Hello to Nova Scotia!

It’s been a bit since I’ve posted anything and I do apologize for that delay. It is my intention to post something at least weekly. I have written and rewritten a post called “Christmas in July” about a hundred times and I still don’t have the heart to post it. It’s funny cause I am NOT an editor. I am not a re-writer. I write from the heart and I publish. If there are grammatical errors, I may pop back on to fix them. But that’s just how my brain works…write, publish. But Christmas in July was different. It was inspired by Hallmark’s Christmas in July (come on now, I know I’m not the only one who was watching Christmas movies all month!) and talked about the two Christmases I spent in the Dominican Republic. But in order to talk about the DR, I had to talk first about why I love Christmas. And why I love Christmas is inextricably linked to a relative who has taken a few steps away from me and that’s something that hurts my heart every day; but especially when I talk about Christmas. Sooo it’s just not somewhere I’m able to go just yet. Despite the fact my brain was saying ‘Christmas, Christmas, Christmas’, my heart was saying ‘Not yet’.

Soooo…we move on, for now! After Joan and I got married, we started making preparations for him to come to Canada. Job prospects are not great for either of us in the Dominican Republic, so it made the most sense for him to immigrate to Canada. Now, if you have not been a part of an application to immigrate to Canada, you likely have no idea of the insane amount of work that is involved! It took months to gather all of the necessary information. For me, as the sponsoring spouse, I had to produce my banking information and letter from my employer stating that I was a regularly employed individual (shout out to my employer who made me a permanent employee once they realized my temporary status could affect my application!). Joan had to have a medical and a criminal background check. And then came the really hard part!! We had to prove the legitimacy of our relationship!! How on earth does one prove that, you ask? Well, good question!!

By this point, Joan and I had known each other for about 5 years. But what makes it legitimate? Would telling an immigration agent, a stranger, that I knew the minute I laid eyes on Joan that he was going to be my husband be considered legit? Doubtful. Thankfully there were people I could turn to for help. A very old friend of my father’s had a son in law immigrate from Columbia and she advised to collect all the boarding passes I had accumulated over the years; that tickets could be bought and refunded, but boarding passes prove that I actually made those trips. Good to know. But daunting to know at the same time!!! I really had to prove it this meticulously? Good Lord.

I went online to learn from other people who had been through the process…and grew even more discouraged. Story after story of people who had applied in good faith to bring their spouses to Canada, only to have an immigration agent tell them their story sounded fishy and deny them the ability to be together. One lady told me their application had been denied simply because she didn’t know the colour of her husband’s toothbrush!! Now, I suspect in that case, it was likely more about HOW she answered the question than about the actual colour of the toothbrush, but still!! (Cause I couldn’t tell you today what colour Joan’s toothbrush is but if I was asked I would probably laugh and say so; a legit response. Whereas the lady I spoke to likely panicked). Knowing the fate of your life rests in the hands of a stranger is overwhelming. Even now, as I remember and write about this, my body has gone into stress mode!!

And back then, I went into stress mode overdrive!! I rounded up all the boarding passes AND tickets; I printed off samples of emails, texts and MSN chats (remember the days when we communicated via MSN?!); I dug out the stack of used calling cards I’d used to call the DR. I collected tokens of our time together…the “just married” sashes that were on the honeymoon suite doors; the New Year’s Eve party favours we’d worn; the napkin from the first restaurant we’d ever gone to together; the pamphlet from the boat tour we’d been on at Laguna Gri Gri; samples from the journals I’d kept; a copy of the Scarboro Missions article I’d written about Father Buddy and our adventures; and even the plastic wine glasses we’d used to toast our engagement! Family members and friends wrote letters of support, detailing times spent with the two of us and vouching for our authenticity. And then I dove into pictures!! I printed pictures from each one of my trips to spend time with him…pictures of us doing things together; pictures of me with his family and with his friends and with his colleagues. Pictures of my family and friends who had gone to the DR to meet him and their encounters. Pictures of our wedding week when more than 70 of our family and friends gathered together. Thankfully Walmart had a ten cent per print sale on!! Altogether I printed, labeled and sent over 500 pictures! I was still stressed and so I did what I do…I started writing. I wrote what I called, “The Story of Us”, outlining how we’d met and how we’d fallen in love and how we’d gotten married; giving the story to the pictures and artifacts.

