Five Reasons Why I Live In Canada

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.

(No) Bitching Allowed

How much can you com­plain about your host coun­try after you immigrate?

Some wish they hadn’t immi­grated to Canada and crit­i­cize every­thing and oth­ers praise every­thing but now hate their home coun­try. The truth must be some­where in between.

Challenge Your Beliefs

Some of my core val­ues were chal­lenged at one point or another after I moved to Canada. I had to recon­sider what I had been taught as a French. What I had blindly believed in for all the years I spent in France. What had been passed on to me by my par­ents and by the edu­ca­tion system.

Even the slight­est things.

Four Years, Already...

Exactly four years ago, I got up very early. Feng and I got in the car still half asleep. It was a big day for me: I was cross­ing the bor­der to the U.S.A only to come back to Canada a few min­utes later, to val­i­date my per­ma­nent res­i­dent visa and to become a landed immigrant.

My Brand New Canadian Passport!

Two weeks ago, I com­pleted what I hope is my last paper­works for a while. But it was worth it: today, I picked my Cana­dian pass­port up!

Apply­ing for a Cana­dian pass­port is not that easy though: ref­er­ences, guar­an­tors… what is that??

Canada's Visa War

The new is every­where in the immi­gra­tion com­mu­nity: as of July 13^th 2009, Canada imposed a visa on Mex­ico and Czech Repub­lic nation­als vis­it­ing the coun­try.
The move was uni­lat­eral and very sud­den. It was also some­what unex­pected and it is cer­tainly huge trou­bles for the thou­sands of tourists that are now forced to apply for a vis­i­tor visa.

I Belong Here... And There Too

This got me think­ing. I was born in France, of French par­ents, so I am French. No-brainer here. But because I left the coun­try right after grad­u­at­ing from high school, lit­tle by lit­tle, I lost my French iden­tity. Obvi­ously, I adapted to Canada — this was bound to hap­pen. But I also lost it in a very prac­ti­cal way.

Useful Links For Immigration (10/10)

This is the last and 10^th post of the How To…Immigrate To Canada series. I’d like to give you a list of use­ful links about immi­grat­ing to Canada: offi­cial web­sites, per­sonal blogs, forums etc.