Cana­dian Flag

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.

It all went very smoothly. We drove to Prescott, an hour from Ottawa. We exited Canada, stepped into the U.S.A, and then showed up again at the Cana­dian cus­toms. I had noth­ing to declare but a box of Tim Hor­tons donuts, my papers were in order and I already had an address in Canada to receive my per­ma­nent res­i­dent card.

The immi­gra­tion offi­cer tore my one year work­ing hol­i­day visa from my pass­port, say­ing I wouldn’t need it any­more. He wished me luck and informed me that three years from now, I would be eli­gi­ble to apply for cit­i­zen­ship. It had seemed like a long time back then, and it was pretty much the last of my wor­ries — becom­ing a land­ing immi­grant was already a huge accom­plish­ment for me. We drove away, back to Ottawa.

Four years ago already.

A lot hap­pened dur­ing the last four years. After gain­ing some work expe­ri­ence here and there, I found a job as a French teacher and taught gov­ern­ment work­ers for a few years. I started a new job that I love last Octo­ber in a whole dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment: it’s chal­leng­ing and pretty reward­ing. For the first time since I’m in Canada, I feel that I found a “nor­mal” job, not one immi­grants take because they don’t really have the choice.

My Eng­lish got bet­ter too. When I first arrived in Canada, I could speak some Eng­lish but I was far from being flu­ent. First, I had trou­ble under­stand­ing North Amer­i­can accent: in France, French teach­ers teach British Eng­lish. I could under­stand writ­ten Eng­lish fine, but writ­ing was a painfully long process. And I was miss­ing a lot of cul­tural clues to under­stand what was going on around me. Eng­lish is not a dif­fi­cult lan­guage but it does rely a lot on pop cul­ture, slang and idiomatic expres­sions. Learn­ing from a book isn’t very help­ful but for the basics. If you want to speak like a Cana­dian (or an Amer­i­can for that mat­ters), you have to be famil­iar with the culture.

I remem­ber that when I first met Feng, I asked him once how long it took him to be flu­ent in Eng­lish. I was impressed because he didn’t have any accent. He replied some­thing like ten years. “You gotta be kid­ding”, I thought. But I can see what he meant now. Com­mu­ni­cat­ing in Eng­lish isn’t dif­fi­cult: after a few months in an English-speaking coun­try, any­body can pick up enough lan­guage skills to get by with­out any prob­lems. But if you really want to be flu­ent, it takes much longer. It always makes me laugh when I hear peo­ple say­ing: “oh, I spent a month in the U.S.A, I’m flu­ent in Eng­lish now”. Yeah, right.

I learned a lot about Canada these last few years. I learned so much about it that I feel I’m more com­fort­able liv­ing in Canada than in France. Indeed, I’m almost lost when I visit my birth coun­try. I can still relate to the edu­ca­tion sys­tem and a few social val­ues because after all, this is where I grew up. I can find my way around my home­town, even though dur­ing the eight years I have been gone for, a lot of busi­nesses changed. But I no longer fol­low pol­i­tics, eco­nomic or social news. If I had to go back to France tomor­row, I wouldn’t know where to start — hell, I can’t even write a proper French resume! I bet I would use “tu” with every­one as well, instead of the polite “vous”. Yes, French lan­guage has two way of say­ing “you”: a for­mal one, “vous”, and a famil­iar one, “tu”. Like “tú” and “usted” in Span­ish, or “你” and “您” in Man­darin. And among fran­coph­one in Canada, the rule is very flex­i­ble and using “tu” most of the timeis com­mon, whereas France has less flex­i­ble social rules.

I mostly real­ized how much I changed when I speak with other French peo­ple. I know longer feel an instant com­mon bond and I can’t relate if they are really into French cul­ture. I have dif­fer­ence cul­tural ref­er­ences now.

Immi­grat­ing to Canada wasn’t a life-long dream for me. It wasn’t a strate­gic or eco­nomic choice either. I sort of ended up here, up North, and decided to stay.

I was a chal­lenge at first but I don’t regret it.

Thanks Canada for adopt­ing me.

Related arti­cles:

1. 500 Arti­cles And Four Years Later…
2. Two Soli­tudes And One Loneliness
3. Immi­grat­ing to Canada: 6 Years Later, What Changed?
4. The Wall
5. Lucile And Mur­taza: From France and India to Montreal