IRCC is being quite flexible these days regarding what supporting documentation they accept. The application fee is only $75 CDN. No reason you need to wait for her application to be approved unless you want to; IRCC just wants color photocopies of the supporting documents, so once your aunt has lined up any missing docs, she can just scan and email them to you.
Yeah, I had forgotten about the EU visa aspect. I’d still be wary of the Baltics (risk-averse guy that I am) and my understanding is that Latvia is kinda on the more conservative and insular side as Europe goes. But if I thought the bureaucratic hoops could be jumped through quickly enough I might have been tempted if I were younger and didn’t have nearby elderly parents to worry about.
I did briefly and just out of curiosity look at Balkan immigration laws. Both sides of my father’s side of the family all immigrated out of pre-WW I Austrian Croatia around 1906-1910. Because of that Croatia is the best shot by far and might work. However there IS the nagging little issue of my paternal family being Serbian 
. Legally it shouldn’t make a difference by the letter of the law, but tribalism is tribalism. I can’t but imagine I could get shuffled to the bottom of the pile a few times.
Serbia can supposedly technically be done by ethnicity with Orthodox baptismal records. But I would never bother. Serbia isn’t in the EU yet and I’m none too keen on dealing with their version of insular politics.
Regardless it is a moot point. Circumstances (age, family) are conspiring to keep me a ride or die American.
Correction: descendants of people who were citizens of interwar Latvia. I blame insufficient caffeine 
We know what you meaned. 
If two of your great-grandparents were born there, that’s one quarter of your ancestry, not one eighth. Not so tiny!
Yeah, I realized my math was off after it was too late to edit. Very embarrassing for a committed amateur genealogist like me. I blame my recent head trauma, a handy scapegoat.
When I apply for my Ancestry DNA test today, I’ll hopefully be able to see how far back my maternal grandparents’ lines of descent go as someone linked their FindAGrave pages to Ancestry at several places. My mother’s family moved from Quebec I want to say around the turn of 1900.
I just am not sure there is a safe haven anywhere on this planet at this point.