Thanks and merci!
Congratulations! Finally!
Your patience has been rewarded at last. When will you move? Where will you settle?
Don’t delay, come quickly, there’s no predicting what might happen with regards to ease of border crossings.
We live in dark and changing times after all. So happy for you.
Everything is up in the air. There are many moving parts to figure out, not the least of which is PR for my husband. And he has a documentation issue in that he was born in Lebanon, but doesn’t have a Lebanese government-issued birth certificate because his parents never registered his birth with the Lebanese government (just the U.S. government). So now I believe we will have the joy of figuring out how one might register a birth with the Lebanese government 50+ years after the fact while the country is in complete meltdown, or if that would even be an issue given the other birth documentation that he has. Normally I would advise a client in his circumstances to have a family member in-country try and do it, but he doesn’t have any family there (he was born there while his parents were working there and they left when he was an infant), and jumping on a plane at the moment to do it himself seems…inadvisable.
Where would we move? Good question. Likely somewhere in Ontario (proximity to family in the U.S., among other things). I have spent a total of a long weekend 20 years ago in Canada, so we need to do some recon. We’re thinking of a road trip to Niagara Falls in the spring, driving back through southern Ontario.
Lots of things to be figured out, not the least of which the job situation, since we certainly aren’t in a position to retire. Tom_Scud might be able to keep his job in some capacity remotely, although I doubt that I will - which is fine because I don’t think I can deal with the next 4 years in my current line of work. So the question now Is 1) what am I going to do with the rest of my life? and 2) will someone pay me enough to live on to do it? Maybe I could pivot to global relocation or something else where my skillset would be useful, but that doesn’t require doing the hands-on interfacing with USCIS and the State Department? Thoughts welcome!
We looked at a map for cities we could both find work in our fields, the narrowed it down by language and weather, which is why we’re in Vancouver. We didn’t factor in housing but should have.
I sponsored my partner as a common-law spouse, which got him across the border; once in Canada, he got his PR very quickly and it was about four years to get citizenship.
Welcome aboard team Canada. Cheers.
Based on what’s happening down south, we might be closing the gates, so good on you.
When you say, “Driving back through southern Ontario,” I’m assuming that you mean westbound, from Niagara Falls to Detroit. Very nice part of the country, and you would do well to take a look at Kitchener-Waterloo, London, and Windsor.
But don’t forget the parts east of Toronto too. Belleville and Kingston are both charming little cities—Belleville is close to the wineries of Prince Edward County, and Kingston is full of history, and neither has that big-city hustle, “New York Minute,” feel of Toronto.
I’m a little hesitant to suggest Toronto. Don’t get me wrong; it’s my home town, and I love the place. But the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is just so crowded and expensive now. Not just the city, but the communities (Oakville, Markham, Pickering, etc.) around it as well. Worth a look, though, if you like; nothing wrong with that.
Regardless, welcome! We’ll be glad to have you with us.
We would re-enter the U.S. either via Port Huron or Detroit, so we would do at least some exploring east of Toronto on the way back. (We’re tentatively thinking of the week before Memorial Day, and stopping off to visit Tom_Scud’s family in Michigan overnight on the way home.) Nothing is off the table! I have heard a lot of people saying exactly what you are saying about the Toronto area, but I am a city girl, and I’d like to be close enough to a major city to be able to hop a train and duck in on a weekend, anyway.
Thanks for the welcome, and for the input! I really never thought I’d even be considering a move like this; it’s all a little surreal. But there are a lot of things that have happened in the past week in the U.S. that I never thought in a million years that I would see happen.
At some point I need to touch base with the guy at Jewish Family Services in Winnipeg (he’s now the head of the agency). If not for his digging through a lot of very old microfilm to send me my grandmother’s orphanage records a quarter of a century ago, I might not have been able to pull this off at all. I certainly didn’t have Canadian citizenship on my mind back then; I just wanted to understand more about my grandmother’s early life. But without that file to prove that the person who was born in Winnipeg was actually the same person who gave birth to my father (her name morphed quite a bit over the years for complicated family reasons), I don’t know that IRCC would have believed me.
