I Am Canadian

As I explained before, unlike many immi­grants, I hadn’t really planned to immi­grate to Canada. It sort of hap­pened: I came here and I decided to stay. It wasn’t a spur of the moment deci­sion though. I was in Canada for almost a year on a tourist visa I had extended, and then I got a work­ing hol­i­day visa. Only then I felt ready to apply for per­ma­nent residence.

Canada wel­comes about 250,000 new immi­grants a year. I doubt all of them even­tu­ally stay and make Canada their per­ma­nent home. Life isn’t always easy at first and immi­grat­ing is much more than get­ting a res­i­dence per­mit. After the hon­ey­moon period, the huge­ness of the task ahead can be scary: learn­ing to live in a new lan­guage, adapt­ing to new tra­di­tions, social norms and visions, recre­at­ing a net­work of friends… I really don’t blame those who go back home.

Yet I chose to stay. Liv­ing in Canada was dif­fi­cult at first for all the rea­sons I just men­tioned. But lit­tle by lit­tle, things got eas­ier. Look­ing back, I think five rea­sons made me stay in Canada.

Because I can find work: The sit­u­a­tion in France was turn­ing quite depress­ing around the time I grad­u­ated from high school. “C’est la crise”: in all aspect of life, it felt like a per­ma­nent com­pe­ti­tion because there just weren’t enough jobs, apart­ments etc. for every­body. The whole coun­try was stuck: those who should have retired couldn’t because they hadn’t saved enough and faced increas­ingly higher cost of liv­ing, those who should have moved up the cor­po­rate lad­der (thus free­ing entry-level posi­tions) didn’t etc. As stu­dents, we couldn’t even get hired at McDonald’s because there was a wait­ing list of skilled pro­fes­sion­als who needed the money. It looked like I would spend the next 6 or 7 years of my life study­ing, liv­ing off my uni­ver­sity schol­ar­ship money and hope­fully find some kind of minimum-wage posi­tion. I feel more opti­mistic in Canada: I find it much eas­ier to find jobs here and peo­ple gave me a chance even though I was young.

Because Canada has an immi­gra­tion pro­gram: this rea­son can be quite obvi­ous but the fact that Canada has an offi­cial immi­gra­tion pro­gram made my life much eas­ier. I hated being on a tourist visa for the first few months in Canada because I felt I couldn’t do any­thing. This is logic after all: I was a tourist. Tem­po­rary work visa are another story. While they are great to allow you work in a spe­cific posi­tion in a for­eign coun­try, you are still an expat. I didn’t want to feel like an expat and I didn’t want to have to deal with visa exten­sion, renewal etc. I like the fact that all I had to do was to apply for per­ma­nent res­i­dence. It was stress­ful and a bit dif­fi­cult but at least, once I landed, I had a per­ma­nent status.

Because I knew I would be able to become a Cana­dian cit­i­zen: Not all coun­tries give immi­grants the option of becom­ing a cit­i­zen of their adop­tive coun­try. I appre­ci­ate the fact Canada does. I didn’t want to be an expat or a for­eign worker for­ever – I wanted to belong some­where, to have a real sta­tus in Canada. I know I will always be an immi­grant to a cer­tain extend and I don’t mind it. But I’m also Cana­dian, which gives me the right to vote and to par­tic­i­pate fully in this country’s life. I’m proud of the fact that I have a sec­ond home, a sec­ond iden­tity and a sec­ond pass­port.

Because life is afford­able: I left France in 2001 when the hous­ing bub­ble started. Each time I go visit my fam­ily, I’m amazed at how expen­sive life has become. Gas, hous­ing, food, clothes… every­thing costs more. I remem­ber when I was in high school (that is only ten years ago!), a movie ticket was 30 francs (4.50 €). It’s now over 10 €. A nice pair of jeans was 200 francs (30 €) but these same jeans cost today between 100–200 €. And I saw my beloved 500 francs (75 €) Doc Martens shoes priced at over 200 euro last year. In Canada, if you don’t buy expen­sive imported prod­ucts such as cheese and wine, food is pretty cheap. Lodg­ing is more expen­sive in Van­cou­ver, Toronto and Mon­tréal but it’s def­i­nitely not as bad as in Lon­don or Paris. When I first came to Canada, I have very lit­tle money, yet I could afford eat­ing out once in a while and buy­ing clothes on sale, two things I hadn’t done in a while in France.

Because rel­a­tively speak­ing, things work out fine: A year ago, one of my stu­dents asked me what I liked best in Canada. I paused for a minute and said just that: “Because over­all, things work out fine”. French peo­ple love to rebel and there is always a strike or some kind of demon­stra­tion going on. I some­times think it’s bet­ter than polit­i­cal apa­thy, yet it gets tir­ing because it feels like France is against every­thing and going nowhere. Cana­di­ans are more bal­anced. Sure, there are seri­ous issues here, it’s not like the coun­try is per­fect. But peo­ple tend to trust each other and it looks like they want to make things work and live in har­mony.

As I wrote three years ago, “Canada gave me a future, hope and the abil­ity to choose the life I wanted. Lit­tle by lit­tle, the jig­saw fell into place. Today, I can’t really imag­ine what would have been my life if I had stayed in France. Maybe bet­ter, maybe worse, who knows. But I’m glad I took a chance. ”

Related arti­cles:

1. Top Ten Rea­sons I Love Canada
2. Redis­cov­er­ing Canada – Things To See and Do If You Live in Canada
3. How To Work Tem­porar­ily In Canada (2÷10)
4. 5 Rea­sons Your Visa Offi­cer Hates You
5. The Lonely Immigrant