So on October 7, I became a citizen of Canada.  The ceremony was at 1:15PM at the Citizenship and Immigration office in Kitchener- they have a citizenship court there, actually the same building where I took my citizenship test.  When I arrived (along with my husband, and my friend Carrie), a clerk checked me in, took my Permanent Resident card away (it was weird to give that up after basically guarding it with my life for 3 years) and gave me some booklets about Canada to take.

We went into the court itself and sat down- there were a good number of people there. They schedule the ceremonies for 45 new citizens at a time, but there were 49 of us there, with guests.  Once we were all checked in and seated, the clerk walked us through how the process would go.  All through this, the flat-screen tvs in the room were playing one of those montages of images of Canada.  Eventually, everything was set to go and the clerk had us rise for the judge to enter.

My ceremony was presided over by Judge Sharon Robertson, a former educator.

Sharon Robertson - Philip Walker, for the Waterloo Region Record

She gave a speech, telling us about some of her background and talking about the importance of the occasion and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.  Then she administered the oath, which we took in English, and French.  A representative from the MP of the area spoke and gave out little cards of congratulations.  Then each new citizen was called up to get their citizenship certificate, shake hands with the judge, and sign the oath paperwork.

There were people from 20 different countries at my ceremony, including Northern Ireland, England, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Colombia, Mexico, USA, Romania, Nigeria, China, Netherlands, Germany, India, Albania, I think Turkey, and a couple of others that I don’t remember.

After the certificate presentation was over, we all sang O Canada, our first time singing the anthem as Canadians.   Soon after that, we were finished.

I'm so Canadian!

After the ceremony, I had to go straight down to the passport office, because I’m travelling out of country soon, so I needed a passport right away in order to get back in. A bunch of others from my ceremony did the same thing.  I’m a proper Canadian now!

Once I got back to work, I found out my coworkers had done this to my desk.

Thanks, coworkers!

Hooray for Canada!  For people curious, I am a US citizen by birth and am retaining that citizenship as well.

I took my Canadian Citizenship test yesterday. The scheduled time for the test was 3PM, so I left work at about half past 2 to walk up to the Citizenship and Immigration office and be there in plenty of time.

I neglected to check the address on my paperwork before I went- I went up to 29 Duke, which is where the letter came from, and the office that I’ve been to before, but citizenship tests are held at 15 Duke.  So I was confused for a few when I was faced with a locked door and an hours sign saying that the office was closed on Wednesdays.  I figured it out momentarily after a closer read of my letter.

Once inside, there was a small waiting room, attached to a small room with a desk and two CIC people who were asking questions of the test attendees.  They called us in one by one, and we went in there, and were asked to present various paperwork, and they asked a couple questions, basically just getting a quick assessment of our grasp of English (French would have been fine too of course, but there didn’t seem to be any French speakers at my test).

We had to show our passports and landing documents and various other things.  The lady had my application there, and mentioned that I had a lot of vacations to the States- while looking through my passport for stamps. My passport is pretty much never stamped- I got stamped once on my very first trip to Canada, and once each for my Study Permit and my Permanent Residence, and that’s it.  Plus, now that I use a Nexus card, I almost never have to show my passport at all when I cross the border.

Once they were satisfied with my paperwork and english, they gave me an answer sheet- basically a photocopied legal-size sheet with numbering to 20, and A B C D after each number.  I was told to go sit in the next room (the citizenship court room) and find a chair with a clipboard, sit, and sign my sheet.

After I sat, I could sort of hear the test-writers coming in after me going through their questions/paperwork stuff.  One woman really was struggling with English and was definitely flustered and nervous, but she did fine enough in the end.

Once we were all in the room and sitting down with our clipboards, they started the test.  They handed out different colored folders, with a few pages inside that held the questions.  There were two mandatory ones (questions that you have to get correct in order to pass) and a set of 3 questions where getting one of the three correct was mandatory.

I think I did fine.  I definitely remember feeling like I got one of the questions wrong, but at this point, I can’t remember at all what the question was.  After we finished, we just turned in our papers and test folders, and that was that.

They don’t let you know right away if you’ve passed, which I found a little frustrating.  I’ll get a letter in 4-6 weeks with my results, and if I’ve satisfied all the requirements, that letter will have notice of when the oath ceremony will be.  I hope that it will be before the next municipal election, so that I can vote right away!