• Dual citizen Michael Stiege was raised in Canada but spent many years working in the US.
• The darkness and cold climate of Canada pushed him to sunny California.
• For Americans thinking they can simply move up north, it's not that easy, he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michael Stiege, 75, a dual citizen of the US and Canada. Stiege was raised in Canada and spent roughly 30 years working in California before moving back to Canada 15 years ago. He soon plans to split his time between the US and Canada. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Because I'm a dual citizen of America and Canada, traveling between the two countries is virtually a non-issue.

If you're an American coming to Canada, you can travel visa-free. Still, if you're planning to move here and be able to work here, that's another story.

You can visit for six months as long as you leave before the end of the six-month period. You can do that back and forth all the time — but you won't get access to the social system and healthcare.

My friends, who used to live in Chicago, moved to California and said, "We're going to move up to Canada when we retire," but they couldn't get a visa.

This fellow's a Ph.D. and a really smart technical guy — and his wife is pretty bright, too. They couldn't get a visa because they were simply too old. Once you're — let's say 50 — the immigration system disadvantages you. They have a merit-based point system and start worrying about things like age. That's the thinking. Once you reach a certain age, or if you don't have certain other legs up, the criteria by which you can get a working visa is stacked against you.

[In Canada's Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) — which rates potential immigrants based on age, language fluency, education, professional expertise, and if you have a Canadian partner — applicants 45 years old or older receive 0 points.]

Whereas if you're a young guy just out of college, you have some reasonable skills, and you even know a few words of French, you probably wouldn't have a problem.

There are ways around it, but if the expectation is, "I'm just going to go up there and apply for a visa and get a visa," it may not happen like that.

I needed a change from the cold and long nights in Canada

I was born in Stuttgart, Germany. When my parents and I moved to Canada, I was about 3 and written into my parents' passports.

They got their visas and eventually became naturalized Canadians, which was bestowed on me. So, for all practical purposes, I'm a Canadian.

I grew up in Toronto, went to school in Toronto, and it wasn't until the early side of my career that I moved out into western Canada to Calgary and British Columbia.

I have an engineering degree and an MBA — which, at that time, was a pretty good combination to earn a job and make a living. I looked at the available jobs in the market and thought, "Go to Silicon Valley, where your skills will be valued the most."

I applied to a couple of things and got a call one day. It said, "Are you interested in coming down?" I said yeah, and there I was.

I needed warmer weather, and I was able to get rid of Canada's long winter nights. The summers in Canada were great — you could golf at 11 p.m. — but the winters were awful.

Seasonal affective disorder really got to me. It's not so much the cold as the long winter nights. It's dark. My wife says I had started hibernating, so I wanted to leave that behind.

I rented in the US and bought a home in Canada

When I moved to the US, I found that if I pushed myself, I could've bought a house, but I kept holding off. I found it easy to rent — it was affordable. I could get by without any problem. What I didn't put into a mortgage, I put into stocks and stuff like that.

I lived there for almost 30 years in two or three residences. I paid about $3,200 monthly in Los Altos Hills, California, right by Stanford University.

I came close to buying a couple of times, but the property tax burden in California is significantly higher than what you would find in Canada.

If you buy a house in California for $3 million, you're looking at $40,000 yearly in property taxes. [Zillow estimates a $3 million home in Santa Clara County would cost $36,300 annually in property taxes.] I could go on a trip for six months on that.

If I did the same thing in Toronto, I might spend between $6,000 and $8,000 — and that's a big difference. [According to the city of Toronto, a $3 million home costs $21,459 in city, education, and building fund taxes.]

I moved back to Canada about 15 years ago. My father was 96 then, and I said, "Let's go back." My wife is Canadian, and we have family up here. We settled in and bought our house.

We have a summer home up north in the lake country. It's not bad, but it gets cold in the winter.

If I ever move back to the US, my preference is California.

• MrBeast spent $14 million building a "city" for his "Beast Games" show.
• The show, premiering on December 19, features 1,000 contestants and a $5 million prize.
• Controversy has surrounded the show with complaints about conditions and a potential lawsuit.

MrBeast has shared some photos of the "city" he built as part of his upcoming game show, "Beast Games," which he says cost $14 million.

"We spent $14,000,000 building a city in a field for the contestants in Beast Games to live and compete in," MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, wrote on X, alongside four photos of the set. "December 19th is almost here 🥰"

Donaldson, YouTube's biggest star with 335 million subscribers, has already shared some details about the scale of production on "Beast Games."

In an interview with fellow YouTubers KSI and Logan Paul, Donaldson revealed he'd "spent way more than $100 million" on the show and recently shared that the production had broken 40 world records.

Amazon has also promoted "Beast Games" as "the world's largest live gameshow" with the "biggest single prize in the history of television and streaming" of $5 million.

It premiers on Prime Video on December 19 and is supposed to kick-start Amazon's video ad sales efforts by attracting a wide audience and appealing to advertisers.

In one X post, Donaldson was asked how he planned to make up the money he spent on "Beast Games."

"The goal is to make the best content possible not make money," he replied.

In the trailer, which dropped on December 6, Donaldson promised that "Beast Games" would be "the most insane competition show you've ever seen" with 1,000 contestants. Clips included footage of the $5 million grand prize, a massive pirate ship, monster trucks, Navy seals, and stunts.

One of the photos Donaldson shared was "a render of the city," which had a moat running around the outside.

"We ran out of time and didn't get around to building the moat," he said in response to one query on X. "But everything else is accurate."

The set of the specially built "city" is in Toronto, CBC reported in September.

Toronto City Hall's film and entertainment department confirmed to the outlet that it was the site but declined to comment further for "confidentiality reasons."

Donaldson's rep confirmed the city's site as Toronto and told BI that Donaldson donated many of the goods used in the shoot, including mattresses, sleeping bags, and clothing, to local organizations afterward.

Paramedics and firefighters confirmed to CBC that they were aware of the production, and police told the outlet that its department's explosive disposal unit was consulted.

CBC drone footage showed a large cement tower and two rows of single-story houses surrounded by a red wall.

"Beast Games" aligns with Amazon's strategy of increasing spending on entertainment and sports content.

The show's coverage has not been entirely smooth sailing, though. Both Donaldson and conditions on set have faced bad press.

Some contestants have complained about inadequate living conditions, injuries, insufficient hygiene on set, and being subjected to sexism in a New York Times report. Five contestants are seeking to file a class-action lawsuit, though a rep for Donaldson told BI nobody has been served yet.

Amazon declined to comment on the lawsuit to BI. A spokesperson for Donaldson previously told BI that Amazon was not involved in the Las Vegas round of the show, where many of the allegations surfaced, which was "a promotional video shoot."

The spokesperson also said that this shoot was "unfortunately complicated by the CrowdStrike incident, extreme weather, and other unexpected logistical and communications issues."

Much of the rumors and allegations directed at Donaldson and the show went unanswered for months until Donaldson appeared on YouTube Oompaville's channel to address everything at once on November 23.

Donaldson said he could not address some of the allegations due to legal proceedings, but he described some of the claims about injuries on set as "disinformation."