Patience…

Seri­ously, I love Cana­di­ans, but they have a thing with pic­tures. See, in France, we still have old fash­ioned auto­matic photo booth, 4€ for a sheet of four pic­tures, ready in min­utes. Smile, laugh or look either pale as a ghost or red-faced, your pic­ture will be just fine. You can use it for your pass­port appli­ca­tion, your dri­ver license or any other offi­cial documents.

But in Canada, it’s dif­fer­ent. Your health card or your dri­ver license’s pic­tures are taken on the spot by an employee and dig­i­tally included in your cards. Alright. Easy enough. Now, things get a bit more com­pli­cated for pass­ports, cit­i­zen­ship cards or immi­gra­tion doc­u­ments. You have to get your pic­ture taken at a pho­tog­ra­pher. The require­ments are very spe­cific… The pho­tos must mea­sure between 35mm x 53mm fin­ished size and between 25mm and 35mm from chin to crown. The the name of the pho­tog­ra­pher or the stu­dio, the stu­dio address and the date the pho­tos were taken must be stamped on the back of the pho­tos. The pho­tos must show a full front view of the person’s head cen­tered in the mid­dle of the photo; have a plain white back­ground; have a plain white sig­na­ture strip (no more than 10mm and no less than 6mm deep) at the bottom.

And most impor­tant: you can not smile. Ever. A neu­tral expres­sion with no teeth show­ing with nor­mal skin color has to be main­tained. Look sad, just to be on the safe side (two pic­tures cost about $15).

Look­ing happy on an offi­cial pic­ture for what­ever appli­ca­tion may makes the per­son who process it smile. God for­bid. It is also well-known that a smile can change your face. See these bad guys on Amer­ica Most Wanted? None of them smile on their mugshot. That’s why they are the bad guys. As an appli­cant, I’m a poten­tial bad gal. So no smil­ing. How flat­ter­ing.

I feel like smil­ing though. I’m apply­ing for Cana­dian cit­i­zen­ship. Finally. I meet all the require­ments: I have been in Canada for a min­i­mum of two years and I lived there for at least 1,095 days for the last three years. I haven’t been charged or con­victed of any­thing. I speak French and Eng­lish. I’m that close to be Cana­dian… minus the one-year cit­i­zen­ship application’s pro­cess­ing time.

Cal­cu­lat­ing for how many days I had been in Canada was my biggest chal­lenge, once I man­aged to have the size-specific non-smiling pic­tures taken. See, I first came to Canada in 2002 for a while, and then in 2003, and then stayed there for a year in 2004 as a tourist on an extended visa, got a work­ing hol­i­day visa later that year and was granted per­ma­nent res­i­dence the fol­low­ing year. Got it? Me nei­ther. I had to scram­ble every­thing down, writ­ing cryp­tic dates and arrows to con­nect my jumps across the pond. Turned out that I only had to count from my work­ing hol­i­day visa. An eraser, any­one?

I also had to sub­tract the days I was absent from Canada. Prob­lem is, I always get a stamp on my pass­port when I re-enter Canada, but of course it is not stamped when I’m going to France or leav­ing Canada. So I always know when I came back but not when I left. I remem­ber very clearly that when I got my per­ma­nent res­i­dence and was told I could apply for cit­i­zen­ship, I promised myself to write down every sin­gle minute I would spent out­side Canada. Which, of course, I never did. So I had to rely on fam­ily, friends, old emails and Feng:

— In 2005, did I leave on the 30^th of August, or on the 31^st?
— I don’t know, I can’t even remem­ber what I ate last night!
— But was it right before the Rolling Stones con­cert or a cou­ple of days later?
— Oh wait, I think we went to the fair right after, so it must have been the fol­low­ing day.

I’m glad I didn’t have to jus­tify how I remem­bered the date.

For­tu­nately, I didn’t have to cal­cu­late my “time spent serv­ing a sen­tence”. I think the incen­tive of not to have to cal­cu­late an extra thing was enough for me to behave in society.

The bot­tom of my appli­ca­tion states: “I under­stand the con­tent of this form. I declare that the infor­ma­tion pro­vided is true, cor­rect and com­plete.” And while I did fill up the form cor­rectly and hon­estly, I’m not sure I can declare that I under­stand it. The ques­tions look easy enough: name, date of birth, first time appli­cant (yes or no), place of birth etc. But no mat­ter how easy Cit­i­zen­ship and Immi­gra­tion try to design the forms, there are always some ambigu­ous ques­tions. Here how the fact that there are three dif­fer­ent cases for names explained:

Print your surname/last name and given name(s), as they appear on your Record of Land­ing (IMM 1000) […]


The name on your cit­i­zen­ship cer­tifi­cate will be the same as the one shown on your Per­ma­nent Res­i­dent Card, unless you have legally changed it after arriv­ing in Canada. […]

If you have not legally changed your name, you may still request that the cit­i­zen­ship cer­tifi­cate show a dif­fer­ent name . […]

If you have used another name in the past, or are known by a name other than the one you listed above, print it on the appli­ca­tion form. […]

So basi­cally, I have to write down my name and has to be the one I actu­ally use. Unless I changed it legally. But eh, even if I didn’t change it legally, we are still good and I can write it down anyway.

Right. See what I mean by ambiguous?

Oh well. It’s in the mail now. Wait and see

Related arti­cles:

1. Cit­i­zen­ship Cer­e­mony In Ottawa
2. I Belong Here… And There Too
3. I made It
4. The Pros and Cons to Cana­dian Citizenship
5. Cit­i­zen­ship Exam Day In Ottawa