I MOVED TO TORONTO – WE SPEND WEEKENDS IN THE MOUNTAINS BUT I MISS CHEAP M&S SALADS

Around half a million people left the UK to live elsewhere last year, and it’s not just retirees. A survey of more than 3,000 young people by the British Council showed that 72 per cent of 18- to 30-year-olds would consider living and working abroad.

They cite varying factors – cold weather, high cost of living, extortionate childcare, stagnant wages, dwindling opportunity, lack of work-life balance and even poor romantic prospects – among their motivations for leaving the UK. The i Paper’s Expat Files follows Brits who have taken the leap and settled elsewhere, detailing the ups and downs of their journey. Kate Debar, 34, and her husband left London for Toronto in 2018. They tell Katie Strick why they’ve chosen to start a family there.

My husband and I lived in Australia for a year after university, back in 2014. I loved it so much that when he was offered a job back in the UK, I had to decide whether I wanted to stay with him or stay in Australia. I chose him, happily, but we made a pact that in four years’ time we’d move back to Australia after both gaining a little more work experience in the UK.

Four years later, we were newly married and living in Reading, travelling into London most weekends to see friends. We had great jobs (my husband in telecoms, myself in tech advertising sales) and we loved our lives. But I’d never seen myself staying in one place. I’ve always believed that you have to make decisions to move overseas when everything is great so you can leave on a high.

The visa for Australia was proving too complicated so we looked into other English-speaking countries with an outdoorsy lifestyle. We spent a while toying between Singapore and Canada – both of which at least one of us had visited before – and the decision eventually came down to climate. My husband is a warm-blooded soul and said he couldn’t face commuting in a shirt in the heat of Singapore, so Canada it was.

I pushed for us to move to Vancouver because I love the mountains, the beach and outdoor activities it’s known for. But many big companies only have offices in Toronto, and we didn’t want our careers to take too much of a dip. Still, we were choosing between the two cities right up to the wire.

A week before leaving the UK, we decided on Toronto. We didn’t have jobs or a plan – only that we’d stay until the end of our two-year visa, then head back to the UK or go travelling. We landed with two suitcases and very little else, except a notification that our stay at an Airbnb had been approved for a week on the beaches in the east end of Toronto. I remember driving from the airport across an elevated highway through the city, looking into people’s condos in big sky-rise blocks. It felt cool and futuristic, but where were the trees, the greenery? I didn’t tell my husband until the next day, but I spent that whole journey thinking: “Oh my God, we’ve made a terrible decision.”

After a month of flip-flopping between Airbnbs we moved into a big expat house share in the west end of Toronto, which could probably be likened to Balham or Clapham in terms of it being full of young professionals keen to grow their careers but also have a fun lifestyle. Many people opt for condos in downtown Toronto, so they can live centrally. They’re cool and often come with a tennis or basketball court or a rooftop pool, but they’re not my vibe.

We found it hard to break into already established friendships that many of the Canadians we met already had. We became bolder as time went on, but were initially drawn to other expats with similar mindsets around wanting to travel and explore. Fraser, a friend-of-a-friend from the UK, relocated at a similar time to us, so we quickly teamed up. One night, Fraser and I went to a run club called Midnight Runners and met many of our now-best friends.

My husband and I both took about three months to get jobs. We’d thought that having a good job in London would set us up for success, so were surprised that Canadian employers wanted people with Canadian experience. I took a job as a cleaner for Airbnbs in the meantime, because I wanted to enjoy the Canadian summer and be able to drink nice wine without living off my savings. Some properties I had to clean were horrendous, but it gave me a sense of different neighbourhoods we might later live in. I didn’t really care what work I was doing. I just wanted the money.

My husband ended up landing on his feet using connections from his work in London. He found a job at a smaller telecoms company before moving into a dream role at the larger Canadian company he works in today. I took longer to find my dream job, taking an advertising role at an agency almost two years after the cleaning job. The pay wasn’t great and they worked me hard for it, but I met lots of my best friends there; many Canadians who took us under their wings and welcomed us for family thanksgivings. In return, we introduced them to our expat friends and our British lifestyle. Even after all these years, they still find our British-isms hilarious – several of them have notes on their phones with funny British sayings I’ve taught them like “fancy a coffee and a chinwag?” or “I’m cream-crackered”.

