The backstory - where?

We had certain requirements, these have changed over time, but initially they were

• Skiing, sailing and horse riding near by
• Good supply of IT jobs
• Somewhere much smaller than London but still big enough to have the hustle and bustle of town life but small enough that getting out would be easy

We talked about a number of places
Sydney - The skiing wasn't close enough (and weren't the sharks a bit of a setback on the sailing front) plus being too far from home
Geneva - Too Swiss plus they speak a funny language there
New Zealand - Too far from home and too small feeling
Vancouver - Loved it!

In 2003 we spent the ski season from January to May in Whistler and loved it. We spent a bit of time in Vancouver on the way home and liked the feel of it there too.
We had a winner!

Close to the sea for sailing

Close to the mountains for skiing and horse riding

Good skiing in Whistler...

... even though our skiing was too rubbish to appreciate a lot of it...

So we looked in to Canadian residency, and it seemed that it should be very doable as it was based on a points system taking in to account things like your education, age and profession and we easily qualified.
We submitted the application and it then looked like we would have something like 2.5 years to wait as they only accept a certain number of people each year. This was a little disappointing but kind of a good thing as it would give us a little longer on a London income to save up to give us a good start while we looked for jobs etc.