Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Adventurer]

I have never been to Thunderbay. I also know nothing about Lakehead University. I would appreciate some information about the two...


Thanks...

[Canadian Club]

There are a lot of Finns in Thunder Bay!

There are also a lot of trees, lakes, bushparties, and canoes.

[blaseblasphemener]

There are a lot of druggies there. It's the Newfoundland of Ontario.

[oneofthesarahs]

I have a very close friend who went to Lakehead. They once shut down an entire day of classes because there was a bear wandering around on campus.

[robot]

i'm from the bay.

whaddaya wanna know about lakehead?

oneofthesarahs: really, they shut down campus? man, that was a daily occurrence. i used to write for our local daily there and i was always doing pieces on bears walking around downtown...

[Scott in Incheon]

If it is about the education program...then maybe I can help. I did the one year B'Ed program there 95-96.

[Adventurer]

[ajgeddes]

[Are they the lemmings]

"Thunder Bay"? Sure, it's just down the hall, second door on the right. The flush button gets stuck sometimes, so you have to push har...... What? Oh, ooops, sorry

[whatever]

Keep the bear stories coming!

[Adventurer]

[robot]

Thunder Bay (two words) is an amazing place, but you have to be a cetain kind of person to live there.

Foremost there is the relative isolation to consider. We're 8 driving hours away from Winnipeg, 14 hours from Toronto, blocked by the US border on the south and up north there's only the north pole.

It's also apparently one of the only cities in Canada that is imploding -- reducing in population rather than increasing. When I was there we were at 113,000. The key factor in this is youth out-migration resulting from very poor job prospects in certain areas. There's work for teachers, but many schools are closing down these days, and that added to the fact that Lakehead offers the very popular Ed program means that there's stiff competition and long waits on sub lists. Many people end up venturing north even moreso into the sticks to find solid gigs. The cost of living is quite low, though, and you can buy a decent-sized 3-bedroom house with a yard in a good neighborhood for well under CDN $100,000.

The people and landscape are also beautiful. If you're at all into the wilderness, Thunder Bay is one of the best places for camping, rafting, mountain climbing, and all that fun. From the heart of downtown, you can drive for 15 minutes and be in the middle of the forest with no one around. There are often tales of people just a few minutes' drive out of the city getting lost in the bush while hunting or camping. As for the people, while Thunder Bay has the laid-back, down-to-earth kind of folk you would expect of a small town, it also for some reason has produced a significant amount of exceptionally cool artists, musicians, etc. (though most of them head to Toronto or Vancouver). And tons of NHL hockey players, of course. It's true -- there are tons of Finns, so there's an excellent sauna culture that rivals even Korea. There are many other European families that live there, very few Asians, and a rapidly increasing Native population that is predicted to soon make up the majority of the city.

I'll probably relocate there when I'm older. I think it's a perfect place for retirement, just relaxing and camping and enjoying nature in a slow-paced city. For now, I need to be somewhere with a scene... but I do miss that place fiercely.

[crusher_of_heads]

I would concur with Robot except for teaching jobs-apart from French, nothing up there-they've been closing schools and plan on a few more this year.

[Fishead soup]

If you want to fit in you'd better get a mullet. Things get a little crazy there when the Welfare cheques come in. That's usually the last Wednesday of every month.

[djsmnc]