I understand...
I bought my 16gb black N9 for 350 EUR here in Slovakia (it was officially released here and it`s still being advertised and offered by providers, with a full support in Nokia stores), which is some 450 USD...if it was more expensive I probably wouldn`t go for it, either...
what I did was that I grabbed new white iPhone 4s from my provider as I had a new 2-year plan coming up, for some 300 EUR, I sold it for some 530 EUR within a day and instantly bought new, unlocked N9, central EU version, from another guy...so I basically got the N9 for some 120 EUR...
you can still get new, unlocked N9 for the similar or lower price here in EU, I suggest to try German or Austrian eBay (ebay.de, ebay.at) if you`ll ever be interested...I`m sure some top-rated sellers there won`t have a problem with shipping the thing to Canada, too...