Who We Are
Why We're Here
Hi!! Hello!! Hola and Bienvenue! Greetings and Salutations, Shalom and Aloha everyone!! Welcome to, “The Great Escape, Eh?”! I’m so happy you’ve stopped by for a visit, eh?!
Now tell me …
- Are you a Canadian living in the United States and have decided to move back to Canada? Us too! We did it and we’re here to share our story and everything we learned to help you plan and organize your move.
- Are you a Canadian living in the United States and just thinking of moving back? Also us! I’ll share everything we went through, pros and cons and ups and downs and walks around the block till we finally came to the decision to move.
- Maybe you’re a Canadian living somewhere else and are moving back to Canada? A lot of what I share is relevant whether you’re crossing the Canada/US border or another, so come on along!
- Maybe you’re not moving at all but are curious of how it goes, or just want to see all the sh*t we went through. Great! Join us as we share our ‘moving back to Canada’ story and for hopefully some good fun and great laughs at our expense, of course
Fabulous! Then you’ve landed in the right place … The Great Escape, Eh?, is written for YOU!
Hey everyone, I’m Heather and the moustache guy is my husband Jeff. Sharing the story of our move back to Canada from the US with all its trials and tribulations was his idea although I get to do the writing (check out my next post, “So what’s in a name, eh?”). Thanks honey 
A Bit About Us
Jeff and I met in a bar at the Majestic Hotel in Calgary nearly 40 years ago. Anyone remember those huge cabarets? Wholly those were such great parties! I swore I’d never even date anyone I met in a bar yet, here we are!
He was tall and skinny with long wavy hair and pouring concrete for a living. I’d just gone back to school to earn my Computer Science degree and needed a part time job to support myself living away from home.
Working at Paskapoo in Calgary (which later became Canada Olympic Park), was just the best job ever and a totally fantastic experience being able to help host the 1988 Olympic Winter Games. We worked with some pretty cool folks back then that we’re so happy to still call friends today, and we still laugh our heads off at memories of some of the crazy shit we did back then. Who even knew you could ride a shovel down the bobsled track?!
Well yes, yes you can, shovels, crazy carpets and ladders … oh to be young and stupid haha! When Jeff got invited to train with the Canadian National Bobsleigh team at least he got to ride in an actual bobsled. ☺
When he wasn’t working or training or being a new dad he earned some extra money by being the brakeman for what we called, “Tourist Bobs”. A qualified driver and brakeman take two passengers in a four-man bobsled and go for a ride down the track – talk about a rush. Check these guys out, they thought so too!
Fast forward a few years, Jeff earned his degree in Electronic Engineering and had a great career in Calgary, being one of the first in his field to install fibre optic cabling in Canada. About the time the opportunity to move to Arizona came about he’d gone back to night school to become a Licensed Massage Therapist. Graduating with honors all with a new baby at home, he’d be able to use his new skills down south (once he was legally able to work, of course. That too, is a story in itself!).
We’ve been blessed with two amazing (adult) boys, a beautiful daughter-in-law, and over the summer the sweetest little baby girl arrived, our first grandchild! What an angel, what a blessing ❤
All from rescue, our three delightful fur kids of course moved back to Canada with us: Brody the Border Collie, Harley the 135lb Yellow Lab and Lucy the tabby cat. Unlike their human counterparts the dogs are totally loving the cold and snow haha! Their stories follow, come on along and meet the gang and in a future post I’ll show you how easy it is to bring your fur kids back to Canada with you.
A Bit About Me
By trade I’m a Software Engineer/Project Manager, and it was my job that moved us from Calgary, Alberta to Phoenix, Arizona in late 1999. I was working for this little software company called Oracle, put in for a transfer to Honolulu on a whim and well, to make a long story short, Phoenix (Mesa) was a pretty awesome place to end up. No snow and icy roads, no scraping windshields, no more mitts and toques and big winter coats, yep were all in. And the sunshine, wholly!
I’ve spent the majority of my career in the fast paced, high tech world and as a Consultant, aka road warrior. We all understood that with the transfer and new job I’d be on the road a lot, but we decided to give it a go with mom being away. Well, a year became two, which became five, ten and then twenty.
