American-Traveler: To Canada right?

This is a re-posting from 4 years ago when we celebrated 10 years in Canada.

Canada has sometimes been accused to be a bit lax with their immigrant screening in the past.

Maybe I can contribute to eliminate that prejudgment, because we have been going through the screening process. And let me add it should qualify to receive clearing for the highest federal office.

I will spare you to read about every little item on the list, but just mention that our stack of papers was ¾ of an inch thick. Just to give you one example, we had to go collect all employment data with wages we had earned from the age of 18. In our case that was a span of more than 30 years of working and schooling. Even with the best memory that is not any easy task. And being at it one might just hope that the company one worked for 25 years earlier is still in business. If not – bad luck. Every document had to be notarized and translated by an authorized translation agency.

One other requirement: Criminal background check from every country of previous residence.

For “normal” citizens, and I am thinking of normal as not being any Einstein, this is a hard task to achieve. We were extremely busy for 4 weeks. Then $6000.00 changed hands to our immigration consultant who was the one compiling all the papers to make some sense in our application. He blessed the entire book with his friendly letter and a stamp with his name. He did also sent it off to the Canadian High Commission in London, UK which is in charge for Scandinavia. After 5 months we got a friendly invitation to show up at a doctors office in Oslo. I shall forego the story of that examination here, maybe I will post it some time later, but after 2.5hrs at Dr. Frankenstein we were standing outside on the curb, 600Dollars poorer looking at each other and just couldn’t believe what we just had gone through.

But the doctor’s visit was the last official hurdle before we could leave Norway, and they never call in for the health check unless the application is approved.

So being back at home we got busy again. The house and two vehicles and our travel trailer needed to be sold. Our possessions needed to be gone through for what we wanted to take with us and what we would leave behind. We ended with a wooden box (Yes I made that myself) of 7 cubic meter (247cubic feet). It was mounted on a pallet and a truck brought it to the Oslo Harbour where it was loaded onto a freighter and shipped to Vancouver BC. It took 6 weeks before it arrived in Canada.

Our realtor sold the house I had built within 2 weeks. We moved into our travel trailer and to the local RV-Park.

Bea’s Toyota went like a hot cake and was already sold. The last day arrived and I drove the travel trailer to the buyer in the morning and dropped off my big old Suburban in the afternoon the same day. One minute after I received the money for the truck, friends drove us to the airport. It was incredible timing. We had booked a one-way flight to London, UK from where we would take a charter flight to Calgary the next day. It was just days before the Queen celebrated her 50th anniversary. The city was full of excitement and preparations for the big party. I was 50 years old as well. 1952 was a good year for the Queen and me.

All that seems like it happened yesterday, but hey it’s been ten years!

And today, 10 years after, the Queen has just celebrated her 60^th anniversary, and we have been 10 years in one of the British Commonwealth Countries – Canada!