Why we left Canada

last year was a year that nobody saw coming who could have predicted any of that so today i want to talk to you about how it changed the course of the life that i was living why i left canada and what i learned [Music] over the last few weeks we've gained a lot of new subscribers on the channel welcome and the last year has been one hell of a journey and in case you weren't here for it allow me just to recap or you could watch my one year in canada review my name is dr june i am an orthopedic surgeon i completed my training in london and after all of the exams and years of hard work i wanted to change so i applied for a job in canada i got a job at the university of toronto and then july 2019 i packed up all of my belongings including my three-year-old daughter and my heavily pregnant wife and we jumped on an airplane and we flew to toronto where a new life awakening [Music] we made it yeah but i can't really do much right now this was just one of those urges that i'd always had and had spent some time in the states but i always wanted to go back and when i got the opportunity in canada we took it because we knew that we wanted to spend some time in a country that we might potentially fall in love with and end up wanting to stay so bear in mind this was pre-covered and it was glorious summer sun shone every single day we had long days warm evenings dinners out parties festivals whether it was getting creative or just going out for drinks i had a blast and it didn't take long for us to meet some really cool people make some really close friends and already start feeling as though toronto was quickly becoming our home and there was something every weekend for the kids i mean every weekend there was a festival some kind of event some kind of fair and they had a blast [Applause] and don't get me started on christmas whether it was the snow the christmas markets the mulled wine or the poutine it was like something straight out of a christmas movie it was cold though but definitely something i could have gotten used to [Music] and my condo jeez it was luxurious i mean to get the same standard of living in central london you would probably have to give up an internal organ i lived in a brand new condo right in the heart of the city well just outside the downtown area but in an amazing area i had bars restaurants nightclubs cinema malls literally on my doorstep and the building itself was amazing like 24-hour concierge penthouse gym you've got business study suites rooftop bbq and bar it was honestly like living a dream and for a fraction of the price of what you would pay in central bank [Music] the main reason for the move was actually work as i said i am a trauma and orthopedic surgeon and surgeons in canada have a great quality of life they earn good money uh it's a wonderful country to live and raise a family it's pretty safe and people are really friendly so we went completely open-minded we thought if we love it then perhaps we'll extend because we were on a one-year fellowship post and we could extend it maybe apply for another one-year fellowship and then eventually try and see if we can organize a permanent position and i have to say the work was amazing i spent the time learning cutting edge techniques in the field of upper limb surgery and trauma i spent the year treating patients with really devastating injuries and learning different models of healthcare how to deliver surgery and treatment in a different way a completely different health service to what i was used to and so that certainly opened up my mind and i do encourage anybody in whatever field that you work in to go and work in a different country and just see alternative ways of doing what you've become so used to doing we had lots of residents lots of fellows lots of surgeons in general and there literally was never a dull moment from early starts late finishes lots of operating lots of teaching lots of meetings lots of dinners it was just a truly amazing experience and there were lots of really great hospitals in the city and they all come under the university of toronto umbrella so the networking was incredible sadly in 2020 covert came and changed everything so we had a baby shortly after we moved my son is officially canadian i nearly forgot your brother said he brought these for you yeah yeah he said he he said that he can't believe that he's got a big sister can you carry it and i perhaps didn't appreciate how difficult that was going to be and the toll it was going to take on my wife and even our relationship and so we quickly found ourselves locked down in a country with a new baby and a toddler but no real close friends or family and i was a surgeon so i still had to spend a lot of that time working with which meant i actually got to leave go to work come back at least interact with other people and the stress and anxiety during the first wave when we constantly were bombarded with death rate and hospital admission numbers and itu capacity and numbers of disproportionate black people that were dying all over the world from colvin it took a significant psychological impact on us and i remember you know we were worried about kobe initially we were worried about what would it mean if we caught it in a country where we we don't have any family and we have to care for our kids we also worried about our parents falling ill and us being nowhere near by to be able to help it seems a distant memory now but it really was um it really was a game changer i remember how devastated we were when our travel plans crashed to a hole we had work trips planned conferences in the us had an orthopedic meeting in orlando and i was so looking forward to that this is the biggest medical meeting in the world