Canada

Subjoint


Rob and I frequently meet for lunch at a little place on 100Ave called Subjoint. A woman named Tara who is one of those impossibly thin beautiful women that I always wanted to be when I was young runs it. When I asked her today if she would mind if I took a photo of her at work for this blog article, she assented readily, but I could see in her eyes she was far to practical a person to think being featured on a blog was any kind of big deal. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I hadn’t confirmed my middle-aged geekiness to her for sure today.

Tara is usually the only person behind the counter at lunch though I have seen another employee there on occasion. Rob and I frequent often enough now that she nearly knows our order by rote. Today as she confirmed that I do not take tomatoes or onions, I admitted that I am allergic to them. Another customer, a friend of Tara’s it seemed, was nearby still collecting her order and chatting a bit overheard and was horrified. How could one live one’s life without tomatoes? Well, it’s not as easy as it sounds. More foodstuffs than most people realize contain tomato in one from or another. So I explained that while I loved tomatoes, I suffered from Oral Allergy Syndrome (totally self-diagnosed by the way because I couldn’t get even my usually open-minded doctor to take my symptoms seriously – but when you mouth feels as though it is burned all the time and your lips are tingling – anyone will be motivated to sleuth.) I explained that while it wasn’t life-threatening (that I have been able to find out). It could/did make eating very painful. So, I avoid tomatoes and all citrus and peanuts – don’t know what to do about freshly mowed lawns – and amazingly my chronic heartburn, gastic upsets and sore mouth are gone. The friend continued to be horror-struck as she as she exited.

 Subjoint is just a block over from the library where I meet with the Fort writing group on the first Wednesday of every month and just two doors down from Soulitude Spa where I get my hair done while discussing American politics and world events with the Canadian/Lebanese stylist, Fredrique, who despite what Rob thinks isn’t the tiniest bit gay. The café is really just a sandwich only place though they offer a limited chip selection at times, and there is an assortment of drinks. Rob and I usually have the veggie wraps anymore, but you can have any manner of sub and of course the ever popular donairs, which as nearly as I can figure out consists of shaved lamb on bread with the diner’s choice of accoutrements.

There are only four tiny tables, the kind you might find in a Starbucks, upfront for dining in. Now that it is winter, we dine in, but back in the fall we would take our sandwiches and drinks down to the picnic area by the river. From there you can see the trail that runs the length of the Fort and a tiny white church across the river that I found quite picturesque when the colors were turning from the summer greens to the mulit-coloreds of autumn.

I was the one who was early that doesn’t happen often. I dropped Katy off at school just before and her teacher was letting the kids into the classroom about five minutes earlier than usual. Probably on account of the weather. You just don’t appreciate the gift of five minutes until it’s just handed to you out of the blue when you least expect it. I had been thinking for a while that I wanted to shift the focus of my blog just a bit and start writing about the things, places and people I am finding here in Alberta and in Canada. After all, I have been given this great gift of another country to explore and take note of and what I have done with it really? So from now on I am going to include entries on the many things and people around me, starting with Subjoint.

If you are ever in the neighborhood of Fort Saskatchewan and in need of a quick and tasty lunch, I heartily recommend that you look up Tara and her café. It’s cozy and smells wonderful and is the perfect place for a mid-day break from the hustle. Not that life moves swiftly in the Fort. Around it perhaps would be more accurate. This is Canada remember, where my own dad noted that “the dogs even move slowly”, but I think you might find this place and the food a nice alternative to the fast and the processed of say a McDonald’s or a Tim Horton’s.

 

Out of the Woods: My Canadian Immigration Experience Part Deux


Or maybe it is Part Trois? I am no longer sure just how many hours, make that days, no – scratch that too. Weeks. How many weeks have I put into emigrating to Canada before I crossed the border and immigrating into Canada after crossing. I may have mentioned this before but the sheer volume of paperwork and the innumerable steps that are none too clearly defined by the CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) could make an illegal immigrant out of a Rhodes Scholar.

