Moving permanently to lovely correze

Hello,  Not exactly from France but I am french by birth and a Canadian citizen.  Your post caught my attention, seems we share some things in common.  I also work for a Canadian police agency and although am not sure if I ever will consider moving to France at the very least its a dream of mine.  Married with 2 adult daughters.  Just wondering if you are in Rochester NY?  I'm about 2 hours west of Toronto. I have a million questions
regarding France and owning property, immigrating to France, ect.
Hope to hear from you.

ooh nice to hear from you. Unfortunately I am a little further away from you than you imagine...I am in Rochester Kent!!
Canada is always a place I have wanted to visit, cold though...I've seen pictures of you in snow that would cause England to grind to a halt. In fact anything over 2cm causes England to grind to a halt!
We also have to grown up daughters, well as much as you can be considered grown up at 18 and 19.
I used to be in the Police too although that ended with children. Mike loves the job but I think is ready to go now. He's doing some work on the Olympics so as soon as that's over we're off!!
I'll try and answer any questions you may have about France and living there so feel free to fire away.

As soon as I posted my message I was left wondering if perhaps you meant Rochester, England and not New York which is only a few hours from us.  I would imagine that being part of the European Union it made things much simpler to buy property and consider moving to France.  Perhaps you can address that for a start. I have at least another 6 years of work before I can retire and there is  this fantasy of living in France that I have but am not sure I would go to that extreme.  I would imagine it would be much more difficult for a Canadian citizen.  Perhaps not, I'm just not sure if the French laws go easy on retiree's.  At the very least I do want to travel to France and other parts of Europe in the coming years and in a way this dialogue and others will help me a great deal so thanks for responding.
Oh and ps....those severe winter storms would scare me too but we've had many mild winters as well.  A few bad ones too, no doubt global warming doing its thing.