From Canada to Rotorua

Moving from Canada to Rotorua, New Zealand

Patrick and Veronic's migration story

Hi, my name is Patrick. I'm originally from Montreal, Canada.

Hi, I'm Veronic, and I'm from Canada, and I'm living now in Rotorua.

So, actually, I first became interested in moving to New Zealand when I was working at a ski resort called Mount Traemblant, in Quebec.

We met our friends our New Zealand friends, who is from Rotorua and he was working like a for a few years in Canada to set up the luge from from the Skyline luge and we met him, and we loved to have him around us and we like, do everything with him, and that's how we met you know the New Zealand people.

I started to sort of look at the opportunity to move, and Patrick tried a lot to get in here, you know, have like lots of interviews. And he just have this interview and - like that he has this job - he's got this job and we have to move, one month after.

When the council offered me the job, part of the requirements was that I had to come up with the visa, which was quite easy because once you have a job offer, basically I applied for a work visa, which was my first gateway into New Zealand. 

Most of my work was around making sure that she wasn't going to be stuck by herself for the entire move which she was I guess, yeah.

So my first contact with settlement support  - they sent me an email. They sent me basically a guide they produce about, you know, you're moving to New Zealand, so that was really, really good in terms of the value of the information they delivered.

I think I'm feeling better now for my kids, I used to be nervous because we have to put them at the school and we always be nervous about the things. Are they going to find some new friends? Are they going to...? And it was so easy for them to just be in New Zealand and they changed like that, and now I think probably my younger one have the accent. New Zealand accent better than me.