A Halifax couple renting a room in their friend’s house, unable to afford an apartment of their own, feared they would be renters for the rest of their lives.
“That’s a pretty depressing place to be in when you’re in your late 30s,” Ryan, now 40, told True North.
“For eight years we were trying to save and put together a down payment and get into a home and start a family…. As time went on, we were just falling further and further behind. We were making progress, but we could see that the goal was receding over the horizon perpetually.”
On Feb. 14, 2022, amid the debankings of the Freedom Convoy – a movement they were vocally supportive of, Ryan says his and his partner Jessica’s joint bank accounts were frozen.
“At the time, we didn’t know if this was going to last a day or a week or a month. It was very frightening,” Ryan recalled.
Their bank access was restored within a day, but they never received a satisfactory explanation from RBC, and it “left a mark.”
“That was definitely what made the decision for us – we weren’t going to let that happen to us ever again,” Ryan said.
Five months later, in July 2022, the couple sold everything they had, including a piece of land they had bought in Lunenburg, N.S., and settled outside of La Libertad, El Salvador.
Jessica, a graphic designer, and Ryan, a software developer, obtained digital nomad visas through a visa services company called Escape to El Salvador.
What drew them to the nation was bitcoin’s status as legal tender, a move made in 2021 under president Nayib Bukele.
Ryan and Jessica are not only paid in bitcoin through their work – they shop, buy groceries, fill up their gas tank, pay rent, and pay their cell phone and internet bills entirely with bitcoin.
Apart from using U.S. dollars for local drinking water delivery, the couple say they no longer have any use for fiat currency.
The couple have a type of one-year temporary residency permit that can be renewed again for up to three years. After that they can apply for permanent residency, and citizenship two years later.
That is the plan for Ryan and Jessica, who both currently hold only Canadian citizenship.
The move raised eyebrows from those around them, but they insist it was the right call.
“When we told our friends and family that we were moving to El Salvador, everyone thought that we would end up with our heads lopped off and broke and penniless and with malaria within the first six months,” Ryan said.
“But we feel much safer here in El Salvador than we did in Nova Scotia.”
According to the couple, their purchasing power has increased 300% in El Salvador, so they aren’t looking to return home anytime soon.
“Neither of us have any interest in returning to Canada,” Ryan said. “A lot of people are expecting (Conservative leader) Pierre Poilievre to restore the nation. I don’t think that that is a task that any one prime minister can achieve. The damage is so great, and so extensive and so entrenched, that it’s difficult to imagine Canada becoming a desirable place for us within the remainder of our lifetimes,” Ryan said.
Corrie Bignell, 46, a former nurse from Kitchener, Ont. now residing north of Chinandega, Nicaragua, also moved to Central America amid COVID-19 restrictions and mandates.
“The pandemic hit and I was a nurse at Grand River Hospital, and I didn’t think much of it until I started seeing kind of weird things, like the news would report that we were so busy with patients, but we didn’t have any patients at all,” Bignell recalled.
“I was living in the rat race, going along to get along and, and once that hit, I began to question a lot of things.”
In early 2021, rumours began to circulate in Bignell’s workplace that COVID-19 vaccine mandates were imminent.
Bignell would meet with her friends during the lockdowns – her pals parking their cars further down the street so that neighbours wouldn’t snitch on the unsanctioned gathering – and discuss their exit plans in case their jobs became jeopardized.
“I said if that happens, then I have to sell my house and I have to leave because I’m not safe here anymore,” Bignell said. “And I am a single mom, and I had a mortgage on my house and it was my forever home. I bought it off my family when my grandmother died. And so that house meant everything to me, but I knew there was something inside of my stomach that was like, you just have to leave if that happens.”
The rumours came to pass in September 2021, with Ontario mandating COVID-19 vaccines for healthcare workers. On Oct. 12, Bignell was placed on unpaid leave for being unvaccinated. And in late November, she left Canada.
Her house sold within a few days of being listed.
She had to race against another vaccine mandate, the one the federal government imposed on air travelers, to get out of the country.
“We had to leave by Nov. 30, because after…we couldn’t travel anymore. So my house closed on the 23rd of November. I literally just finished putting things into storage that morning. And we got on the plane and left with four suitcases and came here.”
Bignell was accompanied by her teenage son, who has since returned to Ontario to live with his father. She conceded there was a “big culture shock” for him.
“It was very hard on him and he didn’t understand at the time exactly what I was doing,” she said. “I think he understands now. He’s getting it now.”
Bignell originally had her sights set on Costa Rica, but one of Bignell’s friends who had gone to a retreat in Nicaragua introduced her to a Canadian couple who had moved to the country in 2020 and were offering a house for rent.
