I Am (almost) Canadian

Last week, I wrote the Canadian citizenship test. It only took me 40 years to get there.

I was born in West Berlin, Germany. Four months later, my parents brought me to Canada. Technically, this makes me a German citizen with landed immigrant status in Canada. I have no memory of Germany. I’ve never gone back there and I never learned the language. I consider myself Canadian in everything but name.

When asked to prove I’m a landed immigrant, I pull out a certified-true photocopy, of a microfilm, of a document no longer used by anyone. Bureaucrats stare at it, scratch their heads, and say:

“We don’t recognize this form. This isn’t the IMM form number XYZ.”

“Sorry,” I say. “That’s the form they used in 1970.”

I once left my wallet in a pants pocket on the floor, and then accidentally stepped on it. My Social Insurance Number card snapped in half. I went to get a new one. The government worker, confronted with my “certified true copy” didn’t know what to do. In the end, she made a photocopy of my photocopy and sent it to a document expert in Toronto, all to verify that the form was okay. It was. I got my new SIN card several weeks later.

It never occurred to my parents to make me Canadian. This is because my parents are, at best, disorganized and hazy. My father, who was German, became a Canadian citizen when I was a teenager. It never dawned on him to get my citizenship at the same time. I am the only German in my family.

As an adult, getting my Canadian citizenship on my own made more and more sense. It would solve a lot of bureaucratic problems. It would allow me to apply for jobs with the federal government. In a post 9-11 world, travel would be much less nerve-wracking.

(I have a reoccurring nightmare that I am stopped at some border and deported to Germany – where I know absolutely no one.)

Knowing all of this, I still kept putting off applying to become Canadian.

Having a German passport means the theoretical possibility of getting a European Union passport. I could then work in the UK or elsewhere. Wouldn’t that be great? But eventually, I had to admit this was highly unlikely. I’m 40. Am I going to drop everything to go backpacking in France? Non, il n’y a pas une chance de ca.

All the same, I looked into getting dual citizenship. I went to the German Embassy.

“You don’t speak German,” they told me. “You have no relatives in Germany. You don’t own any land in Germany. My recommendation is that you don’t even bother applying for dual citizenship. But you can take the form if you wish. It’s in German.” The clerk gave me a withering look, and added, “Do you know anyone who can help you fill them out?”

So it looked like the Canadian citizenship was the way to go.

All the same, I kept putting it off, without understanding why. It was extremely irritating. I was incapable of taking action. I wanted to act, and then I failed to do anything. Something inside of me was stuck, and the more I fiddled with that something, the more stuck I appeared to be.

I’m in therapy, and this topic became a regular point of discussion. Yes, therapy: lying on a couch twice a week, staring at the ceiling, talking to the shrink sitting behind me. It has done wonders for me. I’m no longer a spectator in my own life. I’m taking hold of the reins. I’ve gone from weighing 280 lbs to 180. I’m making choices. Surely therapy could help me with this citizenship thing?

So my therapist and I discussed it at length, and we came to some conclusions.

On some level, getting my citizenship feels like a betrayal of my parents. They wouldn’t do it for me, so I couldn’t do it for myself. They wanted me to be disorganized and hazy – just like them. That’s the family tradition. The haze has crept inside me. I can fight for my friends, and the interests of others, but find it difficult to figure out what I want and to fight for myself.

But lately, with the help of therapy, I can now think about me, take care of me, deal with my problems. A certain amount of selfishness makes perfect sense – like eating healthy and applying to be a Canadian citizen, for example. Looking after myself no longer feels taboo.

So in October of 2010, I filled out the citizenship forms and sent them in. This was a huge deal for me. In January of 2011, I got a letter from the Canadian government. They had received my forms. They would be in touch -- real soon.

The process is slow. When you apply, you’re informed citizenship can take up to a year and a half. Most of the process is invisible – government gnomes somewhere running security checks and performing intricate rituals.

I have always spelled my name NIKOLAUS. On my landed immigration form, my name is spelled NICOLAUS. (Thanks, mom and dad, for yet another one of your screw ups that has caused me grief.) So when I applied for my Canadian citizenship, I politely asked them to spell my name with a “K” on my paperwork.

The next letter I received from the citizenship people was in June, asking for proof that my name was spelled with a “K”. They would accept a very short list of documents, none of which I had.

It turns out that Canadians only recognize Canadian issued documents. My German passport would do me no good. All my Canadian documents spell my name wrong, because they go by my landed immigration document. So I appeared to be screwed. Unless I wanted to legally change my name, all to correct a single letter.

“Please disregard my earlier request to spell my name NIKOLAUS,” I wrote to the citizenship office. I signed the letter NICOLAUS.

(You want to spell my name with a “C”? Fine. Let’s do that. See if I care.)

To their credit, they did as I asked.

My next letter arrived mid-September and informed me that I would be taking the citizenship test on Thursday October 6th at 1:30 PM.

That’s when I started to panic. It was all becoming real.

In their first letter to me back in January, the citizenship people included a booklet to study. This was what they would be testing me on. I tried reading it when I first got it, but it was so boring. Canadian history, Canadian geography -- I’ve always hated these subjects. In part, it’s the way schools teach it. Memorize these dates. Memorize these names.

The study booklet used the same methodology – a stream of endlessly dull facts.

History can be interesting if it’s taught as gossip. And that’s basically what history is. We never really know all the facts. We just have a few documents and interesting characters entangled with one another.

I don’t know how you make geography interesting. All my life, I’ve resisted learning the provinces and their capitals. Now, I had no choice.

