working holiday from Oz
 

My son and his partner (23 & 22) are wanting to do a working holiday to Canada in particular the Vancouver area. They both love snowboarding (not a lot of opportunity for that in Australia!) and any info re: websites /job opportunities, accommodation etc greatly appreciated. He is a qualified tradesman in furniture manufacturing /site fixing and partner is a beautician. any info greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Craig's List is one of the best ways to find local accommodation. There may be some job advertisements on there, too.
Sorry I can't help more with job information.
They should be aware that this is a very expensive city to live in by Canadian standards.
It'll likely be more difficult to find accommodation here this winter with the Olympics.

If they want to go east and try Banff, each time I've been there I've met Australians working in hotels.

A couple of years ago I was talking to a hotel manager in Lake Louise and he said fully half his staff was Australian. His only beef was that they could only get visas for one year so he was constantly hiring/training new staff.

If your son hasn't already found it, this looks like a good place to get information from the federal government about work visas etc.

http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca....aspx?lang=eng

Whistler is about 75% young Aussie workers. I work with a bunch of them too, and a number of those are here on working holidays. They all seem very well versed in how that all works. Your son and his partner will be able to make some good contacts... one girl I know stayed at the Vancouver Youth Hostel for the first few days she was in town and ended up finding 2 roommates there.

We've had a bit of a slowdown in our construction boom, otherwise I would have said he'd have an easy time getting work here. But the city hasn't suffered as much of a downturn as most other places, so who knows?

The Olympics, though, are the big unknown factor in everything. I think accomodation and jobs could be hard to find while the Games are on, and afterwards...?? Will we experience a huge boom as we did after Expo in 86, where everyone fell so in love with Vancouver that they all wanted to move here? Hard to say.

Thanks everyone for the info. Whistler would be their dream destination/. Will pass it all on.
Thanks again.