Canada has always been one of those countries where I have been able to imagine myself living for a while. So, when I got the chance to go to Toronto for my master’s thesis project, I got really excited. And I’ll ruin the ending of this report right away, by saying that my exchange studies was awesome and I really loved staying in Toronto!

However, before taking off, there is quite a lot to do. Below I outline the most import points to take care of before departure. Then, the subsequent sections will describe my experience in Toronto.

First, it is important to realize that even after you have been selected by Karolinska Institutet to go on exchange to Toronto, you will still have to meet the requirements set by the University of Toronto. These requirements differ depending on if you are applying for the fall or winter semester.

For the fall semester you will be enrolled in courses, which are offered by the School of Graduate Studies and you will therefore need to have an average grade of B during your Swedish bachelor degree. If you are holding a degree from another country, visit this link to find out if you meet the requirements http://portal.sgs.utoronto.ca/current/admission/intdegequiv.asp. If you also decide to undertake your short research project in Toronto, you will need to find a suitable supervisor. The professor needs to have an affiliation to any of the three campuses of U of T (i.e. Scarborough, Mississauga or St George), but can be working at one of the hospitals as well as on the university.

Instead of going during the fall semester, I chose to travel to Toronto during the winter semester as part of the International Visiting Graduate Student Program (IVGSR). As an IVGSR student, I had to find a supervisor willing to accept me into their research group. There are not any resources dedicated to assist incoming students with finding projects, so Google is your friend in this one. I don’t know how many research groups I ended up looking through, but there were quite a few and I will post a handful of helpful links below. In the end, I settled on five professors who I emailed my CV and asked for a Skype interview. I was lucky to get replies from all of them and I was happy to see that they were friendly, down to earth and even inspiring during our short interviews. I was mainly asked what intrigued me about their research in particular and what kind of expectations I had for this project. Worth noting is that Master’s degree projects in Canada usually span one or two years so some of the professors might be reluctant to take you on for only four months. When I had reached an agreement with one of the professors, I proceeded with the rest of the application procedure. Most of the steps, such as health insurance, are outlined here http://www.sgs.utoronto.ca/prospectivestudents/Pages/Visiting-Research-Students.aspx and here http://www.cie.utoronto.ca/Coming/Prepare-for-Arrival.htm, so I will spare you repetition of those points and instead share some less obvious tips.

• As a KI student, you are not to pay the annual administrative fee and the full time compulsory non-academic incidental fees. These are to be waived as part of the exchange agreement between KI and U of T.
• You are required to submit your application (the IVGSR mobility agreement) no later than one month prior to the start date of your stay. However, consider that apart from finding a supervisor at U of T, the IVGSR application needs to be signed by the exchange coordinators at KI, then your future supervisor in Toronto and lastly the Vice-Dean for the School of Graduate Studies in Toronto.
• Apart from your IVGSR mobility agreement, you will need to submit a Letter of Agreement, which is to be signed by your supervisor at U of T and you co-supervisor at KI. My letter had to be processed by the human resources department for two weeks, so have this in mind.
• Canadian Master’s students are usually paid around $1000 per month, so politely ask your supervisor if they have the possibility to provide you with financial support during your stay in the lab.

·         Apart from the application itself there are a few additional things to take care off before the adventure starts!

• You need to hold a study permit to enter Canada. The Canadian government (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/index-int.asp) has a questionnaire which will guide you to all the documents you need to submit. Among those documents are the acceptance letter from U of T, which you get after the entire IVGSR application process is complete. Then you will have to wait about one month before getting your study permit application approved if you submitted it online http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/times/temp.asp.
• If you are planning to fly via the states or know that you will visit, fill in the EST Aonline to save some trouble
• Housing close to the St George campus is not the easiest to find if you are a graduate student. I recommend registering here https://www.housing.utoronto.ca/ and applying to the Graduate House as soon as you have your papers ready

First, I recommend flying to Toronto with Icelandair. There are no direct flights to from Stockholm to Toronto so you might as well make that one stop Reykjavik. The Icelandic landscape is the most beautiful one I have ever flown over and it saves you the queues at an American airport. When you arrive at Pearson International airport, you can take bus 96 “The Rocket” all the way to the subway which then goes all over central Toronto (but not much else…). There is also the alternative to take a shuttle bus downtown, which is more convenient, but more expensive and it might not stop as close to you depending on where you live.

As I mentioned, I stayed at Grad House which was great since they are used to incoming students and good guide me to all the different events that are taking place for newcomers. I started out by getting my student T-card at the library right next doors to Grad House. Then I went to the Centre of International Experience, where I met the International Coordinator who I had been talking to over email earlier. She was very helpful and outlined what needed to be done now that I had arrived. There is really not a lot to take care of, so after a few hours I was done and had two days for sightseeing until meeting with my professor in a couple of days!

I could have spent more time getting to know the city and my roommates before starting my project, so if you have time, I recommended coming in a few days early. But I only had two days so I had to make the most of that time. First off, you must remember that Canadians LOVE ice hockey. I play myself and I have always regarded Swedes as quite interested in the sport but truth to be told, there is no comparison. You will see people walking around in Maple Leaf jerseys downtown, every single bar has “the game” on at night and they even got hockey playing kids on their five dollar bills!