That’s how it goes. I travelled nearly every week for work all over North America, leaving my family every Sunday then flying home Thursday nights usually, spending the weekends doing ‘stuff’ then packing up and leaving again. Crazy. Jeff always joked that my kids wondered who the blonde lady was that showed up once a week, dropped her laundry, did some baking, cooked a meal then left again on Sundays.
I was having a really bad day in my professional job one day (a seemingly common occurrence…), I was frustrated and miserable and pissed off and Jeff just told me to quit. Quit the sh*tty job and a$hole manager that treats you like crap. Just quit .. the boys were grown and had moved away, I could find something better or we could just go live in a tent, but that crap just wasn’t worth it anymore. Anyone else out there have those days?!
I thought about it for a minute. How could I possibly give up the income, the health insurance and all the rest? I’m sure a lot of my family and colleagues thought I was out of my freakin’ mind but, that’s just what I did. For my own sanity and wellbeing, I QUIT!
Yes I did and I went off and finally did something I’d always wanted to do. I went back to school and got certified as a Personal Trainer. Before I even wrote my exams I landed a job at the new EOS and was going to spend my days in the gym … I was so excited! I knew the money to start would be crap, especially after a professional salary and it didn’t disappoint lol.. but there’s something to be said for doing what you’ve always wanted to do, and to enjoy going to work and having a good time every single day.
That was great but we still needed a way to supplement our income so we opened up our home and rented the upstairs as a private AirBnb. Immediately after I’d placed the ad we were booked solid. It was great income to offset my teeny gym earnings and it was so freakin’ much fun hosting people from all over, we had such a good time. But then along came Covid-19, and that was that.
My new job as a Personal Trainer? Done as gyms shut down. Our new gig as AirBnb Superhosts? Also done as travel shut down too. I’m sure that’s the story for so many of you, having an income one day and zero the next, and as each day passed who even knew if or when things would go back to the way they were.
We had a big, beautiful home and yard in Mesa, AZ, our family home that we’d built and grown and changed with since our move south over 20 years earlier. We loved the heat, we loved where we lived and had never really even considered leaving.
Returning to Canada - Our Story
Jeff had a great job at a local golf course just ten minutes from home. Early hours, but it was probably one of the only recreational activities that wasn’t shut down at the start of the pandemic, and since he started work at 4:00am there wasn’t much contact with other humans so we were grateful at least he was able to keep working.
What to do. As the pandemic raged on and things shut down, and we went into lockdowns and quarantines and all the rest we had to consider our options. Stay in the house and I’d go back to work in IT to help pay for it all? Sell the house and rent something smaller there? Rent out the big house and find ourselves something smaller? Sell and move back to Canada? Go somewhere else?
This, my dear readers, is our story. Please join me as I share our adventures and all the little its and bits things that tripped us up along the way, including our pros and cons of moving and how we even got to our decision to move back when we said we never would.
Follow along and I’ll share resources, checklists, and hopefully some good laughs to help you, too have a smooth border crossing. Call us crazy but we did it in the middle of a global pandemic during the Canadian wintertime. We lived and are here to tell the story.
Do you have pets? Check out my upcoming post on “Bringing Your Pets Across the Border”. It’s pretty easy.
Will you be bringing vehicles across? There are things you need to do to properly export, then import your vehicles into Canada. Let me show you what you’ll need and how to do it all so you won’t have any problems at the border.
Are you selling your home in the United States? Check out our story so the title people don’t try and collect taxes and major moolah that they are not entitled to! You need to be alert, and you need to know the laws and your rights as a Canadian living in the US in respect to selling your home.
The decision to leave our friends, our ‘hood, the home that we raised our boys in was really hard – 20 years in the same place is a long time nowadays. The home that saw many a wild New Year’s Eve party, our boy’s graduation party (complete with a six piece rock band and nearly 200 guests), rocked the neighborhood pretty good that night! Yeah, the decision to leave was hard, but look for an upcoming post where I’ll go over what we talked through as we walked round and round our neighborhood in Augusta Ranch and we got to our decision to move back.
Deciding what to keep, what to sell, what to garage sale, what to donate, what’s recycling and what’s garbage was hard! That in itself was a job and a half, and that’s about what we came back to Canada with – half of what we’d owned and enough to fill a 26-foot moving truck. There’s just a few things I’m kicking my behind for that I donated but, that’s okay. I hope our donations were able to help out others in need.