 

Between us, Rob and I have ten years of post secondary education, but we have yet to crack the CIC code that would allow us to read directions on any given requirement without need of clarification by way of just phoning them up and asking what exactly they meant or what precisely were they intending us to understand when they wrote X, Y or Z requirement. I have come to the conclusion, especially after today, that obtaining official sanction to live in another country via a permanent resident card, or green card as we know it in The States, is partly a subtle attempt to assess the IQ levels of the applicants and their families and partly a test of their endurance. It is most assuredly a test of will. You have to want it, or you will never manage to get through the process. Why? Because it is incredibly time-consuming, costs significant money by way of the various fees, and, like most travails through government systems, it is designed to induce a feeling of inferiority and remind you that you are an outsider who does not belong. The people who have the most need to make use of programs are usually the people least able to traverse it. There is a reason for that, in my opinion, but I admit that my time spent dealing with Medicaid, for example, or the State of Iowa’s DHS or even the Social Security system, have colored my judgement. Still it seems to me at times that agencies designed to help people somehow have acquired subconscious mandates that demand the grinding down of the souls and dignity of those they were designed to aid. I always come away feeling devalued and ashamed after the majority of my dealings with any of its representatives. I understand the desire of countries to pick and choose who they admit into their societies. No country should have to allow people to become citizens when these people will not be assets in any way, ever. Still, becoming a resident of a country other than that of your birth should not be a process that requires you to divulge highly personal information or allow the government of that country any avenue for collecting more data on you than it should otherwise have.

 

Today my daughter and I had to submit to the medical exam that is required of all immigrants applying for permanent residency status here in Canada. Just finding a doctor who is sanctioned by CIC to perform one of these exams was a task. The exam requirements from beginning to end took almost three hours. Most of this time is spent waiting. Waiting for the paperwork. Waiting for the doctor. Waiting in the various labs for x-rays, blood and urine tests. Although waiting is the common theme underlying all things medical in this country, the Immigration exam waiting is particularly hard simply because there is no logical rationale for collecting the majority of information they want from those of us who are the spouses of citizens. The reason for that is that, according to its own rules, spouses and their minor children cannot be denied residency based on health issues of any kind. But, it’s not just Canada that builds hoops simply for the pleasure of making its citizens or future resident/citizens jump through them. It is one of the basic building blocks of governments everywhere to amass information via pointless paperwork with no visible end in mind. As an example, my own experiences in obtaining Medicaid for my late husband involved two different counties that essentially were branches of the same state agency and yet they couldn’t access each other’s files. They couldn’t even manually supply information collected in one county to another. So, whenever Will went from one county to another for treatment, or residential reasons, I had to fill out paperwork and supply fresh copies of data that I had already given someone for identical reasons. The province of Alberta has a “nationalized” health care system that should in theory allow immigrants to go to their own local doctors or clinics to have the very basic exams and test run that are needed by the CIC. The doctor who I saw today told me that all the information is sent to Ottawa and placed on a government server for the different CIC branches to access after all. Does this leave the door open for corruption? Yes, but the system as is does not necessarily free it from the possibility of fraud. Fewer people in the chain doesn’t ensure it will prevent people from trying to circumvent it anymore than involving more people dooms it to failure.

 

The medical history and physical exam portion is relatively straight forward and, aside from the having to strip to your panties and let some guy you are never going to see again poke and prod you a bit, it was tolerable though time consuming. The doctor was Chinese and probably old enough to be my father. He was pleasant and made a point of explaining the process and what paperwork went where in a manner that the Immigration handbook could have but didn’t. A chest x-ray came next. Probably because it was a bit more efficient to irradiate me than perform a TB mantoux test which would have required me to come back for follow-up. No matter what they find during the course of this examination, there is no follow-up. For that matter, I am not even sure you are told if something of a serious nature comes up. Because you are receiving the x-ray for immigration purposes, they fit you in to the queue at the earliest convenience. If you are lucky this won’t take long. Then there is blood work and urinalysis. My daughter’s age required only that she pee in a cup. Five year olds are only marginally better at peeing in a cup than they are at remembering to use toilet paper after or washing their hands. I had blood work and a date with a cup. Afterwards I made a mental note to self to refrain from early morning snuggling and whatnot on days I might be called upon to fill a cup with urine.

