VL,
You hit the nail on the head. I've spent many years working for companies which don't pay me in the currency of the country where I live. It's something you just have to accept. If you've decided to work away from where you live, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Visit a website such as
Free Currency Converter and you can also get free charts showing the major currency pairs over periods as long as 10 years. For instance after reading your post it took me just minutes to check and see that in October 10 years ago 1US$ got you 1.55 CAD, dropping as low as 1US$/1.61 CAD in January 2001 and it only dropped below parity in October of last year. I guess you just joined at the wrong time as it's now returning to more historical levels.