Currency Conversion ? - Help Needed

[ThankgodforRB]

I'm a US citizen who is now living in Canada. I have a Canadian address on the poker site I use most often and therefore when I withdraw funds I'm doing it via check in $CAD.

My issue is that being a US citizen who will be moving back within the next year, I keep the vast majority of my $$ in USD accounts.

Based on this currrent situation, I'm obviously going to have to pay currency conversion fees to get my checks back into USD. I'm not thrilled about this, but I'm willing to deal with it and my strategy is now to find the bank that will offer me the lowest currency conversion fees. I currently have several USD accounts and one CAD account, but I plan to look into whichever banks have the best rates and open whatever accounts are necessary.

My questions are:
1)Any advice on which banks would be best to use for this process? FYI...I'm in the fortunate position of expecting fairly large amounts (high 5 or low 6 figures) to convert so if banks have various rates based on amount I hope to get their best rate.

2) Is this process retarded in general? Any recommendations for other methods I could use.

3) (This is specific to this point in time and less relevant than the other broader questions) Based on what I understand now, the short term outlook for the $$ is not so good, so would you recommend keeping the money in CAD for a while before I eventually convert to USD? I figure I will have to pay the costs at some point, so there's no real rush now (as I don't really need the money right away).

Thanks for any help you can provide. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ThankgodforRB]

One more try...