My husband and I moved from the US to Canada 13 years ago. We love the free healthcare and the friends we’ve made.

Living in Toronto is like living in a smaller, cleaner version of NYC.

When my partner was offered a job in Toronto 13 years ago, we felt like we’d won the lottery.

We were living in the Midwest, where people stared at us as if they’d never seen a multiracial couple before and Cosmopolitan magazine was covered with black plastic in the supermarket because it was too racy.

We’d long wanted to live somewhere more diverse and walkable, with less violence. Settling in downtown Toronto — where we could walk or take public transportation and over half of the population was born outside Canada — was like being in a smaller, cleaner version of New York City.

Add on the promise of Canadian healthcare, and we were close to nirvana.

After living for more than a decade in Canada, we’ve come to realize that the country is far from perfect. But there are many factors that make it unimaginable for me to live in the US again.

Canada’s healthcare system isn’t perfect, but I prefer it to the US’s

Canadian healthcare has its downsides.

While the majority of care is free, people typically have to pay out of pocket for prescriptions, mental-health care, and dental and vision care, which can make these services inaccessible to many.

Despite that, I can’t envision living without socialized medicine again. I had a complicated pregnancy and an emergency C-section and I developed long COVID four years ago, but I’ve never paid a cent for healthcare here.

When I lived in the US, I worked in public health in California, helping uninsured families access care. I saw firsthand how medical debt could ruin people.

There was also a brief time when I was in my 20s, before the Affordable Care Act, when I lived without health insurance in California and was terrified of getting injured and ending up with a huge hospital bill.

Traveling in Canada can be more expensive, but we’ve found ways to manage

I stayed in a cabin in Québec’s Laurentian Mountains. 

Because of federal regulations, domestic flights in Canada are often more expensive than flights to the US. However, we’ve found ways to manage by coordinating work trips and visiting friends.

Canada’s nature is one of our favorite aspects of living here. We’ve vacationed across the country, but we have a special fondness for Québec’s Laurentian Mountains and the forests of Ontario.

We also spent months in the Yukon subarctic, where we glimpsed a grizzly bear, lynx, moose, scores of ravens, and wilderness more pristine than I thought possible.

We love the diversity in Toronto, but we have experienced racism

My husband and I found friends through community groups and parent-and-baby classes with other immigrant parents. Our friends are from all over, including Nigeria, Russia, Pakistan, Mexico, China, and Peru.

Living in such a global environment is simply second nature for our Canadian-born child, who became trilingual in kindergarten in a public French school.

However, immigrants and people of color aren’t always treated kindly, despite Canada having had an official multiculturalism policy since 1971.

My Afro-Latino partner often laments the racism he’s experienced in Canada, which has been more directly harmful to him than the racism he experienced in the United States.

For example, he sold his bike after nearly being hit by drivers so many times, including one who told him to get off the road before calling him the N-word.

When he does porch drop-offs of kids’ items I’ve sold on Marketplace, he gets followed and questioned by people who act like he’s a thief.

And when we renewed his employer-sponsored work permit at the border a decade ago, an immigration official grilled him and said, “Couldn’t they find a Canadian for the job?”

In part because of those experiences, my husband has felt compelled to connect even more with different BIPOC communities in Canada.

After we moved here, he found out about his Indigenous Caribbean ancestry through genetic testing, and it has become an extremely important part of our experience as a family to educate ourselves about Indigenous people’s histories, lives, and teachings. We see it as one of our responsibilities as settlers.

I prefer living in Canada to the United States

Canada’s healthcare system is a big attraction for many in the US. 

The longer I live here, the less I feel like I belong when I travel back to the US.

My family inhabits multiple marginalized identities — queer, disabled, immigrant, and BIPOC — that are under attack in the US. The ability to live and thrive outside the US, with free healthcare to boot, has long made me feel survivor’s guilt for enjoying that stability.

There are trade-offs to Canadian life: Astronomical housing costs caused by foreign investment and government policy make me worry that when my child is an adult, they won’t be able to afford rent, much less buy a home.

I’m also disabled and cannot work full time. If I’m ever without my partner’s financial support, I wouldn’t qualify for or be able to live on my province’s paltry disability benefits.

In the end, it’s a balancing act.

I will forever follow events in American society and politics, even when I someday become a Canadian citizen. But for my family’s safety and health, there’s no going back.