It’s always interesting to hear an outsider’s perspective on where we live and work.

That was the case last week when I spoke with Richard Ellis. He and his pregnant wife, two children, two dogs and three cats moved to the Calgary area in mid-March.

They came here from England, receiving an inordinate amount of publicity in doing so. They were the subject of a “Reality TV” show, and their every waking move was captured by a BBC2 camera crew.

In total, the TV show relocated eight families around the world. At the end of a month’s stay, each family had to decide if they’d remain in their new home, or return to the U.K.

With the Ellis family, there was no suspense. Last Thursday, they made it “official” for the TV camera. They were staying.

The fact is, there never was any question. Ellis, 34, had secured a job with Calgary-based Industrial Paramedic Services just weeks before arriving for the TV show. It had been his dream to move to Alberta.

Richard Ellis, left, became a media darling when his family was featured in a BBC reality show.

When we talked, I asked him why Alberta appealed so much. What was our advantage?

He listed these priorities:

* The weather, and a love for fresh air and snow.

* A low crime rate, especially compared to the U.K. and to Australia, another country he had considered for emigration.

* Much higher standards of education for his children. * A much better standard of living because of the robust Alberta economy.

The latter point was interesting.

“The one thing I keep pinching myself about is the reasonable standard of living here,” he says. “We can afford to take the kids out, go for a meal.”

At home in pastoral Yorkshire, the Ellis family lived on a farm. He was a manager in the British ambulance service, supervising more than 300 staff. His wife Andrea was a physiotherapist. Despite their professional status, the cost of living was crippling.

“When we were in the U.K., we always had to scrimp and save, watch the pennies,” says Ellis. “We’d go out for a meal with the kids maybe once every couple of months.

“Sometimes it was a case of: ‘Shall we eat today, or shall we save the money and put it in the car for fuel?’ It was that bad at one point.”

While we all complain about gas prices, Ellis won’t – a $40 fill-up here is the equivalent of $200 in England. The pace of business life is also more sensible.

“Canada seems more laid back. The work gets done, and it’s planned properly . . . not like the U.K. where you jump in with both feet.”

The Ellis family has been here less than five weeks, and now make their home in Bragg Creek, just west of Calgary. Their life is only now taking on a sense of normalcy since the BBC2 camera crew headed back to England.

The concept behind the TV show is to give people an understanding of what other families encounter when they emigrate.

“It explodes some myths, if you like,” says Ellis. “Things like immigration. It is quite a tricky area as I found. If you don’t know what you are doing, you can get lost in the paperwork and all that.

“It’s to show people they can do it, and this is what life, the culture, is like in other countries.”

Ellis explains that he and Andrea had been working through the Canadian immigration process for the past couple of years. That process was in place long before they heard about the BBC2 show, Get a New Life.

When they were chosen for the TV documentary last December, Ellis figured the family could come here, tour around and drop off some resumes.

“It would have been an extended holiday, that’s all.”

Then he hit the lottery. Ellis had been trying to enter Canada as a paramedic, but had been rejected. There were plenty of Canadian paramedics for Canadian jobs.

“I was persistent,” he explains. “I wanted to work for IPS. They kept coming up as the most forward-looking company. I kept e-mailing them and phoning them and one day, by luck, got talking to the president of the company.”

The president discovered that Ellis had unique skills in management of major incidents and contamination containment.

A search found that there was just one other Canadian with similar skills. Ellis was hired, received a work permit, and his job was formalized just two weeks before flying to Calgary.

While there was never any link between the TV show and IPS hiring Ellis, he says, there’s been a nice spinoff: the IPS profile has been raised because he and his family have been featured in radio, TV and newspaper features across Canada and abroad.

IPS primarily provides emergency services to the oil and gas industry. His main role is to lead a new international division and recruit paramedics for overseas projects.

“I was initially (hoping) to come out as a paramedic out in the field, and now I’ve been recruited as light upper management.

“It’s all fantastic and my experience on the job reflects everything else we see about Canada.”

The family’s expectations have been exceeded in every way possible. Now, with the TV cameras gone, they’ll settle into the reality of Canadian life.