[Bigtime]

Here's the Edmonton Journal article:

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/healt...318/story.html

He had been “quite excited about the potential adventure” when the U of A came calling. Negotiators offered not only $10 million, but assurances that his family would be accommodated, and some of his research staff could be “fast-tracked” through immigration and join his lab in Canada.

Reality was a little different, he said.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada took months to process his staff’s immigration requests.

But he said the deal-breaker was the way the U of A treated his wife, who had initially planned to move to Edmonton, leaving their children, aged 16 to 22, and aging parents behind.

His wife works in administration at Oxford, and Rorsman said she was offered a good position in Edmonton. But she was told she could only have two weeks vacation a year. She asked for 11 more days without pay.

“Unfortunately, the university was not very flexible on that score,” he said.

As her negotiations dragged on, Rorsman headed to Edmonton in February 2011. In the end, his wife decided not to move.
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Rorsman said he tried to negotiate a new deal so he could rejoin his wife in England. He said he offered to give up his “inflated” salary at the U of A if he could spend three-quarters of his time in Oxford and run the Canadian effort from afar, making periodic visits.

“As principal investigator, you don’t run the science yourself,” he said, noting he could have stayed in close touch by email and Skype. “Lots of people do that all the time.”

Rorsman said the university said no and he resigned. “I sincerely hoped it would work out, but unfortunately it didn’t.”