About me

Hi there, Antoinette Rodighiero here.

Your first thought might be "heck, how do I pronounce that surname?" It's a bit tricky I know...

Phonetically speaking, you pronounce it "Rod-i-gear-o").

Try it now. Congratulations... you passed! It's a good Aussie surname!...not strictly true, although I am Australian-born but with an Italian surname.

You also might ask "how come she left hot, sunny Australia and ended up in cold, snowy Canada?"

I had decided very early on while still in pigtails and wearing a school uniform that I was going to be a citizen of the world - I just didn't know how at that young age.

A journey begins...

After university, then came one of those severe-left hand turns in life. The big wide world was waiting for me so off I went. If you've read the my home page, you'll know I emigrated here, wanting to work as well. I like to say that it was my sister's "fault" as she and her husband emigrated to Canada several years before me. Having paved the way, I followed in their footsteps.

Deciding to emigrate seemed like a smallish decision to me at the time but one with profound consequences. Canada has now been my home for over 30 years. However, I do return to the land down under for a visit every few years to see family and friends.

Snow? mmm... that's a lot!

Now having seen snow just once before I left Australia, it was a shocker to see so much of the white, fluffy stuff on the day I arrived in December... not to mention the -15 Celsius temperature too! There's more if you want to read about my first week here.

Life now

Since then, living and working in Ontario through all its seasons has been a fabulous and interesting journey for me. Each season is definitely different and each one is enjoyable in its own way. But winter is so different in all its different moods and in my mind, it's the one season that's endlessly fascinating.

The winter months affects everything you do for that period of time so you have to know a bunch of things on how best to cope. Having had first hand experience as a new immigrant with everything I've learned from then until now, it seemed a natural segue into creating the Winter Living Advisor website.

We (my partner, Brian) lived in Toronto for 20 years, then moved to Ottawa for four years (talk about snow!) and now live in Kitchener, Ontario. Still living in a snow belt, we've been here for nine years.

In between me doing IT communications contract work, working on this website, developing ebooks, Brian and I are also historic house renovators in our spare time. We can't resist buying a building in distress!

We are now on our fifth and sixth property so winterizing our buildings has played a very large part in our property-owning lives given where we've lived. What we've learned over the years has also been included here as well; some things that have worked well and some not so much which I'll also tell you about too... like using a high yield foam insulation spray for a very small gap in the wall in my first house - not a pretty sight!

There's lots to cover under the heading of "Winter Living Advisor" and I'll do my best to include a wide range of winter-related topics to help you get the most out of winter.

Enjoy the winter!

:) Antoinette

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