Because the booklet was so boring, I did what any modern individual would do when faced with a problem – I turned to the Internet. Punch “Canadian Citizenship Test” into Google, and you’re rewarded with dozens of sample tests. Some are from private companies hoping to sell you study guides. Others are from public libraries across Canada. These sample tests were far more helpful than the booklet ever was. I wrote and rewrote these tests until I was scoring 100% on a regular basis.

Then, fully prepared, I waited for the day to arrive. And quietly panicked and twitched.

My therapist, my partner Michelle, a co-worker who’d written the test himself – they all assured me the test would be a breeze. All the same, I was anxious.

In my crazy fantasies, it’s decided I won’t be allowed to write the test. Instead, I’m forced to do an oral exam with a dour citizenship judge. He sees me as an opportunity to torture some poor bastard.

“Grew up here, eh? Well, let’s see how much you REALLY know.”

He cracks his knuckles and reams off a list of obscure Canadian trivia questions. And when I fail to answer a question properly, he gives me grief:

“There are people here today from all over the world, wanting to become a Canadian citizen. They’ve taken classes. They’ve studied hard. They’re learning English and French. Who do you think you are, showing up here, unprepared? Did you even bother to study?”

When I shared this nightmare vision with my shrink, she saw right through it. It was just another version of me going to my parents, asking for a basic need to be fulfilled, and getting rejected. It happened to me throughout my childhood. It’s what I have come to expect from the world.

But why should it be that way? Was it fair to imagine it like that?

Of course not. If anything, a judge confronted with my situation would feel sorry for what I’m being put through it. Why do I need to write the test? I’m entirely acclimatized to Canadian living. I’ve been working the same job for 9 years. I’m a productive, tax-paying, member of society in good standing.

A judge would rubber stamp my application and shoo me away.

But there’s nothing so gentle in bureaucracies. Instead, I would write the test, just like all the other would-be Canadians.

The day of the test dawned. I was eating my breakfast when I experienced a shocking bit of synchronicity -- CBC radio played a story about the Canadian citizenship test. Recently government bureaucrats made the test more difficult. There was now a 30% failure rate. A polling company, in 2007, gave the test to Canadian citizens born here, and 60% of them failed.

They interviewed a woman who failed the test. Her whole family was taking the oath – they all passed. She didn’t get to take it because she failed.

“Do not tell me this,” I yelled at the radio. “I do not need to hear this today!”

My test was scheduled for 1:30. I showed up at 1:10, expecting to be the only one there. The room was packed with people. Each of us had to have our paperwork processed, then go into a room where we had to sit, waiting for everyone else to get processed. Then, when we were all processed and ready, we’d all write the test together.

I am not a patriotic person. But the mix of ethnicities sitting there, all wanting to become Canadian, was extremely heart-warming. I also loved how grumpy we all were, waiting for close to an hour to get processed.

“This is bullcrap!” said a young Asian woman with a thick accent.

I felt a genuine joy that she and I were sharing our annoyance together, as would-be Canadians.

I sat there for 40 minutes before I was called to get my paperwork looked at. I went up to something akin to a banker’s window and spoke with a young man. This portion of the test was also meant to test your English or French skills. I was hoping this wouldn’t be a problem for me, given that I have a BA in English / Creative Writing from Concordia University.

I tried to crack jokes. He would have none of it. He stonily asked me where I worked and for how long. I told him the name of my employer and said I’d been there 9 years. Then he wrote down some dates. 2007, 2008, 2009, all the way up to the present. He pointed his pen at 2007.

“Were you with your current employer in 2007?” he asked.

“Yes. Like I said, I’ve worked there for 9 years.”

He wrote this down next to 2007. He moved his pen to the blank space by 2008. And then he stared at it. Then he looked over all of the years he had written down.

“I guess you worked for them for all of these years,” he muttered.

“Right.”

I felt like he was going through some sort of process that made sense for real immigrants, but not for me.

“We may require some more documentation from you,” the man said to me.

I wasn’t about to let that slide by. “What kind of documentation?”

“Oh, like a letter from your employer stating how long you’ve worked there.”

I immediately envisioned writing that letter and handing it to my boss for her to sign. That would not be a problem.

I moved on to the testing room – which was actually the same room where I would one day take the citizenship oath. I sat down and fiddled on my iPhone, and waited. And waited.

All in all, testing day mostly involved a lot of waiting: about an hour and a half in total. The test itself was 20 multiple choice questions. I competed the test it in 3 minutes flat. When I was finished, I stared at it, refusing to believe it was that easy. It was. There were no trick questions. I went through all the questions a second time. That took me 2 minutes.

Then I walked to the back of the room, handed in my test, and left. I was the first one to leave.

The most difficult question on the test went like this:

Which province has the highest productivity of pulp and paper, as well as hydro-electricity? And then there was a list of four provinces.

I saw “pulp and paper” and immediately thought of British Columbia. But that wasn’t on the list. Then I remembered on all the sample tests that hydro-electricity was always paired with Quebec. There. Done.

This was the ONLY question out of twenty that required any thought from me at all.

I left the test feeling exhilarated. Soon, my results will be mailed to me, along with a date and time for taking the oath.

Even though the process isn’t complete, it feels like it is. It feels over. All I’m waiting for is the rubber stamp on the form.

And I feel amazing. For the first time in my life, I feel like my life is my own. I get to make choices. I can set goals and achieve them. I’m beginning to shake off that hazy, vague feeling my parents imposed on me my whole life.

I’ve lost 100 pounds. I’m so very close to getting my Canadian citizenship. Are there any other dragons out there I need to slay? Of course. And I feel ready to start slaying them. It shouldn’t be a problem. I am a dragon slaying machine.