‘Easy for me to help them’: Calgary newcomer helps others with online tips

A Russian immigrant to Canada is trying to aid other newcomers. She has a YouTube channel called Ice to Nice: Warming Up to Canada.

Lidia May began recording helpful tips to newcomers early in 2025 through her YouTube channel called ‘Ice to Nice: Warming Up to Canada’.

She says when she arrived she made a lot of mistakes and now wants others to learn from them.

“You need to check like it’s a new country so you need to learn how the system works here,” she said.

“Because if you know how to play the game, you will win the game but if you don’t know, then you will make mistakes.”

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May’s day job is with Windmill Microlending, a non-profit that offers loans for skilled newcomers to get re-accredited.

She attends many career fairs where she typically ends up offering a variety of advice to people starting out in a new country.

“A lot of immigrants when they come to Canada, they’re lost, they don’t know what to do,” she said.

“They would ask so do you know how I can buy a car in Canada, how I can find a job and because I’m very well connected with every settlement agency in Calgary, it’s easy for me to help them.”

When May’s colleagues saw her being asked the same things over and over, they said she should record the answers so she didn’t have to constantly repeat herself.

“In my YouTube channel, I’m helping people learn from my mistakes and I tell them don’t repeat my mistakes, be smarter,” she said.

When May arrived in Calgary in 2014 from Russia she had five full suitcases filled with possessions she thought she’d need to survive starting a new life in Canada.

“But when I came here only in one year I realized that actually things I brought, I got rid of them,” she said.

“Then I bought almost brand new one at the second hand store and that’s why I’m telling (viewers) maybe don’t bring five suitcases.”

Moteleola Olusile arrived in Calgary last August for a masters degree in law at the University of Calgary.

“I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria and that is a big city,” she said.

“It is an active city of 24/7, loud, boisterous, energetic and I kind of wanted something different that Calgary gave me, quiet, relaxed, communal, I was looking for that.”

One of Olusile’s biggest challenges here was etiquette and some of the softer skills including small talk.

“The first few minutes of every meeting is small talk,” she said.

“‘How are you, how was your day, how did your weekend go, what did you do for fun, what are your hobbies,’ - it took a minute to kind of get into the swing of that.”

Olusile says she benefitted from watching May’s videos that have helped her adapt into Canadian culture.

May knows there are many newcomers in Calgary who are still struggling even after being here for five or six years and want’s to help them.

“I just love it, definitely because I see the value right,” she said.

“And especially when I see that I’m helping people and they say, ‘Oh, it was so great that you gave me that piece of advice.’”

Learn more about May’s YouTube channel by going to https://www.youtube.com/@IceToNiceCanada.