Glad I could help, TG.
My better half is Canadian. We use Skype from PC here to landline phone in Canada to talk to her folks. It's great. Unfortunately they're technical luddites over there (her family, that is, not all Canucks!) so we can't get the full cost benefit of PC to PC Skype, but it's still cheaper than our telcos can offer.
Have you seen the USB VoIP phone handsets that are available and will work with Skype (and I presume others)? They're not expensive. I've mislaid the URL or ad or whatever. If I can find it I'll post it here for you.
Cheers
AA