Relocating to Ottawa - day care (& housing) questions for European newbies to Canada
Hello & bonjour from across the big pond! My employer made me an (irresistible) offer to relocate to your lovely city for a few years, and enjoy the sweet Maple syrup and ice hockey filled Canadian way of life as an “expat” (that was maybe too much European stereotyping – my apologies)!
The upside is the nice compensation package to help my family and me make the jump, the downside is that I will need to organise a lot on my own before we fly over in the summer. I am therefore turning to r/Ottawa’s hive mind on the most pressing question for us: day care, kindergarten and school (and a bit less pressing: housing).
Coming from chocolate and beer filled Brussels, our situation is that we have a 3-year-old who speaks Dutch (at home) and French (in the crèche / maternelle). We would like him to learn English without losing the French as we will go back a few years in the future, while getting a good education with lots of friends along the way. So ideally a bilingual day care, kindergarten and school would be great (as he will continue to speak Dutch at home).
I have searched this sub extensively and understood that Canada probably is as complex as my current residence (Belgium) when it comes to languages, with four school types (EN / FR and catholic / public) governed by respective school boards. Kindergartens are attached to elementary schools, day cares are not. It seems to be important to live in the right “school district”. My google education on this also showed that the Fraser Institute is doing elementary school rankings but I have no insights how reliable these are. On top, there are private schools, which are expensive and maybe not as good as they might appear from the outside (according to the colleague I am going to replace and who had a bad experience with the Lycée Claudel). Then, everyone here is talking about waiting lists managed by the city for day cares and fee subsidies, but how does it work without subsidies. I am of course happy for any subsidies but just assume that the Canadian state might not want to subsidise well-paid expats.
We have not yet decided on the housing but following recommendations of colleagues, looking at my small soon-to-be office downtown and seeing the nice bike paths near the canal, our initial thinking was looking for a house to rent in Old Ottawa East or South, or the Glebe. We could pay $3500-4000 a month in rent and I hope that will be enough for a three bedroom. So feel free to also offer any tips on finding a good place to rent, e.g. how long in advance to look and what pitfalls to be aware of.
A massive thanks & merci to all the help r/Ottawa can offer! :-)