I've just spent an hour looking for the citizenship post when I realized, I don’t think I ever did it. While it seemed that it just occurred, and I remember writing about it, I think that it was an email, as the entire event happened in 2008, a year before I started this blog.
The road to citizenship was long, as we kept putting it off; it simply seemed like a lot of work. It really wasn’t until politics became interesting for us, and we realized that we wanted to participate, at least by voting, and as permanent residents we were denied that privilege.
Our permanent resident cards were about to end and we would have to reapply. That process was as much, if not more trouble. Our youngest daughter was born here and was a citizen by birth. If we became citizens before our oldest daughter became 18, she would be included in our application. We decided to go ahead with the application process.
It was a bit daunting, just gathering all the required information we needed to present to the government, but we could do it. The hardest part for me was gathering the information needed explaining when we left Canada, returned and where we had been each time in the previous five years. In fact, we all had different schedules some of the time, so it took some work, but we had old calendars and were able to piece it all together. We were already permanent residents so much of the other work had been done previously like fingerprinting and FBI checks for US citizens.
We carefully went through the process, and were prepared to take the written test. I practiced on line for a while but soon realized that my daughter was too young to have to take the test, I was too old to have to take the test and my wife was the only one qualified to take it. We teased her about it as she had to pass it for all three of us. She passed with flying colours! (note, Canadian spelling).
We were down to the final ceremony, and my youngest daughter came along to lend moral support and take photos.
The girls made sure I would do nothing to embarrass them, and call no attention to myself, for fear I’d do something terrible. The Citizenship Judge who performed the ceremony was Bob Morrow, the former mayor of Hamilton and someone I knew personally. He did a wonderful job, and things were going along just fine until he decided to focus on me and my family as examples of new citizens. It was a very nice presentation, but my daughters lost their anonymity and were not happy about the sudden attention.
The ceremony was beautiful, touching and all involved in the very full room were delighted and moved by their new status.
And yes Virginia, we have voted in every election since.
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