And I cried. Oh Lord did I cry!!! Remember in an earlier blog I wrote about how over and over and over again, I was faced with friends or family members or even strangers who were critical of my relationship? Well the fact that anyone had an opinion at all still rankles me. I would never in a million years question anyone else’s relationship. But here I was fighting to have the right to have my husband live in the same place as me…all the while people were so critical; to me it felt like such a vicious assault when I was already fighting for my life. Think about it, if I’d met a fine Canadian boy, the government doesn’t have anything to do with it; they can’t swoop in and say, ‘nope, you can’t live together’. But that’s very much the battle I was preparing for. I didn’t have it in me to fight on two fronts. Even all these years later, I am still hurt from “well intentioned” folks and their negative input. This wasn’t some boyfriend or some guy I met once or twice. This was my HUSBAND. The person I’d stood with in front of our families and friends to vow to be by his side through sickness and health, through good times and bad. And yet the negative input continued. Still continues to this day! There’s a classmate of my mother’s who lamented to my aunt & cousin that I’d ever married “that foreigner”, telling them we would definitely end up divorced as the two shouldn’t be mixing. Dead serious.

I did not have the strength so I had to somehow block out the criticism and focus on my battle with immigration! I drew such incredible strength from my cousin Sandy who told me to block out all the bad and focus only on the love. As if I needed any more reason to love the stuffing out of him!

So the application continued. We had to answer a gazillion questions about how we met and how we introduced our families and friends; about what we did for our first date; questions galore about our wedding and what friends we introduced each other to first. And every one of those people needed to be listed, with their contact information, for Immigration Canada to verify!! It was a LOT.

During this time, our first year married, living thousands of miles apart, my work situation changed and I was no longer free to make my own schedule, as I’d been in the past. I would work overtime and make sure things were done…and then go, as I pleased. But not anymore. Imagine being separated from your new husband, fighting the battle with the gossip hounds and gearing up for the battle with Immigration! I feel my chest tighten as I type this!! Joan was living in limbo; living away from me; waiting on Immigration to come through; all the while caring for his elderly parents. He was stressed about leaving; stressed about going to a place he’d never been (we tried 3 times for a visitor visa but he was refused all 3 times due to a lack of travel history and the fact that Immigration just wasn’t sure he would go back when the temporary visitor visa expired); stressed about building a life with a woman who lived thousands of miles away! Oh the stress. When I think about it, like I am today as I write this, I wonder how on earth we ever survived it?!! We were so lucky to not have had a stroke in the midst of it all!!

Time ticked by and the first word back from Immigration, months after we’d filed, was that I was approved to sponsor him. Whew! One step down, a million to go! Other people we knew had their US spousal visas approved long before us. Other Canadian-Dominican couples that Joan knew had their approvals long before us. And still we heard nothing. Everyone and their dog was asking both of us, “have you heard?”, or “what’s happening with Immigration?”. Their concern and kindness only served to stress me out further. Anyone who knows me should know that I would be shouting it from the rooftops when it finally came through! Or would I?

At this stage of the game, I hired an immigration lawyer. I was mad at myself for not using one in the first place; perhaps that would have meant a far shorter wait! We had him listed as the official agent for us and he set out to enquire on our behalf; basically asking, what the f is taking so damn long??!! I was nervous to get him involved because, as much as I wanted Joan here with me, I knew that the lawyer’s questions could trigger an Immigration interview! Anyone who applies for a spousal sponsorship visa can be subjected to an interview with Immigration officials. There are websites that list potential questions asked to the foreign partner in these interviews. Here are a couple examples:

1. Describe the scenery in the community you will be moving to (so, what’s Antigonish like?)
2. What colour is your wife’s car?
3. How many hours a week does your wife work? (I work construction, sometimes I work 40, other times I work 80)
4. Name all of your wife’s relatives that attended your wedding, where they live and what do they do for work?
5. Do you love your wife? Does she love you?

And a thousand others. The interview could last hours. It’s a high stress situation with SO much to lose…you worry that you won’t be able to answer all the questions (I mean, how on earth could you answer all of them even if you lived in the same household…I bet Joan still has no idea what Uncle Al does for a living!); you worry that you won’t answer enough or that you will answer too much. You worry that the Immigration agent will see your stress as a sign of trying to deceive. An interview is like the cherry on top of all the obstacles and stress we’d gone through to get to this point.