During my first two days I had time to orient myself on campus, including all the facilities such as, library, lecture halls, laboratory, gym, sports centre and cantines. I also spent some time down town Toronto in the malls and went to visit the hockey hall of fame. Building wise, Toronto is quite bipolar. In downtown, there are plenty of skyscrapers, lots of people and always something going on no matter the time of the day. When you walk a short distance outside of the downtown core and more and toward campus, you will instead see a lot of small two stories houses instead. And they all look a bit different from each other, giving the impression that people have just built houses in whatever color and shape they like right next to each other. So while, the average building might be like in Stockholm, there is no actual building looking like that average. I prefer the small house areas which are also full of tress and have significantly less traffic than the rest. My roommates showed me around during the evenings and introduced to some of their friends so I felt that I had already met a lot of nice people before even starting my project in the lab.

In general, Toronto is a little less expensive than Stockholm. Eating out is definitely cheaper and so is going to the cinema, but expect to pay the same for housing and groceries. I found that taking CSN loan together with the financial aid I retained from my supervisor was indeed enough to cover all expenses.

As I have mentioned a couple of times, I stayed in the official on campus housing for graduate students. This is a great option due to the simplicity, the location and the opportunities you will have to meet other students new to Toronto. There are several events for new students about what there is to do in Toronto and then it continues with events such as movie nights, bar hoping and watching theater performances throughout the year.

In Grad House, it is common to share a suit with three other people of the same gender as you. I got along great with my roommates and they showed me around in Toronto in the beginning and then we kept hanging out throughout the year. Since I worked late hours in the lab, I felt lucky to be able to hang out with some people at home as well. The suits themselves are certainly not spacious, but there is enough room to cook as long as not everyone is doing it at the same time. For hanging out, there is always the downstairs common area with a pool and a foosball table as well as a court yard and movie room. There are also residential advisers, which are students that take care of the building and makes sure that all the residents are getting along. They also have groups such as the theater group and the running group in which you can partake.

I did not attend any courses at the University so I cannot speak of the quality of those. The time I spent studying was mostly reading up on the topics of the research of my supervisor and reading articles for our weekly journal clubs.  The knowledge level in the lab group was high and I was intrigued by the topic of my project and ended up having the most fun I have had in a lab environment!

As I indicated, the research atmosphere in my group was great and the same notion of cutting edge research imbued the entire campus. Contributing to this sensation were many excellent open lectures where professors around the world came to U of T or one of the surrounding hospitals. During my time in Toronto, the university also hosted a TED talk.

Even though I did not take part in any official U of T courses, I went to seminars and writing workshops that were organized by U of T together with an external company. Most of these were free and the odd one that had a small registration fee was paid for by my supervisor.

The facilities at the university are fantastic and this includes several gigantic libraries. I only had time to explore the Robarts library which is shaped in the form of a giant concrete peacock, quite cool! I worked in the Donelly Centre, which is a modern building that reminded me about the Singaporean lab architecture with plenty major glass features on the outside and plenty of vegetation indoors. There are spaces to sit and enjoy a lunch or a chat among the bamboo trees in the entrance and on the ninth floor there is a big tree growing happily through two floors.

The Canadians are not that different from us Swedes, which facilitates the acclimatization to a new environment. To specify, I would say that they share our originality and sense of being genuine, but combines it with the typical American openness and friendliness, which makes for a great combination. My favorite episode that I find representative of the Canadian mentality is when I am standing in the grocery store holding two big juice boxes contemplating getting a third just to take part of the stores special  offer. While I’m standing there pondering, an old lady walks up to me and suggests: “If you buy those two and I buy one, we can buy them together and then split the cost, what do you say?”. Amazing!

In general, the Torontonians are very into sports, both when it comes to watching and playing. First and foremost it is of course ice hockey, but there is also a basketball, baseball, football and soccer team in the city. Every bar has a TV and each night there will be people out eating and having a beer while watching the game.

Toronto is a very multicultural city and there are several China towns, a Korea town, a little Italy, a Japanese area, a little Portugal and some other “littles”. This diversity is great, especially food wise as a big chunk of the world most renowned kitchens come together in small area. Walking through China town right next to campus is a fun stroll with lots of markets stalls out in the streets and there are great tasting Vietnamese sandwiches.

The great variety of the nearly three million people living in Toronto, means that there are activities and events for all tastes. During the weekend, it is popular to go for a bike ride outside the city, take the ferry to the Toronto island or go to the cabin one or two hours away that every Canadian worth his salt owns. On the island, there are often dragon boat competitions and other summer events.

Toronto has a quite lively night life, ranging from student bars around the campus area to fancier night clubs in the downtown. Big concerts take place in the city each yeah such as last year’s Swedish House mafia concert which attracted a huge crowd. There are also many minor festivals such as the HotDocs film festival and so many events taking place that it is impossible to keep track of all of them.

There are many opportunities to perform sports as well and most Canadians are competing on a recreational level. The school offers activities for students in the different faculties and I played ice hockey in a team on campus. In total there are four division for intramural campus ice hockey and the rink is in the middle of the campus which is quite cool. There is also two indoors running tracks, one big athletic center with a fantastic gym and a swimming pool and then a dome for indoor soccer and other field sports.

Apart from the more official places to play sports there are many pick-up games taking place around the city. In the summers it is mostly soccer and volleyball on the beach and in the winter there are many rinks around the city (even in the middle of downtown!), where people just drop in after work for a few hours of childish fun on the rink.

The five months I spent in Toronto were fantastic! I am going back to continue my project and I’m really looking forward to living in Canada for a while. Apart from a great project, I treasure the atmosphere where I work and the openness of the Torontonians and the friends i made. It is a very inspiring environment to perform research in and as important is the many ways to relax outside the lab. I love being able to go down to the closest outdoors ice hockey rink after a long day in the lab and play hockey with people of all ages in a mixed skirmish for a couple of hours. And I love being asked if I want to buy juice boxes together in the grocery store!