From the BBC:
Canadian beavers take down town’s Internet
Oh dear! What can I possibly say?…
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Tags: Beaver, British Columbia, Canada, wildlife
Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.
Marcel Proust
I receive a sharp reminder once a year of the passage of time… and in particular of the passage of time since I started writing this blog. That reminder comes in the form of the renewal demand from my hosting company for the pleasure of supporting my various websites – of which this blog was the first, having been created back in 2012. I started blogging at the end of January that year so now is the time that I must stump up in order that I may continue so to do.
For those gentle readers who don’t really get this whole blogging thing – there was a time when blogging was all the rage. That was the few years before I took it up, naturally, and by the time had I started keeping this journal the youngsters were already saying – “Blogging?… Nah!”
Now, of course, I am nearly a whole decade further behind the times – and you know what? – I really don’t care that I am old-fashioned. I am sixty seven, for goodness sake. I am allowed to be old fashioned.
For those of you who like statistics – in the nine years that I have been writing this blog I have written 925 posts (averaging just over 100 posts a year – approximately two a week). If the internal statistics are to be believed I have written nearly 365,000 words in that time and uploaded some 2,590 images – many of them my own photographs.
Not bad, huh?!
I started blogging when I learned that The Girl was going to take up a good job here in Victoria, even though I still needed to work for a few more years in the UK before I could retire and move to Canada to be with her. Faced with the prospect of carrying on a long distance relationship with an eight hour time difference I figured that I would need to find things to occupy my time (other than working!). When her job fell through and she came back to the UK some ten months later I decided to keep the blog going – documenting our eventual move to British Columbia, which was rescheduled for 2015.
I could have stopped once we settled here but I decided to keep it going – as a way of keeping a foot on both continents. I am blessed to have regular readers on both sides of the pond who seem happy to keep up with my chunterings.
Has the blog changed much? It is certainly less verbose than it used to be and I don’t reach for the thesaurus quite as much as once I did. I enjoyed getting to explore the language and to play little games with prose, but as I have grown older so have I started to keep things a little more simple – more straightforward. I have noticed that I do the same with song lyrics – which is no bad thing…
Having made it this far I will, naturally, be shooting for the complete decade.
After that – who knows?
Tags: Blog, Canada, Immigrant, Long distance relationship, Memories
Just for completeness – and who doesn’t like a little completeness – I thought I should wrap up my thread from earlier in the year about having to apply for a new Permanent Resident card (documented here and here). Well – I finally have it – and here it is:
You will notice that I have intentionally blurred some of the detail for security reasons. My face – on the other hand – usually looks like that first thing in the morning!
This is the old and now redundant card – strangely suffering from a similar lack of focus.
It struck me – as I was manipulating these images – that there is perhaps something a little perverse in having a Permanent Resident Card that must be renewed every five years.
That seems to be a whole new definition of ‘permanent’.
The instructions that came with the new card dictated that the old one should be destroyed. Naturally I did as I was directed: herewith the proof:
Hmmm! I think one of my projects for 2021 must be to try to get my citizenship sorted out.
Onward and upward!
Tags: Canada, Immigrant, permanent resident
Well – not boots actually – but I could not off the top of my head think of any other footwear related couplets from which I could plagiarise a post title.
When I was a considerably younger man I really had very little time for slippers. Now that I write that it feels like an odd thing to say; I don’t suppose than anyone actually gives time to domestic footwear. What I mean is that I didn’t feel the need for/couldn’t be bother with such things. Living in residences with carpets probably probably made a difference; we have little truck with such things here on the west coast.
I suppose also that I am now guilty of re-enforcing the stereotypes concerning such cosy domestic items – that they are only for old-folks; something your father would wear in his dotage (mine did!). I guess the truth is that I have now become (am now becoming!) that old-timer myself.
Either way – when we came to Canada half a decade ago it seemed like the right (and sensible – no-one needs cold feet) thing to do to acquire said comfy accoutrements. Further – being in Canada – they should undoubtedly take the form of Moccasins. A suitable pair was duly located – purchased – fallen in love with and worn until they fell apart.
Those are they on the left. On the right is the virtually identical pair with which I have just replaced them.