Bignell had never travelled before, and never seen the ocean, but she sent the Canadian couple the rent money and they picked her up at the Managua airport. Now, she owns her home in Nicaragua. Her priorities have changed with her surroundings.
“You kind of feel like in the first world, in Canada, you’re just a consumer and you have so many things that don’t actually really mean that much to you,” she said. “And the only thing that really matters to me now is my health. Getting out in the sun, getting in the ocean, and eating good food.”
For the first two years in Nicaragua, Bignell didn’t have to produce an income.
“I made a lot of money on my house (in Canada). And so it was a good cushion for me to buy a house here. My expenses here are very minimal compared to living in Canada,” she said, also noting she invested in cryptocurrency.
Bignell lists her expenses as $45 USD a year on property taxes, $12 USD a month for water, and only $20 to $30 USD a month for electricity because she installed solar panels. She doesn’t have a vehicle, instead opting to share a car with her neighbours. A fruit truck comes by her residence twice a week.
It’s under $20 USD for a quality steak dinner.
Her house is in an expat community which charges $600 USD a year for security. She pays a part-time gardener $180 USD a month and a housekeeper $48 USD a month.
She explains that she doesn’t need a housekeeper, but the previous homeowners had employed the couple and urged Bignell to keep offering them steady work.
“So those are the only things that I really have to spend money on here. There’s no online shopping, I don’t have a post office here, I don’t have a mailbox, you can’t just order Amazon here.”
Income-wise, Bignell now runs in-person coaching programs for clients who come to Central America, and she has a lower unit in her house that she occasionally rents out on AirBnb.
Bignell explained that upon landing in Nicaragua, Canadian citizens get a 90-day stamp on their passport. If you overstay, the fine is only $3 USD a day.
“What most of us Canadians or Americans do who stay here is we’ll just do a border run to Costa Rica. What I did in December was I took a taxi to the border, went into immigration, went out the door and turned right back around, I didn’t even go into Costa Rica. I turned right back around and they stamped my passport again, for another 90 days.”
She mentioned that it is also fairly inexpensive to fly from Managua to Miami.
The method is working for Bignell, who hasn’t ever been denied additional 90-day stamps.
“You can apply for permanent residency and a few friends of mine do have theirs. The process is very, very lengthy. It costs money. And I’m not sure that I want to do that just yet. So right now this is working out for me.”
In 2022, Bignell met her boyfriend, a firefighter who also had to leave his career over vaccine mandates. He lives in Guelph, so Bignell travels to Ontario in the summers to see him, making her a kind of snowbird in her 40s.
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Andrei Bondar, 47, holds Romanian and Canadian passports, moving from Romania to Montreal with his wife when he was 29.
But during the era of COVID hysteria, he started seriously exploring career options in the US, becoming spooked by the Freedom Convoy debankings.
“I realized at some point that Trudeau is not the only problem. Lots of people around me were thinking like him, thinking that personal liberties should be canceled or diminished for the greater good of the community.”
“This is something that brought back memories from my home country, Romania. I grew up in communism. That was exactly their doctrine: you have no individual rights, everything has to be attributed to the society. Eventually, people hated it. And lots of people died because of that. A lot of people suffered,” he explained.
“I decided it’s time for me to get a way out.”
He found himself drawn to Florida because of Governor Ron DeSantis’ libertarian-minded governance during the pandemic, as well as the hot climate.
He started looking for jobs in the US in December 2021. Once he found a position, the employer petition process with US Immigration took a month and a half, and by May 2022 he was living in Coral Springs, Florida.
Bondar, now a senior manager at Charles Schwab bank, entered the US as a mathematician on a TN visa, a three-year permit for designated Canadian or Mexican professionals. Other professionals eligible for TN visas include engineers, scientists, health professionals, and accountants.
His wife Miki, a business librarian, applied for a job with Nova Southeastern University and was hired within a week. Miki showed up at the US port of entry with an offer letter from her employer and was also granted a TN visa.
TN visas can be renewed indefinitely.
Bondar credits he and his wife’s highly specialized skills and education for their ticket into the US.
“We had a very serious discussion if we’re going to go back to Canada or not. Actually, we kept two properties in Canada,” Bondar noted, listing his construction lot in Hudson, Q.C. and small farm near Cornwall, O.N.
“I’m thinking more and more never to return there, just to liquidate the whole thing.”
“From personal experience, I can tell you that each and every Eastern European that I know has a clear plan to leave Canada. Many of them have left, many of them, just because we have this experience living in communism,” said Bondar.
“I think it’s more like a material situation… If you don’t have the means, you’re not going to leave Canada. If you can afford to do it, probably you will do it.”