There isn’t the same after-work drinks culture here. People are much more homey and work-focused. They’re always shocked when we fly off somewhere for a long weekend. In my current role as a brand partnerships manager for a large international tech firm, I’ve seen a real focus on career when interviewing Canadians. They have so much experience on their resumes and are less likely to have taken gap years or extended time out like many of us do in the UK. I recently discovered I’d been to more Canadian provinces than one of my Canadian colleagues. There’s less vacation allowance here – three weeks as opposed to five in the UK – but it’s also an attitude. I’m always surprised at how colleagues often get to the end of the year having not maxed out their days.

I love how open-minded and progressive Canadians are. There’s a real family-first culture, so they’re very forward-thinking in terms of parental leave: the government can support you for up to 18 months after giving birth, and my current employer provides almost six months of paid maternity leave. They’re also very inclusive. It becomes second-nature to ask someone’s pronouns when you meet them, and I’ve definitely become more conscious.

Canadians are also generally very rule-abiding. Drinking in public isn’t allowed except for a few select parks, dogs are very well-behaved and never jump up, and people were very obedient of the lockdown rules despite Toronto having the longest official shut-down of any city in the world. My group of expat friends would often be the only ones in restaurants, sitting outside with hot water bottles in -15 temperatures.

People in Toronto live for the summer, because the winter is very long and cold. It’s currently -13 outside and feels like -23, with 30cm of snow on the ground. There’s sometimes snow until as late as April, but then the city suddenly goes from winter to summer in just a couple of weeks. Before you know it, everyone’s out of hibernation and patio season is back. People are at the beach, going to food festivals, or swimming, fishing and barbecuing at their lakeside cottages north of Toronto (which are more like mansions).

We had our first child in 2022 and have just had our second, so life has changed a bit since our days going to restaurants and bars. I’ve made a nice number of mum friends just by approaching them in coffee shops, going to parent Crossfit classes or through the Peanut app.

Four years ago we also bought our own house, having moved out of our house share in 2022 and lived in a couple of a triplexes (house that are split into three apartments) in the west end of Toronto, before buying a three-bed close to a subway downtown. I feel very safe here, in general. Toronto does have big problems with drugs and homelessness, but what major city doesn’t? We have Canadian friends who don’t like going on the subway but I’ve never had an issue.

Property prices are pretty similar to London, but the benefit in Toronto is that majority of houses come with a basement, so you have a tiny bit more space. Also, the house-buying process is also a lot simpler and less stressful. We’d moved into our new house within two months of having our offer accepted.

Will we stay in Toronto forever? It’s a conversation we’re having regularly. I’m always on the hunt for what’s next – Barcelona and Costa Rica are among the options my husband and I are exploring at the moment – and we constantly think about moving back to the UK. We’re lucky it’s only a seven-hour flight so friends visit us regularly, and we tend to fly back at least once a year.

We’re also lucky our parents like to come and stay with us for long stints. So it’s just weighing up those long, quality stays with seeing them regularly. We’d love for our kids to grow up around their grandparents and I miss little things about the UK like good affordable cheeses and high-quality, on-the-go foods such as M&S salads and dine-in-for-two date-night deals. The equivalent can be quite limited, and the grocery shopping can be extortionate.

Then again, our work-life balance is significantly better in Toronto than it would be in the UK. Our jobs in the UK would probably be in London but we couldn’t afford to buy there, so our commutes would be well over an hour door-to-door. Here, my my commute is a maximum of 45 minutes and my husband can cycle or subway to his office in just 20 mins. Our son’s daycare is just a four-minute walk from the house, so we have a lot more family time in the evening than we would at home. We really value family time and love that our employers do, too.

Our lifestyle is also better. It’s a small city with a great restaurant scene and we’re always eating food and meeting people from places I’d never even heard of before moving here. We also adore driving north to the lakes and that calm, simple lifestyle you can live up there in the summer. We came here with the intention of doing a two-year stint; now we have two beautiful kids, a mortgage, an amazing community of friends and are officially Canadian citizens with seven years under our belt as Torontians.

While I will always be a dreamer and would consider doing another move abroad one day, we couldn’t be happier with our lives here in Toronto for now; the lifestyle, the family-first focus, the open progressive mindset and the career opportunities.

We are so grateful to be able to spend so much time with the kids and have good careers – none of which we’d want to sacrifice. We can definitely see ourselves moving back to the UK one day. But it’s Toronto for now – who knows what’s around the corner.

2026-03-03T06:49:03Z