Ottawa, Decem­ber 2012

This four-part spe­cial fea­ture casts a spot­light on the Cana­dian work­ing world and its ups and downs. Com­ments and ques­tions are always welcome!

In Decem­ber 2011, I quit my posi­tion as a man­ag­ing edi­tor for a Crown cor­po­ra­tion to return to free­lanc­ing.

Peo­ple thought I was crazy. Quit­ting a well-paid per­ma­nent posi­tion in the pub­lic sec­tor to free­lance? Giv­ing up ben­e­fits, a reg­u­lar income and a pen­sion plan? In that economy?

Surely, some­thing was wrong with me.

Espe­cially it wasn’t my first time say­ing “non, merci” to a per­ma­nent posi­tion: in August 2010, I had resigned from my job as a trans­la­tor for the Lib­eral Bureau—again to return to freelancing.

So, am I crazy?

Well, maybe. I cer­tainly hadn’t expected to get preg­nant a cou­ple of months after resign­ing from my position—the tim­ing wasn’t great, since I was no longer eli­gi­ble for mater­nity leave or other ben­e­fits (oh the irony—the first time ever I would have needed them!). But even with a baby in my belly, I wasn’t tempted to look for another posi­tion in the cor­po­rate world and I stuck to freelancing.

Since my first work visa in 2004, I held var­i­ous posi­tions in Ottawa and around. First, like most immi­grants with­out work expe­ri­ence in Canada (and lit­tle work expe­ri­ence period—I was only 21!), I worked in the cus­tomer ser­vice indus­try as a call cen­tre agent, a recep­tion­ist, an exam super­vi­sor and a small busi­ness employee. Then I taught French as a sec­ond lan­guage for the Cana­dian fed­eral gov­ern­ment for three years—my first “real” job. In 2009, I returned to my ini­tial area of exper­tise, trans­la­tion. I worked as an English-to-French trans­la­tor and edi­tor at the Lib­eral Research Bureau and then as a man­ag­ing edi­tor for a Crown corporation.

And now I’m offer­ing my ser­vices as an English-to-French trans­la­tor, as well as a bilin­gual copy­writer, copy­ed­i­tor and proofreader.

Being as a free­lancer is a per­sonal choice—it works for me, that doesn’t mean I nec­es­sar­ily advo­cate it.

I like col­lab­o­rat­ing with dif­fer­ent clients with var­i­ous needs. I feel more effi­cient when I man­age my own work­load and sched­ule. I like to com­bine trans­la­tion work, edit­ing, proof­read­ing and copy­writ­ing, and free­lanc­ing gives me that opportunity.

I some­time won­der what my career path would have been if I had stayed in France. When I left the coun­try at the age of 18, I didn’t really have a career plan in mind. I loved (and still love!) writ­ing, words, lan­guages and any­thing artis­tic. I have a degree in Chi­nese lan­guage and civ­i­liza­tion but I was reluc­tant to use it to get into inter­na­tional trade because busi­ness isn’t really my thing. I may have become a Chinese-to-French trans­la­tor… or I may still be strug­gling, look­ing for a job—any job. The econ­omy isn’t exactly thriv­ing in France at the moment.

One thing is for sure, the work­ing world in France (and gen­er­ally in West­ern Europe) is very dif­fer­ent from the Cana­dian (and North Amer­i­can) work­ing world. Through the var­i­ous posi­tions I held in Canada, I’ve seen it all—the good, the bad and the ugly.

This fea­ture will explore the ups and downs of the Cana­dian work­ing world. I hope it will help prospec­tive immi­grants and new­com­ers to under­stand its good sides and any poten­tial chal­lenges they may face in the workplace.

Part II Work­ing in Canada: the Good will be pub­lished on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 21. Stay tuned!

Related arti­cles:

1. [Spe­cial Fea­ture – Part VI] Work­ing in Canada: the Ugly
2. [Spe­cial Fea­ture – Part II] Work­ing in Canada: the Good
3. Get­ting Your First Job in Canada, The Chal­lenge Never Ends
4. [Spe­cial Fea­ture – Part III] Work­ing in Canada: the Bad
5. I Belong Here… And There Too
6. I Ain’t Work­ing for Free (And Nei­ther Should You)