I moved to the middle of Canada, where the affordable healthcare is great, but the closest city is 2 hours away and I can't find anything cheap on Amazon

• Leslie Redmond, 37, moved to Winnipeg, Canada, from Alaska in 2022.
• She said she loves the area's cultural diversity and its selection of international foods.
• But, she added, housing is quite expensive and basic goods, especially from Amazon, are pricey.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Leslie Redmond, 37, about her experience moving from Alaska to Winnipeg, a city of around 750,000 residents in the center of Canada. She is an assistant professor of food and human nutritional sciences in the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Manitoba. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Winnipeg is known as the cultural capital of Canada.

There's a large newcomer population from all areas — a lot of Asian countries. There's a really large Filipino population here. There's a really big Ukrainian population and a really big Polish population. So there are a lot of flavors and foods that are really ubiquitous up here that I wouldn't have had in the States.

Culture is a big thing here, and it's widely appreciated. They have a festival every summer called Folklorama where all these different cultural centers put on performances and sell their food. You go and learn about their customs and their culture, and that draws a lot of people, even from North Dakota.

It's not the paradise Americans expect

It's not perfect. Especially since moving here, I've learned they have their own issues. It's not some paradise that Americans envision.

You're in the middle of the continent here. It's not Vancouver, not Quebec. There is a housing shortage, but it is still a low cost of living, relatively speaking.

We bought our house for a little over $500,000 CAD (or about $370,000) just over a year ago. It was right after things had really peaked. By peaked, I mean there were houses that'd be on the market a day, or within a certain asking price bracket you'd go and there'd be like 30 people at an open house, or there were bidding wars.

That was the case across Canada — and across the US — but I think that's kind of slowed down a little bit now. But housing's very expensive.

Alaska's not a good comparison or representative of the US because everything's more expensive up there, too. I would say Winnipeg is pretty equivalent to Alaska, but Alaska is higher than what you would find in the lower 48.

I miss Amazon. In the States, it's way cheaper. When I logged on to Amazon to buy things the first couple of times here, I was like, "Why is this so expensive?" And then I would log onto my US account and it's like half the price. So that was a little disappointing.

This is just the silliest of things, but when going to the store in the US, there are so many different varieties of things. Here there are a few options. I didn't realize that was a luxury in the US until I came here and my choices were limited. In Winnipeg, we're about two hours from North Dakota, so sometimes we'll go down to Grand Forks just to go to Target — and it's a big deal.

You see all these other Canadians there, too. And my husband always mentions, even since he was a kid, the cereal aisle astounds him. So any time we're in Target in Grand Forks, there's just all these Canadians in the cereal aisle picking out their cereal because there are so many choices.

I've lived in a lot of interesting places, but I never thought I'd live in the prairie. Winnipeg is flat and there is very little geographical variation. There are parts of Manitoba that have forests and that have some hills, and there are lots and lots and lots of lakes.

People love their cabins on the lakes here — and it is beautiful — but for me, I think that was the hardest adjustment. Going from a very dramatic, rugged, mountainous, oceanside environment to a very flat middle of the country.

The closest city is two hours away. I can't quote you on the population, but it's very small, but it's what qualifies as an urban area in Manitoba. I think there are Midwestern cities in the US where it's the exact same situation: You're in a big city, but there are no big cities around you.

You're landlocked — the equivalent of a flyover state.

I had thought of living in Canada even before it became an option for me

Even prior to dating a Canadian, I was excited to move to Canada. My friends and I had always joked, "Oh, we should just move to Canada." So it had crossed my mind, but not seriously.

Once I was in a serious relationship and we knew we were going to get married, I wasn't hesitant at all. I was excited about it.

With my particular position in academia, I work with Indigenous populations. Canada still has a really long way to go, as far as reconciliation with Indigenous communities. But, in my experience now working in the US and Canada, Canada's far ahead of the US as far as that's concerned in academia and the research realm. That was really a positive thing coming here for my work.

I was excited about free healthcare. Of course, you pay for it in taxes, but you hear about that and you hear about the really generous maternity leave. I knew there were higher taxes here coming into it.

I have that collectivist mentality — if it's good for the group, it's good for me — which I think is more pervasive in Canada. Which is why most people here are okay with socialized healthcare.

I didn't want to have kids until I officially became a permanent resident in the healthcare system. I have a lot of friends my age having kids in the States — just hearing from them the medical bills and the things they have to go through. And heaven forbid something goes wrong during labor, and you have to stay in the NICU for 10 days. The cost just adds up. Here, if anything happened, they're covered.

There's a lot of politics here, it's just not so bipartisan. There are many more perspectives. I think it's more of an even playing field. So it's not that there isn't politics, it's just different.

I was dating my husband when it was election season in the US, and I felt every time I went into the Yukon, where he lived before we moved, it was a relief because it was like I got to be immediately shielded from all the election drama that was happening in the US. It wasn't on the news as much. I could ignore it if I wanted to, whereas in Alaska, it was in my face all the time. It just got so tiresome and anxiety-inducing.

It's very easy for someone in the US to move to Canada. It's not so easy, maybe, from other countries.

So I do feel very privileged that I was able to pick up and move. Not everybody can do that.