23/07/2026
🇵🇭 > 🇨🇦WHY DID WE CHOOSE TO MOVE TO CANADA?
Before Canada, may buhay na kami sa Pilipinas.
I started my business in 2019. We had a few employees, a fleet of distributors, and several clients who trusted us to create and manufacture products for their own brands. My husband, meanwhile, was already working as an electrical engineer.
We were not rich. Hindi rin naman kami tagapagmana. 😂 But we were busy, productive, and slowly building something of our own.
So, why leave? 🤧
We moved to Canada in 2022. I came here under a student visa, while my husband had an open work permit.
When COVID hit, we were confined inside our house for two weeks. Walang pwedeng dumalaw. Walang pwedeng lumabas. Walang anything. Naalala ko pa yung mga brgy leaders namin, nag iiwan ng grocery sa tapat ng gate. 😆 I saw them once, grabeng takbo huy, allergic yarn? 😆 But it was very thoughtful of them, tho.
For two weeks, the world outside us practically stopped.
And somewhere in that silence, something hit us:
There has to be more to life than what we currently have.
Not because our life in the Philippines was bad. In fact, we had so many things to be thankful for. But we were still young. We had no children yet. We still had time to take risks, make mistakes, and rebuild if we needed to.
We thought, if we survive covid (grabe nakaka anxiety din talaga nung mga time na yon), maybe we can also try to create a better future for ourselves and for the children we hope to have someday.
So we moved. Tinapangan.
Not because we hated the Philippines. Not because we wanted to abandon the life we had built there. And definitely not because we thought life abroad would be easy.
We simply wanted to know what else was possible for us.
And Canada has been very kind to us! 🥺
Patient, too, while we were learning, adjusting, and rebuilding our lives here from the ground up. Hindi naman kami yumaman overnight. Nilamig lang kami agad. 😂
I love the Philippines. It is where I was born, where I lived most of my life, and where I built my first business.
But I also love, love Canada.
This country gave us room to start again without asking us to erase who we were before we came here.
Until today, we continue to keep and manage our business in the Philippines remotely. The life we are building in Canada does not cancel the life we built back home.
They can exist together.
And that is one of the reasons I created this page, Ate Cedie in Canada.
I want this page to show that there is no single playbook for how you should live abroad.
You can build a career here while managing a business back home. You can begin again without pretending that your previous life never existed. You can love your new country without loving your home country any less.
Leaving does not always mean abandoning everything behind.
Sometimes, it simply means making more room for the life you still want to build.
This is our story, and we are still somewhere in the middle of it. 🤍