Well – if it ain’t broke…
If – on the other hand – it is broke…
When I was a considerably younger man I really had very little time for slip-on shoes. You know – the sort of thing that doesn’t have laces (Tom Allen on ‘Mock the Week’ – “Duh! Espadrilles“). I mean – let’s face it – shoes without laces aren’t real shoes, now – are they? Not for an English gentleman anyway (they’re called ‘loafers’ for goodness sake!).
Anyway – when we came to Canada half a decade ago and acquired not only an rather splendid inside but also a quite extensive outside – one containing a barbecue (which the gentleman abroad is expected to use year round) and continuous and copious quantities of pine needles, etc – it suddenly made perfect sense to have some footwear that could easily be slipped on an off every time one needed to rush out to attend the grill! Of course – being in Canada – they would have to take a somewhat more rugged and substantial form than most casual English shoes (one really can’t barbecue in Hunters!). Needless to say, a suitable pair was duly located – purchased – fallen in love with and worn until they fell apart.
Those are they on the left. On the right is the virtually identical pair with which I have just replaced them.
Well – you know what they say…
Tags: Canada, footwear, Old friends
“I have detected,” he said, “disturbances in the wash.”
“The wash?” said Arthur.
“The space-time wash,” said Ford.
Arthur nodded, and then cleared his throat.
“Are we talking about,” he asked cautiously, “some sort of Vogon laundromat, or what are we talking about?”
“Eddies,” said Ford, “in the space-time continuum.”
“Ah,” nodded Arthur, “is he? Is he?” He pushed his hands into the pocket of his dressing gown and looked knowledgeably into the distance.
“What?” said Ford.
“Er, who,” said Arthur, “is Eddy, then, exactly?”
Ford looked angrily at him.
“Will you listen?” he snapped.
“I have been listening,” said Arthur, “but I’m not sure it’s helped.”
Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I received the other day an email from ‘Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’ (funny! – I don’t recall that title previously including the ‘refugees’ bit!) concerning my application to renew my Permanent Resident card. This missive included the paragraph:
“This confirms that your application for your Permanent Resident card has been received by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) on 2020/07/08.”
Making allowance for the fact that here in Canada dates can appear in a variety of odd formats – though not in the correct one (to an Englishman at least) – I calculate that this means that my application was received by the IRCC on July 8th this year – the which would be about right.
I am – perhaps understandably – a little mystified as to why they should send me an email to advise me of this fact on October 14th.
The email also advises me that I can check the progress of my application by visiting the appropriate part of the IRCC website and entering my Unique Client Identifier (UCI). Perhaps – I muse – they have just started processing my application – which might account for their sudden correspondence.
I follow the guidelines.The IRCC website claims never to have heard of me!
I wade through the notes trying to establish why I might appear to be missing from the system. The site helpfully informs me that this is probably because my application has not yet made it to the processing stage – and until is has I officially don’t exist.
Sooooo… Three months after I submit my application IRCC randomly sends me an acknowledgement, even though they have not – and apparently have no intention of – actually looking at it anytime soon.
No – I don’t get it either. What is it about bureaucracies?
Tags: Canada, Immigrant, permanent resident
…still won’t travel!
A few weeks back my new UK passport finally arrived. I now get another ten years of winging my way around the world until I have to go through that palaver again. Right now – of course – I have no desire to hop on a plane to go anywhere.
Still – I could if I needed to…
The new passport was delivered to our residence by one of the better know carriers. The chap who rang our doorbell did not ask for a signature (no-one seems to do that any more in these grim times) – but he did, however, cheerfully remark:
”You’ll get another one of those in a couple of days.”
He was not wrong, of course, for a few days later my old passport – corner docked as per – also turned up. What worried me somewhat was that the man clearly knew that the package he was delivering contained a passport. I suppose it was not a difficult guess, given that Victoria is teeming with ex-pats who must all on occasion receive double deliveries of passport sized packages.
Still – living in a small community is all very well but there are (or should be) limits…
Incidentally, whatever the ghastly brexit mob might claim (and however the thing appears in the accompanying image) this passport ain’t blue (that’s just the light in the photo – honest!)…
…it’s black!
Anyway – I hope that you still feel that it was all worth it (I just bet that you do!).
Sorry – that was only for those who should have known better! As you were…
Now then – where’s my replacement Canadian Permanent Resident card? No point being able to leave the country (should I ever wish so to do) if I can’t then get back in!
