.  T he first hour of my day is scanning the UK, US, Canadian and international print and broadcast media.  I still have friends working in the industry, who daily are juggling the challenge of Ukraine and Russian deployments of journalist and news crews to cover the story.  Trying to balance the risk to them, against the need to get the story out to national and global audiences.  I miss the buzz of working in a news environment and being part of the decision making teams, but don't miss being part of the decision making.  I am glad I...