We Have Landed

Here’s how it went.

They say that when you are deprived of sleep, you tem­porar­ily lose some short-term mem­ory, so maybe that’s the rea­son that that some of my trip to Buf­falo is lit­tle fuzzy. Here is what I do remember:

I left on Tues­day morn­ing and flew first to Chicago. I knew I was back in an Amer­i­can air­port imme­di­ately as I entered and heard that hor­ri­ble Texan woman’s voice you now hear in all US air­ports (“THENK-YOO for your coop­er­a­tion”). The longer your lay­over, the more times you have to hear it. I’m now pos­i­tive that one or more cir­cles of Hell include her announce­ments at reg­u­lar inter­vals. My con­nect­ing flight to Buf­falo was delayed sev­eral times because of mechan­i­cal trou­ble, and we switched gates no less than 3 times, but we even­tu­ally got a new plane and I arrived at the Buf­falo air­port about an hour late, 11 PM. I checked into the nearby Sleep Inn and got some­thing to eat at a nearby Denny’s and then tried to sleep. I was still on Pacific Time and ner­vous about what was to come the next day, so that was hard to do.

The next morn­ing, I called a taxi and left for down­town at about 7:45 AM. The scenery along the high­way and near the HSBC Cen­ter was uni­formly grey and depress­ing, with many empty ware­houses, and clus­ters of neigh­bor­hood houses all look­ing like they were hud­dling together for warmth. It had snowed the night before, but less than an inch. If this was to be the place where I was to make a good-bye of sorts to the US, I’d be hard pressed to find a bleaker spot.

The cab dropped me off by the 30-story HSBC Cen­ter, the tallest build­ing in down­town Buf­falo. The Cana­dian Con­sulate was on the 30^th floor. Even though it was only about 8:10 and the Con­sulate had not opened yet, there was already a line of about 25 peo­ple in the lobby. A short, brisk woman with a strong Upstate New York accent (which I rec­og­nized from the days I lived in nearby Rochester, and to my ears is still the aural equiv­a­lent of drink­ing a glass of dis­tilled vine­gar) gave us each a sticker and herded us into two groups; my group was sent to a glass cor­ral a few hun­dred feet away. She then took the first group, lined up by the wall near the ele­va­tors, up to the 30^th floor and then returned in a few moments for us for the same. When we reached the Con­sulate, she care­fully and pre­cisely directed us to rows of chairs at var­i­ous places around a win­dow­less wait­ing room. The room was bare except for these plas­tic chairs, arranged in rows as if view­ing the tele­vi­sion high on the wall at the front, which was show­ing non-stop CNN cov­er­age of the death of Pres­i­dent Ger­ald Ford. As peo­ple were called to either the recep­tion win­dow or one of the cashier win­dows, we shifted our seat­ing, mov­ing over, return­ing to a dif­fer­ent row or leav­ing. I cal­cu­lated about 75 peo­ple who were dealt with in total. The admin­is­tra­tor woman (who’s name I never learned), gave a spiel every time she returned with another set of peo­ple until 10 min­utes before 11:00 AM, at which point the Con­sulate would take no more busi­ness. We were to put the sticker we’d got­ten in the lobby on the back of the card with our num­ber we’d receive from recep­tion, men were obliged to give their seats to women, there was no leav­ing this room dur­ing the day, no use of cell phones, etc.

Dur­ing the wait, I spoke to neigh­bors sit­ting nearby from Mex­ico, Hon­duras, Eng­land and India. I did not meet another Amer­i­can, although I sus­pect there were a few. At about 9:30, I pro­vided my com­pleted forms, pho­tos and fee of $980 CAD to the recep­tion win­dow. At 11:30 was called back to receive my com­pleted mate­ri­als. There, pasted into Pam’s and my pass­port, was a visa that could be used one time, allow­ing me to ‘Land’ in Canada as a per­ma­nent res­i­dent (which I would be doing the next day). After some best wishes and con­grat­u­la­tions exchanged with my fel­low Immi­grants, I called the cab from a pay phone (know­ing before about the no cell phone rule, I had left mine at the motel) and returned to the Sleep Inn. I took a chilly walk to another nearby restau­rant (an updated Greek Diner), where I had a huge plate of meat­loaf and pota­toes. My body had no clue what time zone I was in, and I essen­tially had noth­ing to do until I was to leave, at 6 AM the next morn­ing. Since a flight at 4 AM required me get­ting up at 3, that was the equiv­a­lent of 1 AM Van­cou­ver time, and I decided to try and get to bed as early as I could stand. After talk­ing to Pam and my brother to share the good news that I had accom­plished my tasks, I lis­tened to my iPod and tried to sleep.

The next morn­ing I took the first flight to Washington’s Dulles Air­port, made the tight con­nec­tion to the Van­cou­ver flight. Another delay because of equip­ment prob­lems, 6 hours, 3 in-flight movies and one snack-box later, I arrived at the sunny (!) Van­cou­ver air­port at about 1:30 PM local time.

The wait­ing and paper­work weren’t over yet. After fol­low­ing the usual long snaking line through cus­toms, I pre­sented my mate­ri­als at a spe­cial room for Immi­grant Land­ings, and learned that my Per­ma­nent Res­i­dency ID card would be mailed to me in about 6 weeks. The staff was very friendly and wel­com­ing, and I mar­veled at how one girl man­aged to speak about 4 or 5 dif­fer­ent lan­guages, includ­ing Hindi, Can­tonese, French and Taga­log. I tried call­ing Pam sev­eral times, but some­how her phone was turned off or not receiv­ing me. Nev­er­the­less, I caught a cab home and col­lapsed. Kind of an anti­cli­max, but that’s the way these things go, I suppose.

The next day, Pam took off from work, rented a car and drove to the US bor­der, and after a cou­ple of hours of wait­ing in the line of cars and the pre­req­ui­site U-Turn from the US side, pre­sented her paper­work in much the same way that I had when I landed (small ‘L’). We both should now receive our ID cards some­where around the begin­ning to mid­dle of February.

So ends our jour­ney, and we now have the right to per­ma­nently call the coun­try of Canada our home. In a few years we will have the oppor­tu­nity to become full cit­i­zens, which we intend to do. I can’t say that I feel any dif­fer­ent now (Pam declared when she returned from her trip to the bor­der that she felt ‘Landed’), but we’re both look­ing toward the New Year of 2007 with antic­i­pa­tion and excite­ment. The months of wait­ing and putting off plan­ning are over. It’s offi­cial: We’re now here to stay.