Tags: Canada, passport, permanent resident, United Kingdom
With regard to my application to the UK Passport Office, from whom I have been waiting patiently for some good news… I think that the attached needs no further explanation:
Now just waiting on the Canadian equivalent for my Permanent Resident card…
How about it – Canada?
Tags: Canada, passport, permanent resident, United Kingdom
“It’s said that you can never go home again, and it’s true enough, of course. But the opposite is also true. You must go back, and you always go back, and you can never stop going back, no matter how hard you try.”
Gregory David Roberts, ‘Shantaram’
We find ourselves in a brief period of anniversaries – the which are as ever cause for celebration… and in these difficult times any reason so to do is to be seized upon with gratitude.
The weekend before last saw the fifth anniversary of our arrival (or re-arrival in the case of The Girl) as residents in Canada. As I have noted in other recent posts, this milestone is significant for various reasons – not least because I can now apply for Canadian citizenship to add to my British variant. It seems somehow appropriate that The Girl and I should each be a citizen of both countries, as both have been particularly good to us.
On which note – the image that accompanies this post is apt and heart-felt. I am most grateful both to Canada and to Canadians for taking me in and helping me to feel at home here. I will never forget the kindnesses that we have been shown. Canadians are – by and large – a generous, modest and gentle people (traits shown up all the more by the manners of their nearest neighbours) and have thus earned my undying respect. Thank you one and all.
We will certainly be making the journey across the water again (when the current crisis has abated) and I will naturally always be drawn there – but Vancouver Island is now my home and I am delighted at that.
Next time – yet more anniversary news…!
Tags: Anniversary, Canada, Celebration, gratitude
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple”
Oscar Wilde
It need hardly be said that the truth is far from being the only thing that is ‘never simple’ and I could – at this point – be referring to any one of a great number of subjects. Those who pursue the many strands of this online delectus will not, however, be surprised at my current target.
As divulged within these meditations but a few posts back, I am currently engaged with the relevant authorities in the pursuit of an application for Canadian citizenship, as well as for the renewal of both my Canadian permanent residence card and my UK passport. Anything connected to citizenship or passports can be guaranteed to conceal a veritable minefield of obstacles, obfuscation, obstruction, obscurement and obduration.
The opening salvoes in this particular engagement were fired back at the start of July and things had reached the point – I surmised – that it was time to sit back and to wait for the inevitable interminable months to pass before anything further happened.
With regard to my UK passport renewal I had – as directed – completed and submitted the online application form and – somewhat nervously – entrusted my current passport to Canada Post (cue sharp intake of breath) in the expectation that it would wing its way back over the pond to Durham (in the UK) whence it had originally come.
Somewhat to my surprise I received, a couple of days ago, an email from the UK Passport Office advising me to do (again?) what I had already done. Naturally I had sent the precious document by recorded delivery, so I was able to check the tracking log. According to Canada Post’s records my passport had been delivered to Durham on July 9th – some two weeks ago. I figured that the best thing to do was to call the UK Passport Office to check that it had – in fact – arrived.
Easier said than done, of course!
Using Skype to make a trans-Atlantic call at a reasonable rate I suffered the expected multiple attempts at connection before finally a ‘ring tone’ was heard and I shortly thereafter found myself listening to the usual robotic instructions. After the familiar ritual of the system refusing to acknowledge that I had in fact pressed the numbers that I had, I reached – on the fourth or fifth attempt – an accommodation with the insensate automaton by which it agreed to connect me with my desired service if I were prepared first to listen to a whole bunch of badly recorded music punctuated by incessant and identical informational missives.
Eventually the call was picked up – not by a real live human (oh no!) but by another machine. This one had but a single purpose in mind. It demanded that I key-in a telephone number on which I could – at some unspecified point in the future – be called back. I could not – naturally – recall the correct recipe for calling Canada from the UK in the first instance, but eventually the machine seemed to be satisfied and abruptly disconnected me.
I thought that I had better check what was likely to happen next, so I approached the InterWebNet with a suitable query to determine what experiences others had had with this ‘service’. I rapidly discovered that my call-back might be anything up to about three days in coming. Given that there is an eight hour time difference between the west coast of Canada and the cathedral city of Durham it further seemed likely that the call would come sometime in the middle of the night – assuming that whoever made the call might not figure out that he – or she – was calling the far side of the world.
