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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.

Last Wishes


There is nothing like attending a funeral to get you pondering your own. We drove up to the Grande Prairie area on Saturday to attend the memorial service and burial of Rob’s late wife’s Uncle Raymond. He was eighty-one years old and, ironically, it was a car accident that took his life. Usually when elderly people pass it seems to usually be related to illness and the wear and tear of so many years. I think of my own father who is slowly being robbed of life by pulmonary disease or my mother and her sister who have hypertension and a family history of strokes and heart disease. When did they stop being middle-aged? Of course, when did I become middle-aged myself? Am I going to know when that day arrives? When I am old like them? When my daughter will start to wonder when she will get that phone call telling her that I am gone, the same way I wait for that call myself?

 

The service took place in the Hythe Legion Hall. Like so many farming communities, every one knows everyone else, and their business, and the hall was packed to standing room. The family gathered in the lounge and since we were late, as always, we went to join them. The tradition is for the family to enter last and seat themselves in reserved rows at the front after filing past the congregants. I wasn’t overly apprehensive about being there. I have already met several of Rob’s in-laws including Shelley’s mother and stepfather, a sister and brother and one of the nieces. They were quite welcoming and though Rob tends to downplay the significance of this because generally most people are on their best behavior when first you meet them, I know from experience that good in-laws are not a given. Not that I buy into the in-law stereotype whole-heartedly. I think that it is a crap shoot really but it tips more to the good side than the bad.  I personally know more people who have wonderful to fair in-law relations than those that are truly awful. Still, I was a bit uncomfortable walking up with the family and sitting in the section that was saved for them. I was also keenly aware that little more than a year ago, Rob and the girls had been in this exact same place, taking this exact same walk for Shelley, and that many of the people who were attending now were there back then, and I couldn’t help but wonder what must be going through their minds.

 

The service was conducted by an older gentlemen, not a minister or anything of the like, but someone who clearly was used to conducting memorial services. He had, in fact, led the service for Shelley.  I kept a close eye on Rob. I am not sure how close he was to Raymond. Not really, though it is always disconcerting when someone you know but only on a “just so deep” level dies. It is not the same kind of sadness. It’s more like coming home and finding that someone has broken in and taken just one thing. You don’t notice outright. Can’t put your finger on exactly why things seem amiss, but there is that one piece missing from the jigsaw puzzle feeling that you just can’t shake off. I knew though that he couldn’t help but go back a year and remember the service for Shelley and when you go back, even fleetingly, the emotions are waiting for you because they always are. More loyal than any friendship you’ll ever have, that’s grief. I watched the girls a bit too. Jordan especially. Her grief is never too far from the surface. She still has the look in her eyes, lurking behind the brightness. Farron keeps it at bay by being in perpetual motion. I was able to do that myself when I was younger. Now I am a virtual empath, swamped by emotionally charged people and situations. I wondered aloud at one point this weekend if I would ever not be able to pick up other people’s pain like an XM satellite receiver. Rob says no. And would I want to be as cold to others’ pain as the majority of people seem to be as their worlds swirl around them as if they were the sun? I guess not, but it does make an event like Raymond’s memorial exhausting.

 

There was music, a eulogy given by two of Raymond’s nieces, a few scripture readings, more music and after the service, the hall was quickly transformed for lunch. The lunch, unfortunately, threw me. It caught Rob off guard because we haven’t been through any similar experience together yet and unsurprisingly, we don’t spend any more time than necessary discussing things like funerals. But I have been this way since my first experience with death at age eight. My dad’s younger brother died in a freak farm accident. He was my godfather and my hands down most favorite relative. Now that I am older I realize that I have partly looked for men who possessed similar traits as my Uncle Jimmy.

 

I don’t switch emotional gears easily. I need to wind down from highly charged events. The practice of going from grief to the light social interaction of the funeral dinner is too wide a chasm for me to cross quickly. My parents could never understand and it caused no little bit of friction. I can remember being sent to the car on one occasion though I can’t remember which relative’s funeral it was, and I earned a reputation of being incorrigibly shy amongst my extended family as at least half our gatherings were wake/funeral related. It didn’t help Saturday that I couldn’t eat a single thing being served. Farm folk, ironically really, don’t hold with veggies. Add to this a hyper five year old and I didn’t stand a chance. Rob managed to extricate himself from family and other acquaintances to rescue me. He generally goes practical when I am having one of my less than stoic, as he calls it, moments. We drove back to Beaverlodge for a veggie sub before heading to the cemetery.

 

After the interment there was a get together at the home of one of Shelley’s cousins. A mix of family and friends. I was my characteristic quiet. I need to assess and warm up. Katy is the same but where she can fly through the process in minutes, I need hours to several days worth of exposure. It sucks but it’s me. All in all, I did okay. Okay enough to earn actual applause for attending from Shelley’s family. At one point during the weekend Shelley’s sister Cindy told me she thought I was a very special person. As I have stated in the past, I am not special in any particular way. If Rob’s in-laws hadn’t been as open, accepting and inviting a group of people as they are, things could easily have ended differently. Their behavior just confirmed for me once again how special a person Shelley was.

 

But how has any of this led me to think about my last wishes for myself?

