What to Pack When You're Leaving Canada for a Year

What to Pack When You're Leaving Canada for a Year

There are two kinds of packing lists on the internet.

The first tells you to bring socks. Thank you. The second is written by someone who moved to Bali with a backpack and a hammock, and it is not going to help you survive a Scottish February.

This one is for Canadians leaving for a year or more — for school, for work, for the hell of it. It assumes you're a competent adult who can remember underwear, and focuses instead on the things people actually forget.

Start with the paperwork

Boring. Also the only category where forgetting something can genuinely end your trip.

• Passport — check the expiry. Many countries want six months of validity remaining beyond your stay, and some visas won't be issued without it.
• Visa or study permit documents — bring physical copies, not just photos on your phone. Border agents ask.
• Acceptance or employment letter — physical copy in your carry-on.
  
• Proof of accommodation and onward travel — sometimes requested at entry.
  
• Insurance documents — travel and health, with the policy number and emergency line saved offline.
  
• Prescriptions — the medication in its original labelled packaging, plus a letter or printed prescription from your doctor explaining what it is and why you take it. Some perfectly ordinary Canadian prescriptions are controlled substances elsewhere, so check the rules for your destination before you fly.
  
• Vaccination records, if your school or visa requires them.
  
• Digital backups of everything — scanned to cloud storage and emailed to yourself. You want it accessible from a borrowed phone in a country where your data doesn't work.

Also: tell your bank you're leaving. Every single year, somebody lands in a new country and gets their card frozen at the airport ATM. Don't be that person.

Things that are weirdly hard to buy overseas

This is the real value of a Canadian-specific packing list. Some of these will sound like nonsense until you're standing in a foreign pharmacy trying to describe them.

• Your specific over-the-counter medications. Brand names and available strengths differ enormously between countries. Bring a starter supply of whatever you actually rely on.
  
• A good winter base layer — if you're going somewhere cold-ish, you'll find that countries which get mild winters do not sell serious winter clothing. Canadian cold-weather gear is genuinely better. Bring it.
  
• Contact lens solution and any specialty eye care in your preferred brand, at least to start.
  
• Deodorant, if you're particular — formulations and available types vary more than you'd think.
  
• A plug adapter you bought in Canada, before you arrive. Airport adapters are triple the price and half the quality.
• A power bar or extension cord. One adapter plus a Canadian power bar means you can charge everything. This is the single best travel tip on this list and it costs eleven dollars.

Clothes: pack for the weather you're going to, not the one you know

Canadians systematically over-pack for cold and under-pack for damp.

If you're headed somewhere with a mild, wet, grey winter — the UK, the Pacific Northwest, Northern Europe — you don't need your parka. You need a genuinely waterproof shell, actual waterproof footwear, and a lot of mid-weight layers. Damp cold at +4 is more miserable than dry cold at -20, and your Canadian instincts will not prepare you for it.

If you're headed somewhere hot and humid, natural fibres will save you. Cotton breathes and doesn't hold onto smell the way synthetics do on a long day — which matters a great deal in a climate where you're sweating from breakfast onward. (More on that in our guide to cotton for travel)

The general rule: pack half of what you laid out. Almost everything can be bought where you're going. Laundry exists. Nobody there has seen your clothes before, so the wardrobe you think is too small is invisible to everyone but you.

The comfort category

This is the one seasoned travellers insist on and first-timers skip.

Bring a small number of things that have no practical function and exist purely to make an unfamiliar room feel like yours:

- Photos you can actually put on a wall — printed, not on your phone
- A blanket or pillowcase from home
- Something with a taste you can't replace locally
- One item of clothing that says where you're from without you having to say it

That last one does more work than it sounds like. When you're a long way from home, having something familiar and unmistakably yours to put on is a small, daily kindness to your future self. It also — genuinely — starts conversations. Other Canadians will find you.

What to leave behind

• Full-size toiletries. Heavy, restricted, available everywhere.
  
• Textbooks. Buy or rent them there. They weigh a tonne and may be the wrong edition.
  
• "Just in case" formal wear, unless you have a specific event booked.
  
• Most of your shoes. Three pairs. You are not going to wear five.
  
• Bedding and towels, unless you've confirmed your accommodation doesn't provide them. Bulky, cheap to replace on arrival.

Two weeks before you go

• Confirm your baggage allowance — airlines differ wildly and the fee for guessing wrong is brutal
  
• Weigh your bag at home
  
• Photograph the contents of your suitcase, in case it's lost
  
• Put a change of clothes, all medication, and every important document in your carry-on
  
• Set up a way to get money in the first 48 hours that doesn't depend on one card working

And then just go

You will forget something. Everyone does. It will almost certainly be replaceable, and the story of replacing it will be one of the first things you tell people back home.

The suitcase matters less than you think. Get on the plane.

Snowbird Studio makes 100% cotton tees for Canadians heading a long way from home — the comfort item that packs flat and never needs explaining.

Shop the collection →  SHOP

What's the one thing you'd never travel without? Comments are open.

Related reading:

The Homesickness Nobody Warns You About