Dearest readers, my promise to all of you is to ALWAYS be open, honest and a passionate blogger. This is all new to me (this blogging stuff) as it’s sooooo outside the bits and bytes of my technology career but, I hope you’ll stumble along with me as I try something new and write something for you!
I’m not here to sell you snake oils or lizard skins or anything at all. “The Great Escape, Eh?”, is written just to share our stories, information, things we learned and things that tripped us up in our move back to Canada. My wish is that if this helps just one person or family move back, and y’all get some good laughs at our stumbles along the way, then even better! Life’s too short, laugh often
Today is a new day, and it’s the BEST day. I’m a wife, mom, software engineer, personal trainer, cook, baker and chief bottle washer, and starting today I’m a blogger. I couldn’t be more excited to write and share for all of YOU!!
“Life is Beautiful”
Heather
Meet the pack
Brody
Hey everyone, hi! I’m Brody and my sister Ruby and I were about eight months old when we were rescued from a really bad place in southern Utah. A good human saw us chained up to a chicken coop and reported the bad humans to the Arizona Border Collie Rescue. They came and got us and took us far away from the bad place.
We were so scared and cold all the time and we were just little, it was wintertime and the bad people just left us out there. The AZBCR people gave us a warm bed, fresh food and water, some nice people to stay with for awhile and nobody ever put another chain around our necks. Thank you Arizona Border Collie Rescue for saving us. ❤
My mom’s good friend Heidi told her about the AZBCR rescue people and we all got to meet at a big park one day with lots of different kinds of dogs and humans – wholly! It was exciting and all but I was still pretty nervous and scared of all the noise.
The blonde lady knelt down to say hi and I rolled right into her lap for a belly rub, then I checked out the moustache human and he’s cool, then I met Benny and as they say, the rest is history.
Mom tells me all the time that she sees my sister Ruby online…on the line? I don’t understand, but she tells me Ruby’s happy and I’m happy now too. Welcome everyone!
Love, Brody ❤
Harley
Hola! I’m Harley and my brother Max and I were born in Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point), Mexico. We were just little still and didn’t know what was going on when our humans took us to this place called a Kill Shelter and left us there. Had we been bad?
Someone said we were going to be pretty big, I don’t know, but we were so happy when the people at Barb’s Dog Rescue came and saved us! They brought us to Barb’s place and gave us a bed to sleep on, fresh food and (not so fresh) water and we got to meet all the other dogs. There’s like 350 of us!
Humans seem to just throw a lot of us “Mexico” dogs away but we’re good and we just need some love too. We don’t cost any money at Barb’s so my new humans brought some big bags of dog food and stuffed toys for all the dogs to share and came looking for a new friend for Brody.
As soon as I saw them I wouldn’t leave them alone and kept getting in the way of the other dogs (haha, seems that worked out alright!). They asked the Barb lady if they could bring Max home too but she said he was going to someone else’s house. I guess that’s okay, Brody will be a good brother and they said I’ll also get to live with Lucy the cat. What’s a cat? Anyways, welcome everybody!
Mucho Amor, Harley ❤
lucy
Hello everyone I’m Lucy, or Lucy girl as my mama calls me. A nice lady in Apache Junction, Arizona found me and my brothers and sisters hiding under her porch. We were super little and all alone.
We were hungry and cold and really scared, this big, mean, dog-thing came in the dark and took our mama away and hurt her really bad. We heard her cry but we didn’t know what was happening. The nice lady told my dad it was a coyote. I don’t know what that is but I don’t think I ever want to find out!
The nice lady gave me to my now dad, and my dad gave me to my mama. He said I was a big surprise and a Chrismakah present? I don’t know, but she was SO happy, and she cuddled me when I was scared and whispered that I was safe and that she loved me for always. I hope my brothers and sisters are safe and loved too.
Brody’s always trying to herd me and Harley’s always sticking his nose up my butt but they’re the best big brothers. Come follow along with my mama as she tells our big moving story, and see how I got to ride up front in the big truck!
Lotsa love, Lucy ❤
“Rescued is my favourite breed.”
– Unknown