The Carroll’s Clueless in Canada

We had landed on Canadian soil and surprising the ground was perfectly visible and not covered in metres of snow as we expected! If we could have kissed the tarmac, we would have we were that grateful to finally be here.

After the first leg of our journey to Ottawa was complete and we had the much-needed opportunity to decompress from the stress of the past couple of weeks we felt very much like the beautiful jelly fish that greeted us as we got off the plane at Vancouver Airport, weightless, floating and drifting with the tide of passengers as we headed through transit to the baggage collection (brainless could also be added to that list much like our Jelly Fish counter parts, we had totally switched off by that point).

Our stop-over in Vancouver was to be around seven hours but there was an incredibly good reason for allowing this extra time before picking up our next flight to Toronto. Vancouver was our first port of entry and therefore the place where we would need to validate our COPR visas and make it official.

We must have adventures in order to know where we belong.

After all the issues we experienced back in NZ trying to get out of the country we fully anticipated further complications trying to get into another country so tried to wake ourselves up and prepare for what may lay ahead. Previous research on entering Canada to validate our COPRs had forewarned us that we could be selected at random to undertake an interview with an Immigration Officer. This made us both extremely nervous, we had watched the Immigration interview scene from the movie The Proposal with our celebrity crush and most favourite Canadian Ryan Reynolds and anticipated it to be much like that.

The chances of Martin remembering personal information about me that was factual such as my date of birth or where I was born was zero, the chances of Martin remembering information that had a juvenile element to it like me refusing to fart in front of him in the whole time we have been together was high, most of the time he struggles to remember my name! I was going to be denied entry and deported back to Hobbiton.

The queue for the Customs & Immigration office was ridiculously long so we thought we could use this time to get re-acquainted and I could refresh Martin on who I was and that we were in fact married, unfortunately a staff member called all those with COPRs requiring validation to the front of the queue and we were stood in front of a burly and surly looking Immigration Officer before we had chance to prepare.

Like rabbits dazed and wide eyed in the headlights, we stood at the Immigration desk with beads of perspiration collecting on our foreheads and what felt like the icy finger of doom tapping us on the shoulder, but we need not have worried. We seemed to have let go of the calamities we experienced in NZ for good and the doors were opening.

The moment we let go is the moment we find freedom.

We managed to confirm the information on our COPR documentation without any major cockups, with the Officer seeming keen to process us quickly and without preamble all the while glancing over at the ever-growing queue behind us. But when we mentioned being ex-cops the pace changed and the Officers cool, impassive armour fell away leaving a friendly and chatty fellow brother in service. After thirty minutes of processing our COPR and chewing the fat we walked away from the desk with our COPR stamped and validated and a spring in our step, we were now legitimate Canadian Permanent Residency holders.

We were herded like well organised cattle through the Covid testing stations where much to our surprise the Q-tip was swabbed gently around our upper nostril and not our brain cavity, our details were taken so the results could be sent on and with information guides in hand we skipped off to our freedom.

If you want to fly give up everything that weights, you down.

With the Covid checks and process of checking in our bags for our next flight an absolute breeze compared to the trauma we experienced in NZ we had time to relax before our next flight and sample some of the delights Canada had to offer one of which was the much-revered Canadian institution that is a Double Double (two cream, two sugar) from Tim Hortons! This sounded like the kind of wake-up juice we needed after such a long flight, and we were excited to finally try it.

Now coffee is held in high regard in NZ with kiwis striving for the best coffee experience possible available from a multitude of Barista’s serving Latte-art and the much-heralded Flat White, Tim Hortons had some big shoes to fill.

This is the part of the story where we make ourselves a national target and fully expect to have a lynch mob waiting at our door ready to burn us at the stake for our blasphemy, but we really did not get all the fuss about Timmie’s! We are not fans of filter coffee an acquired taste that always left us feeling like it stripped the enamel off our teeth whilst simultaneously tasting like we have licked out an ashtray but now that we have our Canadian PR, we were all in for the true Canadian experience and wanted to try everything.

Well, we tried it but were not big fans (please do not hate us Canadians) but perhaps it will grow on us! In that moment, it was warm, wet, and fortified us sufficiently enough for the next part of our journey to Toronto.

Ottawa here we come.