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Thanks for the question Jenna. I have lived in Edmonton all my life and when I was little I read about Wop May. I don’t think schools teach about him anymore but they really should. We learned about his amazing flight to save lives and he was held up as a person of good character for us youngster to emulate. In my opinion….his qualities just exemplify what Edmonton is all about.Wop May | The Canadian EncyclopediaNot a person but a group of people…the Edmonton Grads. They had an amazing record of wins and losses. Wonderful group of girls.Edmonton Grads | The Canadian EncyclopediaAnd finally, our great Wayne Gretsky. Although not born in Edmonton, this is where he got his start and rose to fame here. His wedding was the event of the year and I know he had perogies on the menu. He was a great person and we were all devastated when he was traded to Los Angeles. I think he still considers Edmonton home base.Wayne Gretzkyhttps://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002115/ - IMDbBut finally, I have to give a big shout out to Edmonton’s values of community. We are considered one of the cities where events happen because of our great group of volunteers. We are a city of summer festivals. We have a huge love for theatre…imagine that…a blue-collar city in love with the arts. But we do support them….from the world-famous Edmonton Folk Fest and the Edmonton Fringe.I love living here…..and oh..I am going to toot my horn here….we have a world-class educational system….ahem….as a retired teacher we worked very hard to give our students the best education we could. Heck…what else is there to do during our cold winter nights? Just be the best we can be.Thanks Jenna for the question…I especially liked reading about Wop May…he was an amazing man…did not know about his exploits during World War I so I learned something today.

A plan like that requires a few things:a region with unusually cheap real estate;an ability to acquire and keep a job with a steady, reasonable income in a place like that; vet, doctor, lawyer, teacher, nurse, carer, mechanic, plumber, that sort of thing;readiness to drive cheap, reliable cars over long distances every day to keep feeding the plan.Anywhere three to four annual salaries’ worth will buy a house should see that dream possible. I actually think this is a very attainable dream for those who are ready to go where no one else will go, and who have driving licences.And I am happy to tell you that that can be done in Sweden. I have actually done it. Looking around the planet, as I do, I would say you could probably also do it in Norway, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain. Probably also in parts of the US, and conditionally, southern New Zealand, parts of Canada, and more recently, Japan.I bought this house when I was 40, at a price of 220,000 SEK, outright, no mortgage (it’s a so-called “Småhus”, a standard concrete house with three levels, four bedrooms, three bath rooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, and 97 square metres of living space; the wood paneling is for decoration only, and it’s centrally heated in all rooms, with triple glazing; they were put up in the thousands in Sweden’s suburbs and villages as a standard housing solution in the 1950s by companies. Usually with pretty good access to infrastructure, like mine. I walk to the train station or bus stop in five minutes, or to the super market, or the dentist. So this is not a “cabin.” This is a proper family home. Its current market value is 580,000 SEK in my village, and it would be about 2,500,000 in the “nearby” city of Östersund, 50 kilometres away, which translates into 40 minutes of driving):It wasn’t a local mortgage that paid for it, because I lived and worked in Shanghai at the time, but it very easily could have been. You’re more likely to find houses between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 SEK in most of Sweden, but even that can be paid off with relative ease on an average Swedish salary of about 23,000–35,000 SEK per month within maybe 15 years, so if you start at 25, you’re done by 40.Heck, people buy cars that cost more than what I paid for my house.I don’t though. I have these two cars, paid off, and intend to keep them:a 1986 Pontiac Parisienne Brougham 4.3 V6, Canadian model, purchased for 4,900 Canadian Dollars in 1994 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada:2. a 2006 Lincoln Town Car Signature Series 4.6 V8, bought in Stockholm a few years ago for 89,000 SEK:If that’s too adventurous, you could very likely acquire something like this for maybe 100,000 SEK and drive it for the rest of your life. I had one of these till recently, and may get one again some time, they’re lovely:I’ve replaced the lovely Auris Hybrid by an even lovelier RAV4 Hybrid recently out of sheer laziness, because I no longer wanted to shovel snow and just drive through it all the way up to the door, so there:And then, dogs and cats. No problem. You can get them given to you for free. Here ours, brother and sister, born in the fire chief’s house:Just avoid big cities and brand new cars, and get your animals locally or from a shelter, and the dream is good to go. Buy a place in a little town 30–60 km from the town where you work and commute in. It’s a breeze. If you’ve commuted in New York, Shanghai, London, or Mumbai, like me, Swedish country roads in a modern hybrid car are a breeze. Even when it’s minus 25 Celsius in the dark and snowing big flakes. You get used to it.But you’ll want to speak the local language, and be in the medical, IT, or STEM field, ideally as an EU or Nordic citizen, for ease of paperwork and likelihood of success.And then those two years of travel:Really, only two? Why? I plan to travel for the rest of my life once I’m retired. And there will be lots of life left, judging by my family’s life expectancy. I’ll probably stop working some time between 61 and 65, and then I’ll have a pension and probably do whatever I like in places like China, Argentina, France, or who knows.If you want to take two years of travel before that, it can be done, of course. Keeping a house like mine going costs about 2,500 SEK a month, so if you have two years’ worth of that saved up, you’re good to go. And I can save about 40% of my salary with ease by living in this place, so the rest of the budget is easily found, if your job pays like mine - which it should, as I’m only on a salary like a high school teacher.Some may be curious what a place like this looks like inside:

I am a retired teacher from Alberta, Canada.I and a lot of my colleagues were children of immigrants who came here after World War II.My parents always stressed education. Work hard, get a good education. Don’t be a ditch digger!! Yes, my dad told my brothers that comment. My father took some hard-earned money (he was a janitor) and spent it on a second-hand encyclopedia set so we could have one in our home. My parents paid hard-earned money for me to take piano lessons so I would have something constructive to do after school. I remember my father buying me a camera when I was only about 10 years old. Not the brownie camera, but one that you had to learn to use the focus mechanism on it. They would do anything so that we had the opportunity to learn. The children always came first.My father worked three jobs. He was a janitor, he tended people’s gardens and he also worked in a grocery store after hours to clean the floors. We hardly ever saw him. Only on Sundays and that was for church and family.I was not alone. Many many of my friends had parents who stressed a good education. So many of us went on to university. All children of immigrants. And when we became doctors, or nurses or educators, we worked just as hard as our parents.I worked in a semi rural school board just outside of Edmonton. All our parents were hard workers and they supported us teachers if we put education first. And so many of us worked long hours for our students. We put our own money into professional development and were considered very progressive in our classroom instruction. Now….we also had very strong unions that supported us. That helped us keep the focus on education and not politics.Well…I am retired now but I know that the standards are still pretty high. I substitute teach and just from how classrooms are set up, I know there are a lot of dedicated teachers working in our schools.If America wants a good education system….they will have to put money into it. I know that we were paid well….but we worked hard for our money. If you starve the schools…you starve education.Finally, one more thing….no one in our society ever treated schools as a business. We treated education as a profession…but not a business. I think that is a failing of America. Regan did not do you guys any favors.