After 32 years of living in Calgary, where they raised three boys and enjoyed a “fantastic” city within driving distance of the Rocky Mountains, Peter and Barb Wiseman weighed moving elsewhere to accelerate their timetable for early retirement.
They rejected the West Coast, where house prices would be as or more expensive than Calgary. The East Coast, with low-cost land and waterfront access, got nixed because of costly flights out of Halifax. Then a Calgary friend recommended his hometown of Windsor, Ont.
Though hit hard in the 2007-09 recession, Canada’s most southerly city has appealing assets for would-be retirees. Among them: bargain-price real estate (relative to big Canadian cities); low property taxes; a long growing season; bodies of water on three sides and, not least, proximity to the United States.
“We would never have looked down here if it was not for my friend,” says Mr. Wiseman, 59, a retired landscape architect. Leaving Calgary, he adds, “was purely a retirement lifestyle decision.”
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