 

On Sunday, we gathered at Uncle Raymond’s farm to bury some of Shelley’s ashes near a tree that Raymond had planted in her memory. It stands right under the shade of the two large trees where she and Rob were married twenty-six years ago this past July. The farm had originally belonged to her grandparents and she had always felt that her grandmother, who she was quite close to, was still lingering there in spirit and she wanted to be there too. It was one of her last wishes. So Rob had brought her ashes along with us to conduct a little memorial and fulfill one of the two requests she had made before she died. As I stood in that shady place listening to Rob speak over the rustling leaves of the trees that sheltered the front yard, I realized that though I had spent some time thinking about the what ifs of dying, I hadn’t really considered what comes next for my earthly remains. I had always assumed that funerals and whatnot were for those left behind and not for the deceased, but both of my parents have their entire wake, funeral and burials scripted. There is really little for my siblings and I to do but follow the directions. My aunt has pre-planned, as they call it. I only know that I want to be cremated and having the experience I have had with burying Will, I have come to the conclusion that the interment of ashes is a silly thing to do. But where to be once I am dust? I don’t know. I told Rob that I haven’t been much of anywhere over the course of my life. I hadn’t any favorite or special place. He thought that perhaps it was because I haven’t been there yet. Maybe so. Bodes well for the long life we wish on each other too in some ways.

 

I am not really ready to think about my last wishes. I have too many others that need attending to right now, but the thought has been planted firmly. 

The First Day of School


My little girl started kindergarten yesterday. She has been itching to be a kindergartner since her first year in preschool two years ago. I can remember her tears of frustration because the kindergarten students in her multi-age room got to attend writers’ table when she had to go to nap-time. She has always wanted to write. More than she wants to read really. She has filled many a pad of paper with line after line of scribble. When she finally managed to break her preschool teacher down last year and join the kindergarten students at writers’ table, she was so happy. It didn’t last long however. She expected to be able to write, like I do on the ‘puter, instantly and was miffed when she realized that there was work involved. She hasn’t give up though and still practices. Her Grandma Gerry, Rob’s mom, sat with her nearly every day on her last visit, helping Katy with her letters. Chip off the old block. I can remember being in the second grade and teaching myself cursive. I was always in a hurry to be older too. She is so much like me that it never fails to catch me off grade when I see faint hints of her father mixed in and drowning in my DNA.

 

She was a bit apprehensive when we pulled up to the school. So was I, truth be told. I wasn’t sure where to park and Rob had managed to scare me throughly with tales of traffic violations in school zones because it seems that Canadians actually enforce school zone speed limits. Once we were inside, and one of the school secretaries had escorted us to the kindergarten room, things were back on familiar ground. At least for me. Twenty years of teaching have made the rituals of the first day of school practically a reflex even if I am the parent now and not the teacher. 

 

The teacher was “wee” as Jordan would say. I find it interesting that so many of the teachers I have met who teach preschool and kindergarten are themselves quite short. It certainly puts the children at ease. They also have this very young sounding, sing-song voice that little ones love but could very slowly drive an adult insane. She introduced herself, got me going on the paperwork, of which there will be a steady and endless stream until the end of June, and invited Katy to roam and play with anything she took a fancy to. My cautious child spent a good amount of the next ten minutes observing and poking about. She is so like me in the way she stands back and assesses and big-toes the water before jumping in. Unlike me however, when she jumps, she is in. She has her dad’s ability to attract and make friends. It is something I have improved upon with years of trial and error practice, but I am still socially somewhat retarded by my inherent shyness. 

 

A tour of the building followed, and Mrs. Thompson made wonderful use of a variety of hand gestures, signing for the children many of the things she was explaining to them. She wisely took advantage of the tour to point out all the washrooms and drinking fountains and asking the children if anyone needed to make use of either or both each time. And someone always did. When we arrived at the main office, she took the little ones in to meet the vice-principal, leaving us parents to stand awkwardly in the hall to stare at each other. One of the more chatty mothers asked about start and dismissal times and was told that afternoon kindergarten began at 12:19 and ended at 3:12 to which she joked; “ What ever happened to 12:15 or 12:30.” She then proceeded to talk about her high schooler’s classes being 81-minutes in length and asked, “Who thinks this kind of thing up?” Another mother replied that it was just a way that teachers could justify their paychecks. Everyone else nodded and I bit my tongue. Not for the first time either. Just a week earlier I had listened with quiet amazement as mommies picking up their children from the child-minding at the fitness center moan about buying school supplies. One was incensed that she was expected to send a box of pencils to school with her son. “I wrote a note to the teacher saying that I was sending just five and when he was out, she should let me know and I would send 5 more.” I am glad I wasn’t that boy’s teacher. What a pain in the ass that woman must be. I have taught classes of 30 kids or more 6 times a day and can’t imagine having to keep track of the supply levels for 180 children. That, by the way, is the reason supply lists ask for boxes of pencils or reams of paper because teachers can’t keep track of every child’s supply level nor do they have spares enough of everything to give (because children of any age “take” as oppose to “borrow”) to students when they lose things or run out. 

 

At the end of the two hours, we all joined our kids on the alphabet carpet for a story. Katy made sure we sat in the first row. It pleases me to no end to have a child who chooses to sit up front because that is something I never had the confidence in myself to do. 

 

I had to hold back tears more than a few times yesterday. In part, I think, because this is a new school and I don’t know any of the people to whom I am about to entrust my child, but there was a a part of me that marveled at what a big girl she has become. Smart. Well-behaved. Inquisitive. Beautiful. And I did that. I raised her. Which is what hurts. The things that I see in her occasionally that are her father’s, well, they are there by some miracle and not  because he had an opportunity to actively shape her. I try not to let this overshadow important moments like these, but it is always there, back in the far corner of my mind.