The Girl made it clear that this meant one or more nights on the sofa for me as she had no intention of being woken at some god-forsaken hour by a disinterested British bureaucrat.
I was sleeping the sleep of the just at five thirty the following morning when the phone duly rang.
“Good afternoon” – quoth a British voice (betraying the fact that – as suspected – my being a number of time-zones away from Blighty had escaped their notice) – “How can I help?“. The transition from being in deep REM sleep to having to explain why I was calling the far side of world went more successfully than might have been expected and the northern gentleman explained that – though my passport had undoubtedly reached them on July 9th, it would take a further ten to fourteen days for it to be entered into the ‘system’ – and until such time as it had done so the clock did not start ticking on the processing of my application.
There was a brief pause as we each mentally ticked off the two weeks that had already elapsed since my passport had reached Durham.
“I expect it will show up any day now” – he said, slightly unconvincingly. I mentioned that I lived on the west coast of Canada – more than anything to let him know why I felt so exposed as a result of not being in possession of a passport. “Ah!” – he exclaimed, unable to hide a note of triumph in his voice. “If you have sent your passport from abroad it takes three weeks for it to appear on the system!“.
Riiiiiiight!
Oh well – nothing to do but to wait – and to simply swat away any further spurious requests to send back my precious passport.
Tags: Canada, Immigrant, passport, permanent resident, United Kingdom
…good grief!
Way back in the early days of this journal – May 16th 2012 to be precise – I posted to these pages an entry entitled “A Tough Occupation“. That was the first mention amidst this griffonage of a subject that was to become a major preoccupation over the following three years… my application for Permanent Resident status within Canada.
Should this subject be of the remotest interest to the gentle reader (you might perhaps be engaged upon a similar journey yourself) a subsequent post of May 20th 2015 – entitled “It’s Official!” – not only celebrated the eventual successful outcome of the application but also catalogued all of the prior posts on the subject. Useful – perhaps – should one wish to know just how the long and tortuous process can unfold.
It will not take a degree in rocket science to deduce in short order the motivation for this particular post. It is – after all – exactly one week until the fifth anniversary of our ‘landing’ upon these shores – an occasion that is not without its implications, for once one has been a resident in Canada for five years one may – subject to a variety of other criteria – apply for citizenship. Needless to say this is something that I firmly intend to do.
There are – however – other important things to be addressed first.
I think I was vaguely aware that my Permanent Resident Card was only valid for five years, but in all the excitement of finally being here I did not look too closely at what would need to be done to extend that period. I made the naive assumption that all I would need to do would be to fill out some online application, pay a fee and a new card would rapidly pop into our mailbox.
Nothing so simple!
It turns out that another complex form must be completed (IMM 5444 (09-2019) E) – which demands details on everywhere one has lived since arriving, everywhere one has worked and everywhere one has traveled outwith Canadian borders. The fee must be paid and the receipt submitted, new photos must be taken (in the prescribed format) and signed appropriately by the photographer and copies of primary identification and existing PR card added to the submission. Once this has all been dispatched as directed one can sit back and await the delivery of one’s new card – in nine months time!
What?!
If this weren’t bad enough 2020 also happens to mark the tenth anniversary of my wedding to the Kickass Canada Girl. That is in itself, of course, a significant cause for celebration (on which more in subsequent posts) but another consideration arises therefrom. We took each other’s names when we married and that process entailed acquiring replacement passports. My UK passport thus expires at the end of this year and must also be renewed.
Now – a UK passport can reasonably easily be renewed from Canada (in this age of digital photography) by means of an online application – though the UK Passport Office do their level best to dissuade non-critical applications in these times of plague (presumably once it has become critical they would shrug their digital shoulders and suggest that the application should have been made sooner!). Anyway – I applied – not wanting to be without any means of moving between my birth and adoptive countries.
The problem is, however, that the UK Passport Office requires one to physically return one’s old passport before they will process the online application – thus surely rendering this modernised online version somewhat redundant. As a result one finds oneself worrying lacking in international documentation for an unspecified length of time…
…and I have not yet begun even to look at the citizenship application!
Sigh!
Tags: Canada, Immigrant, passport, permanent resident, United Kingdom
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