Happy new year to all, and a big milestone to share from the snowy shores of Lake Ontario: we’ve passed our citizenship tests! What has become a Star Trek style “five year mission” thanks to pandemic-related delays is now very near its conclusion, and while we’re not across the finish line yet, it feels exciting to be over the final hurdle.
Speaking of journeys, I hope everyone else out there had a safe holiday season. For our family, it was a special one as we managed to actually drive south again (having cancelled all plans last year due to the pandemic surge). It was wonderful celebrating in person with loved ones, and we managed to catch up with a lot more folks than I’d thought we might across several states. It seemed for a little while like our trip might not happen at all, when an unusually fierce blizzard shut down roads and even closed border crossings in Buffalo, NY. Not to be deterred, however, we decided to drive “the long way” around the lake and head down using a more easterly route. While it added a travel day, the gambit paid off, as the weather was much more mild between Kingston and Syracuse than in our neck of the woods. By the way, if you’re ever planning an adventure of your own during similar conditions, the state of New York has an excellent online system for monitoring traffic conditions, road cameras, and closures.
Just as we were packing and preparing for our potentially icy travels, we got an early Christmas present from IRCC. Our immigration attorneys contacted us to say that we’d reached the point in our citizenship application process where the government “invites” you to take your citizenship test. There was just one hitch, once you receive that magical e-mail, there’s a relatively short window of time within which you must schedule your test before you risk delaying your application process. We certainly didn’t want to do that, so we scheduled them right away, and ended up taking them on the last day of school before we’d be loading the kids into the car. Since they’re all online these days (due to both COVID-19 concerns and staffing shortages caused by the pandemic backlog) we got our unofficial results right away! I’m proud to say that while you can miss up to five questions, we both nailed perfect scores. That makes absolutely no difference by the way, we’re just nerds…and were maybe just a little bit competitive about studying.
If you’re curious about the test, the Canadian government puts their study guide online for anyone to see, no application required. You can read it online, listen to it as an audio book, download it as a PDF, or even order a print copy. One can also borrow the latest edition booklet from any public library, which I opted to do since I tend to learn a lot better reading and studying something in my hands (that doesn’t also play videogames or answer text messages). I was impressed to see that an intrepid librarian had already placed a sticker inside the front cover indicating the recent change of monarch. When taking the test, you agree not to discuss its contents, but I can verify what is publicly stated – 100% of the questions of my test came straight from the contents of the Discover Canada guide. If you review that thoroughly, you’ll do fine.
It’s also worth noting that there are a couple interactive practice tests available online, but remember none of those are “official,” might be slightly outdated, and do not necessarily reflect the actual question bank that IRCC is currently using. I found the one from Richmond Public Library in British Columbia to be the best (be sure to select your province for some fine-tuning) but ultimately what helped me the most, I think, was just reviewing the official booklet and taking a lot of notes. Sometimes those historical personae can blend together a bit, and you wouldn’t want to confuse Jaques Cartier with Sir George-Étienne Cartier.
Now that this is done, the final step will be to wait for our scores to be made official and then to receive one last “invite” from IRCC, this time to schedule our citizenship ceremony. During that ceremony, one swears their oath of citizenship to the head of state (and if you read the study guide, you know who that is now) and then it’s official: you are granted all the rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship! If you have any minor children who weren’t born in Canada, citizenship is granted to them as well. We’ll be watching our inboxes, and I’ll share what that experience is like when it happens. In the meantime, I hope your own 2023 is off to a good start.
This Ontarian Life 