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Oh Canada! It’s while singing the Canadian national anthem on July 11, 2012 in the offices of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, that I was finally able to relish my Canadian citizenship in French and in English. A day to be crowned by a badge of merit since I had to wait about ten months to attend the citizenship ceremony after writing and passing the required exam to claim the citizenship “title”.
Moving to Vancouver was surreal. It was also not an easy decision to make.
You see, I was born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) – my family still lives there. I came to Vancouver to be with my husband, whose job and life are now here, and whose roots are in British Columbia. I’ve now been here now for almost five years, and each year it feels more like home.
Immigrating to Vancouver was a near and dear project to me. It meant a well needed escape from a Parisian life that isn’t as glamorous as you might think. It only took me a few days to get a first feel of Vancouver and its inhabitants. I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it is for Vancouverites to converse, joke and share personal stories with perfect strangers.
The library in Pemberton, B.C. looks small where it sits, in the middle of a nearly empty road across from a makeshift park and a dirt pond. It consists of two sections that were haphazardly stitched together.
I spent much of the summer of 2006 reading all the books on its shelves that had previously drawn my curiosity, but that I had never bothered to pick up. I had heard of Generation X before, but it wasn’t until I borrowed Polaroids of the Dead that Douglas Coupland resonated with me.
Where do I belong and do I belong anywhere?” That is the question. It’s a question that I have asked myself since my arrival in Vancouver nine years ago and has preoccupied me significantly at times. Probably because it is very difficult and complicated to answer.
Most of the people I’ve met in Vancouver tell me that British Columbia is full of Australians. So, you’ve probably encountered a few of us sun-loving, beer-drinking folk who drive on the wrong side of the road, and boast of childhoods spent running amuck in backyards full of deadly critters.
As someone who was born in Vancouver, I’m rarely identified as so. Upon first meeting people, they often stare quizzically at me when I say I’m Canadian. “Can’t be so,” they say, “you look too ethnic!”
As much as I belong everywhere, I don’t belong anywhere. I’ve lost my footing on my origin and now I float in a giant limbo. Is this a common phenomenon in Canada, the giant melting pot of cultures? It is often the easiest thing to do: to lose sight of your motherland and convince yourself that you belong everywhere. It is almost an inevitable characteristic of all living organisms. We change to adapt and we evolve.[Read more…]
What brought me to Vancouver is neither poverty nor the hope for a better life or even solid projects. Nope, boredom did. The fatigue from seeing my beloved France going back to its old demons, career prospects as empty as an ice field on a foggy evening, or a love life as exciting as a five hour documentary on stamp collecting in Victorian England. [Read more…]
The Mount Pinatubo eruption of 1991 made headlines; made records for the second largest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century and made a future in Canada a permanent reality for me. Swept in a stream of flowing lava, my sister and I landed on Vancouver’s doorstep. Ok, fine – we flew. [Read more…]
Life in a new country is never easy. Before coming to Canada, I really thought that I could live anywhere without making clumsy cultural mistakes. I was very wrong. [Read more…]