In the meantime, road trip itinerary feedback is quite welcome! I’m thinking a couple of days in and around Niagara Falls, a couple of days in Toronto, and the rest is still up in the air. And if anyone can recommend a spot where we could get a hotel room within a reasonable train commute of Toronto that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to leave the car for the day, that would be awesome.
And I wouldn’t blame Canada for wanting to close the gates, honestly. I just hope enough of a crack open is left for the people who already have ties to Canada. (And for genuine refugees.)
You now have a right under s. 6 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to come up North. 
6 (1) Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.
Everyone in the US has the right to leave. It’s the right to be accepted elsewhere that most of us crave.
Not that anyone of any nation can have any reasonable expectation of such a right to be accepted elsewhere. At least not in this century and probably not in the next either.
That, I wasn’t worried about. I am more concerned about how spousal permanent residency processing might shake out.
I have not fact-checked, but I have read one estimate that 40% of Americans may be eligible for at least one other citizenship by descent.
From Niagara Falls, Ontario, head north on the River Road to the little town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. This is Ontario’s fruit belt, and depending on the time of year, you’ll find all kinds of farm stands selling fresh homegrown fruit. Peaches are a popular crop, but there are also others. Especially grapes, which are used for wine. So, naturally, in addition to the farm stands, there are plenty of wineries, and they offer tours and tastings, as well as their wines for sale.
As for a hotel within an easy train commute, a Florida friend asked the same question when he was coming for an event in Toronto, and the next day, another event in Hamilton. I suggested finding a place in Oakville, about halfway between the two cities. Here’s what I e-mailed him back in late 2023:
Those prices have most likely changed in the year-plus since, but updated ones should be easy enough to find out. At any rate, he came, attended both events in both cities, stayed at one of the places I recommended in Oakville, and used the GO train to get into the cities. And he had a great time, and later, thanked me for the info; telling me that it was quite useful. Note that in Toronto, the GO train terminates at Union Station, from which you can get the subway to anywhere else in Toronto.
Hope this gives you a starting point for your plans. Any other questions, just ask.
Pretty much an academic question (while I can find my grandmother’s baptismal record, her birth certificate remains elusive): how strictly is the term “Canadian citizen” defined? Technically, she was never a Canadian citizen, since she was naturalized in the US well before 1947; before that, I believe she would have been a British subject — though, being Québécois, she probably wouldn’t have considered herself as such.
As I said, this is almost certainly academic: even if I could find the birth certificate and document our relationship, it’s unlikely that I could complete the paperwork before the near-certain clampdown. Still, it may be of interest to others.
Before 1947, British subjects domiciled in Canada were still Canadian nationals. Well, it depends on how far back.
Her naturalization is what is academic: US naturalization means that she was then an American citizen, and as far as the Americans were concerned, no longer a British subject. Britain and Canada, however, are not bound by that opinion, and she would have retained her nationality. Unless, of course, she married someone who wasn’t British; then she would have lost her nationality, depending on the year.
Where was your grandmother born? You could always try requesting a new copy of her birth certificate, if you haven’t already. And you might be amazed at what you can find on Ancestry.com or Familysearch.org.
It does, thanks!
If she was born in Québec, the public record may be better than you think. The church maintained birth and death registries since the 1620s!
I’m not particularly interested in genealogy, so I’ve never looked into it, but this website might be a good start for you.
One of us!
Eva_Luna, I have friends living in Brantford and Grimsby, all in the Toronto-Hamilton-Niagara Falls area, who quite like their locations.
Dr.Drake, back when proof of identity was introduced into the application for Social Insurance Numbers, we accepted baptismal certificates from Quebec in lieu of a birth certificate, so this may still be an option.