July 2016 I get an email from Immigration Canada. Remember, we’ve been married since October 2013. They are requesting Joan redo his medical examination and his criminal background check as the ones provided are now expired. Of course they are expired, you have had all of our information for years now!! But, Joan goes again to the embassy on the other side of the island…costing us for the second time for transportation, hotel accommodation (as they only do them in the morning) and fees for the exam. And we wait. August passes, nothing. September is blowing by. Finally, on Tuesday, September 20th, I get the email we had been waiting for for so long! I was sitting in my office at my computer when the notification popped up. I held my breath, muttered my ‘please no interview, please no interview’ mantra as I clicked it. His spousal sponsorship visa was approved! No interview required! That meant that based on what we’d submitted, they were satisfied that our relationship was genuine and they didn’t need to probe any further. Hallelujah!!!

Joan was fishing that day. And in an area with no cell service. I called anyway. No luck. My colleagues in the office were not around. I sat here gleefully, needing to tell someone, but not wanting to tell too many until Joan himself knew! So I went downstairs into my friend and colleague, Mary’s office. She looked at me and immediately stopped what she was doing, thinking something was terribly wrong, and said “Oh no, what happened?”. I burst into tears and told her, “We got the approval, Joan can come!!”. Mary danced across the office and gave me a big hug and then we both cried together…tears of happiness, tears of stress relief, just tears.

It would be hours before Joan himself knew but when I finally reached him, he was silent on the phone. I think he had convinced himself it might never happen…and here it was!! He was emotional and grateful and even promised to go to Church that Sunday to show his gratitude!!

We had to send Joan’s passport to Mexico so that the Canadian embassy there would put the visa in it. Once that was back, safely in his hands, we could finally book a flight! It was October 24th when the passport was returned so we booked a flight for ten days later, on November 3rd, giving him time to tidy up the pieces of his life there and to pack for life here.

On November 3rd, I sat by my computer watching the Puerto Plata airport departures until his flight to Toronto was departed. I wouldn’t relax until he had passed through immigration in Canada but this felt like phase one of relaxation after all the stress we had been through!

And then my phone rang. It was Joan. Surely it can’t be my Joan! I mean, he is many thousands of feet in the air, well on his way to Toronto! Oh, I know, I bet he left his phone and his number with one of the boys and it’s one of them calling. “Hello” I answer. “Baby, please don’t be angry, ” he says. Um, what???? It WAS my Joan. The flight he was supposed to be on was thousands of feet in the air, but he was not on it.

Unbeknownst to me (as they were trying to solve the situation and not stress me out more), Joan had arrived at the airport but did not have all of the paperwork sent to him from the embassy. He thought his passport with the visa in it was all he needed. Soooo, back to Gaspar Hernandez they raced!! He retrieved the paperwork and they raced back to the airport…but they were too late. Boarding was complete and the cabin doors were closed. Joan was devastated. His family who had raced to get him back in time were devastated too.

I sat at my desk and cried. I had my own secret I’d been keeping from Joan. We had arranged to have a big welcome home party for him…with all our family and friends. Soooo now what? Joan assured me that West Jet was making the necessary arrangements and now he would fly three days later and arrive late at night on Sunday, November 6th. Too late for the party. That was quickly cancelled…hopefully to be rebooked at a different date (It wound up being held on Remembrance Day afternoon at Piper’s Pub and it was wonderful!)! And Joan went back home with his family for one last weekend.

On November 6, Joan arrived at Toronto’s Pearson airport and became one of Canada’s newest permanent residents. My longtime friend, Michelle, who is such an incredibly kind and beautiful soul, volunteered to meet me at the airport to be our paparazzi so we could have pictures of his arrival (and so she could meet him!!) We are so grateful for that…cause now we have the pictures of the very beginning of our Canadian life! There was a LOT of culture shock and a lot of ‘getting used to each other’ things to overcome…but for that moment, we basked in the knowledge that we’d won the battle; we’d proven our love; we’d proven love can overcome any obstacle. And we just melted into each others arms. Forever starts now.