From far and wide
Whenever
you see me in a three-piece suit it's a good bet that I must be
standing in front of a judge, and today was no exception. However,
there were 129 people with me who were about to become new Canadians.
The ceremony itself was an excellent illustration of government efficiency when the immigration officials had to check the papers of each participant and seat everybody. This whole thing took almost an hour and a half, because there was only one official on duty. After a while, another one arrived to pick up half of the load, and he must have been drinking coffee since he complained about a stain on his brand-new shirt.
The main bulk of these new Canadians were South Asians, with a smaller number of East Asians and Middle Easterners plus a handful of black people thrown into the mix. For a moment I thought I saw one other person there who was from Europe. Waiting was boring, and it wasn't helped by the fact that a few people had had the bright idea of bringing small babies to the ceremony to wail and cry. When the ceremony itself finally started, it was led by a very French-looking old judge with an aide, a younger black judge with a more relaxed demeanour, plus two police officers who just looked sharp and didn't say or do anything. The male police officer was crusty and old, in all likelihood retired years ago, and his parade uniform included that type of hat that the Marine Corps drill sergeants wear. The female police officer was much younger and thus wore the regular police officer uniform.
The ceremony consisted of us first swearing the oath in both official languages, led by the judge, after which we stepped to the front one by one to pick up our citizenship cards. After shaking hands with the judge and the police officers and posing for photographs each new Canadian had to go to the back of the room to actually sign the oath. The ceremony ended with the judge giving a short congratulatory speech, in which he listed all countries that we had come from (as my wife noted, USA was curiously absent in this list, for reasons that we could pontificate in a separate post), and the last part of the ceremony was singing the national anthem.
I don't feel that much different now, although when I think about it, quite a lot has happened since I applied for the passport and saved from my meager student money to be able to fly to Canada for the first time. Perhaps ten years or so in the future if I travel abroad to some third nation and some serious emergency breaks out in there, I just show the officials my Canadian passport and they are so scared out of their wits of the thought of the mighty Canadian forces reaching against them that they just say "Go ahead, sir", and a long gray line of thousands of other people end up just seeing me yell "So long, suckers!" in style of Homer Simpson. Hey, anything could happen.
The ceremony itself was an excellent illustration of government efficiency when the immigration officials had to check the papers of each participant and seat everybody. This whole thing took almost an hour and a half, because there was only one official on duty. After a while, another one arrived to pick up half of the load, and he must have been drinking coffee since he complained about a stain on his brand-new shirt.
The main bulk of these new Canadians were South Asians, with a smaller number of East Asians and Middle Easterners plus a handful of black people thrown into the mix. For a moment I thought I saw one other person there who was from Europe. Waiting was boring, and it wasn't helped by the fact that a few people had had the bright idea of bringing small babies to the ceremony to wail and cry. When the ceremony itself finally started, it was led by a very French-looking old judge with an aide, a younger black judge with a more relaxed demeanour, plus two police officers who just looked sharp and didn't say or do anything. The male police officer was crusty and old, in all likelihood retired years ago, and his parade uniform included that type of hat that the Marine Corps drill sergeants wear. The female police officer was much younger and thus wore the regular police officer uniform.
The ceremony consisted of us first swearing the oath in both official languages, led by the judge, after which we stepped to the front one by one to pick up our citizenship cards. After shaking hands with the judge and the police officers and posing for photographs each new Canadian had to go to the back of the room to actually sign the oath. The ceremony ended with the judge giving a short congratulatory speech, in which he listed all countries that we had come from (as my wife noted, USA was curiously absent in this list, for reasons that we could pontificate in a separate post), and the last part of the ceremony was singing the national anthem.
I don't feel that much different now, although when I think about it, quite a lot has happened since I applied for the passport and saved from my meager student money to be able to fly to Canada for the first time. Perhaps ten years or so in the future if I travel abroad to some third nation and some serious emergency breaks out in there, I just show the officials my Canadian passport and they are so scared out of their wits of the thought of the mighty Canadian forces reaching against them that they just say "Go ahead, sir", and a long gray line of thousands of other people end up just seeing me yell "So long, suckers!" in style of Homer Simpson. Hey, anything could happen.
Neat story.
I would love to hear why *no one* from the USA. That extreme does surprise!
Posted by AndrewPundit | 2:23 PM