 

One the things that got to me about today was the facilities. Fortunately, I haven’t been sick since moving here. Katy either. Knock wood. The only time I have ventured to the doctor’s office had to do with getting refills for prescription shortly after we arrived because the pharmacies here would not honor prescriptions written in the United States, which makes me wonder how senior citizens in my home land  manage to get scripts filled north of the 49th, and one other time a month or so ago when Rob nagged me into going when I had a cold that was hanging on a bit. Not unusual for someone with asthma, but Rob is understandably a bit paranoid about my health. Socialized medicine is an equalizer. It allows everyone who is entitled access to health care, but it is not like home. The doctor’s offices I have been in have a worn look that is almost, maybe is really, reminiscent of untidiness and unhygienic. The washrooms Katy and I used today at the medical lab were actually dirty but cleanliness and restrooms are not synonymous here in the Great White North when it comes to public facilities. I guess when you are able to drop drawers and go, virtually anywhere according to my husband, clean bathrooms are not a pressing priority. Filing systems run the gamut from virtual and space-saving to hand transcribed and lining the walls. Payments, those very few that even apply, are expected up front and can run the gamut from cash or cheque only to credit cards. The receptionist at the lab hauled out one of those manual credit card machines complete with carbon. I can’t remember the last time I saw one of those and it was particularly odd here where everyone seems to pay using credit or debit. I haven’t been to a hospital yet, and prefer to keep it that way. Although I fully appreciate the seemingly democratic way everyone has an opportunity to see a doctor when necessary, I miss being able to make same day appointments or appointments period and the way my doctor back home would and did call in refills on prescriptions and the personal relationship we had (she is one of the first people I told about Rob and she was thrilled because she and I go back to long before I was even pregnant with my daughter).

 

Which brings me back to immigrating. Back in the United States, as here…..as everywhere anymore really, immigrants are not accorded much respect. Our motives are suspect. Our worth questioned. I am a white woman who moved to another country because she met, fell in love and married. I am not an aberration although my skin color, middle-class background, ability to speak English and my education level afford me a bit of shielding from many of the prejudices hurled at foreigners. There is no real reason to make the immigration process nearly incomprehensible or extraordinarily difficult. Manuals that example the steps should be easy to read and understand. Steps in the process should be manageable and respectful of an individual’s human dignity. I admit that some of my reaction to the process is, as my husband is wont to point out to me, that I am easily driven to the tipping point due to my inherently water rabbit tendencies, but some of it is my failure to understand the point of making anything hard to understand or accomplish seemingly on purpose.

 

So now, we gather all the documentation and send it off. We’ve completed all the tasks set before us and like the Baker and his wife we are ready to leave the woods.

Drumheller


Today we visited the Royal Tyrrell Museum located in the Drumheller Valley in the town of Drumheller. It’s located in the southern Alberta in a place called the Badlands. The museum was named after J.B. Tyrrell,  who in his search for coal deposits along the river, discovered a skull of a dinosaur. which is known today as the Albertasaurus. Tyrrell’s discovery marked the beginning of the collection of dinosaur remains. Drumheller itself was named after one it’s early settlers, Samuel Drumheller in 1913. Until the gas and oil boom of the 1980’s, Drumheller was one of the fastest growing places in Alberta. Today though it survives mainly on tourism and has a population of about 8,000. 

 

The museum is nestled in and area of steep, dry coulees ridged with the strata caused by hundreds of years of erosion. Even though the climate changes that are slowly changing the weather patterns here are effecting the coulees by providing enough moisture to allow plant life to grow where there once was none, they are still very beautiful, like an earth tone rainbow. It’s not really that large. There is a main building with exhibit areas, a cafeteria, an indoor garden and a learning center. The surrounding coulees can be climbed via stairs to an observation deck and there are trails in the area as well.

 

Katy is not quite as dinosaur crazy as my oldest nephew was at her age, but ever since her preschool teacher introduced her class to dinosaurs over a year ago, she has taken an interest that goes beyond the cursory. She even went to a dinosaur session of kindercamp this summer and still dresses like a pterodactyl from time to time when she isn’t dressed up as a princess or a ballerina. She can tell you how pterodactyls are birds really, and how some dinosaurs evolved into the birds we know today. It’s her favorite dinosaur though she likes T-Rex’s too. She had a pretty good time, I think. It’s hard to tell with young children in museums. The good thing about taking them with you is that is that it relieves you of the feeling that since you spent the money to come in, you should read everything at every exhibit. Having a child along allows you to just “look at the pictures” so to speak. We didn’t arrive there until late in the afternoon, so it wasn’t very crowded though that might have had more to do with the rain and the chilly temps than the time. We wandered for a couple of hours. Bought the obligatory  “I came, I saw, I got the t-shirt” for Katy and headed for home about six.

 

The drive was a long one and we didn’t get back until close to ten. Cranky, hungry child and slightly overtired husband, but all in all a really good day.