Hello there,
I moved from the US last year to Canada. Moving money from US to Canada was a little challenging. There are multiple ways you can do that though. The way I initially did it while moving to Canada for good was, I got a certified (cashier's) check from Bank of America and brought it to Canada. No issues at the border regardless of however big the amount is. You just have to declare it if you are bringing in more than $10,000.
After I opened my account with a Canadian bank and told them that I also wanted to deposit USD, I was told that they can't just convert the money to CAD right away and deposit in Canadian account. My bank opened a US account as well as Canadian account. They deposited USD in US account and initiated a transfer from USD account to CAD. They charged transfer fee and conversion fee to convert to CAD. It took 31 Days for them to convert the money and I lost a significant amount of money due to conversion rate and conversion fee that bank charges. Even though I was supposed to get more CAD because of the then current exchange rate, I unfortunately took heavy loss. Banks will steal a lot of money on the name of conversion fee. If you would like to move money this way, I would recommend that bring as much money as you can. In any case, you will lose money on conversion fee.
Second option could be that you bring in limited amount of money in USD, let's say $5,000 or even less. Have your Canadian bank open USD account and initiate the transfer to CAD account (same process as above). And then once your Canadian account is active (regardless of whether USD to CAD conversion took place or not), you can always initiate an international wire transfer from your US bank account to Canadian account. For example, Bank of America provides this service and will tell you right away on their website that how much you will receive after applying conversion rate, conversion fee and wire transfer fee. The transfer is instant and you get the exact amount in your Canadian account that you saw on your Bank of America website, for example. The only caveat is that you have to have an account with Bank of America. Keep in mind that you do lose money there as well but I never calculated which option was more expensive. To me Bank of America option was more convenient. I am not sure if any other bank provide this service or not though. You will have to check it out. I believe Chase does it too but not sure if it's available for international transfers. I personally like this option because you can every single day check on the BofA site how much money you will receive and once you see a favorable rate, you can immediately initiate the transfer versus the first option where you don't know how money you will receive in the end until the Canadian bank has deposited the money after applying the conversion rate.
Hope it's helpful. If you have any further questions, please feel free to send me a message.