and i've been wanting to go for years and i'm literally a stone's throw away and it was cancelled we had a trip to disney world for the kids cancelled my wife wanted to see mexico so we had booked a trip to mexico cancelled even my flights to come back to london cancelled so we found ourselves really isolated and the airlines westjet you still have my money i'm coming for you i want it back and so all of a sudden we were cut off from civilization in a crucial moment of our whole experience just as we were finding our feet making friends and networking it was cut and so a lot of surgeons were not working and can you imagine being a fully trained surgeon with all of your years of experience and finding yourself unemployed and that really was the situation there were a lot of unemployed surgeons and a lot of canadian surgeons who were on second third and even fourth fellowships still trying to find full-time posts as uh as surgeons and so that was a little daunting my opportunities for networking were cut to zero it's my team dream team what's up instead it might end up on this stage of course we talked about going to another province but essentially that would have been the same thing we would have been starting from scratch again and bear in mind i had excellent training in london i have some amazing contacts have done some great networking and have trained at some of the best hostels in london and so i knew that we could have a wonderful career in london but could we have the lifestyle that we wanted either way i think that we decided that once the contract was up we were going to go back home the sad part of it was that as we were leaving the country was starting to open up and so we were able to get out and do a few things we went and visited niagara falls we went and visited blue mountains we went on a couple of road trips with friends we went back to niagara actually and we had a blast the last like couple of months before we left and we started to see some resemblance of normal return thankfully usually this street you can't even drive look there's the falls right there see that little plume oh yeah let's spray from the falls because they're so powerful do you remember the last time we came down here how busy it was [Music] it was crazy [Music] well let's get let's get a parking spot up here and then we'll we'll bail out that um canada had been stung previously by sars so they took no chances this time and it acted quickly and so because of that i think the first wave was managed really well you can also press this button and that button turns it into like it puts it all into like race mode for 20 so just over a year later we jumped on an airplane and we flew back to london and i remember the experience being surreal because we were on an aircraft that was built for 220 people and there were only about 20 of us and so that experience i'll never forget landing in the airport and it being completely deserted it was like something out of a zombie movie but we got to experience traveling during a global pandemic which is a unique one and anyway we moved back home we moved back into our family home which was big more space for the kids a lot of outdoor space which we had been missing living in our condo family nearby and of course i was able to hit the ground running and start building my career as an orthopedic surgeon in london and i'm looking forward to what the future has in store it was a wonderful experience in our journey i think that toronto is now like a second home and we definitely will be visiting seeing our friends and my son is canadian so i don't know what that's going to mean for the future but i will never fully close the door on that chapter you never know if an opportunity comes up who knows but for now we are building our lives in london ultimately i think i relearned what i already knew and that is that happiness is the true key to success i think it is the key to survival and i mean happiness in terms of yours and your family's peace because stress and anxiety will make you physically sick it will cause psychological and physical problems and so i think we could have explored opportunities to stay but it was high risk and had i been younger or even single then you could do it you could crash on a friend's couch and i haven't even mentioned how badly the fellowship actually pays until you get a permanent job so trying to feed a family but live a lifestyle that actually makes you happy in an expensive city like toronto was starting to become challenging but as i said ultimately it comes down to making decisions that make you happy and we are definitely happy in london at the moment so we probably did the right thing who knows my son may end up playing for the raptors you might see me courtside in the nba one day you never know and i think i want to leave you with this take opportunities to travel because it definitely opens your eyes to opportunities that you otherwise never would have considered or seen so if you enjoyed the video let me know what you thought in the comments and if there's anything else from my canadian adventure that you want to know let me know and i will definitely get to work for you but anyway till next time be good [Music] you

Channel: DR JUDE

Views: 480,977

Keywords: move to canada, toronto, vancouver, move UK to Canada, leaving canada, doctor vlog, medical vlog, becoming a surgeon, surgeon lifestyle, how to become a doctor, doctor in canada, Why I left canada, moving with family, black doctors, dr jude, life in canada, how much do doctors earn, doctors who vlog, lifestyle of a doctor, day in the life of a doctor, becoming a doctor in the UK, travel vlog

Id: uML3Lmy19Po

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 24 2021