What I’ll miss about Akron, OH

2 weeks ago, I had a mini-meltdown and decided to take a bit more time to prepare for Canada. There’s a good chance that my PR application will be approved by the end of the year, at which point I will become a "permanent resident" of Canada. So even though on paper, I'm just visiting, this is actually a permanent expatriation from the life I've grown to know and love. I'm going to Canada. To live.

I was raised in Kent, but my mother grew up nearby in Akron, and most of her family has ended up here (including me); also, most of my Ohio friends are here. But I haven't always been a hometown girl. As a senior in College, my then-boyfriend and I decided to do an exchange year in California. I studied at Humboldt State University, on the foggy redwood coast. After that delicious taste of west coast living, I went back in 2005, this time to northern Idaho. While there, I studied healing arts and my boyfriend studied literature. In 2007, I returned home to pursue my master’s degree at Kent State, and have been here ever since. Aside from the obvious ties of childhood, I've also come into my own here. I became an active member of the UU church, and got my first "real" job as a counselor. It was here that I launched myself as a singer-songwriter and performed at the Kent Stage, the farmer's market, and tons of local coffeeshops. I’ve had the chance to play with seasoned musicians and rub elbows with local celebrities who gave me advice to help me grow. I also have friends who were with me through tough times, staying by me in my weakest moments, and celebrating me in my strongest ones.

Truly, it seems insane to leave here. The thing is, I’ve got this great husband. And he lives in Canada.

So, aside from (obviously) my friends and family, I wanted to share some Ohio-y things that I’ll miss.

• Cuyahoga Valley National Park: Akronites, we are living in one of the greenest cities that exists, and that is thanks largely to the CNVP (also to Summit MetroParks –Sand Run is literally in my backyard). We have the fortune of saying, “well, I’ve got my mall shopping done, gosh I feel like getting some air…  let me drive 10 minutes the towpath trail, then maybe pop into Szalay's for some farm-fresh corn." This is living! 
•  The Village Discount Thrift Store: I love thrifting. It makes me feel free - free of debt, free of trends, and free from the endless imperative to spend more money. Yay for the "VD"! Even after being exposed to Toronto fashion, I'm pretty sure I'll miss it.
•  Lifesource Yoga and Sacred Ground Yoga: if you’re a yogi and never been to Sacred Ground in the Valley, try it… this guy is spiritual to the core. And Lifesource is more than a great collection of teachers, it's also a welcoming community for young yogis like myself
•  Stan Hywett Hall: I have a soft spot for opulence, and every time I drive up Portage Path, I love seeing Stan Hywett on the right, protected only by an attractive 4-foot-high fence. The Seiberlings were awesome people, who worked to promote literacy, public health, and helped created Alcoholics Anonymous. Stan Hywett is available for tours from April through December. Yay for philanthropy!
•  Gabriel Brothers, Big Lots and Marc's. Enough said. 

I’m sure there’s a ton more, and I haven’t even listed each and every person in this awesome community. (Akron is blessed with a community of nice people with infinite inter-sections. It's been effortlessly easy for me to get hooked into this cozy web!) That's all for now, I've got to work on my transporter so I can be in two places at once. :)

Why write this blog?

Most of my fellow Ohioans are curious about Canada. Ever since I was in high school people have talked about wanting to move to Canada to escape from this or that. From the war on Afghanistan to our national debt to our profit-driven healthcare system, we have longed for the apparent simplicity of Canada. As I’ve gotten to know Canada through dating Sean, I’ve noticed that sometimes the very things we envy about Canada are sources of irritation for Canadians. Healthcare is one example. From having to wait a year or more for acute illness treatment, to long waits and unpleasant environments in clinics, Canadians have complaints about national healthcare. An in-depth analysis of this topic is beyond my reach, but it’s a great example of how the socialist leanings of Canada might not deliver all we expect them to. Another topic I’m going to explore is the high price of clothing and goods in Toronto, which is a big controversy as cross-border shopping is becoming a threat to the Canadian economy. What are the factors behind the fact that Wal-mart pricing is not available anywhere in the Greater Toronto Area? Could it be because Canada’s presence in the global market is a mere shadow of that of the U.S.? The fact that Canada has, perhaps, a smaller per-capita appetite for goods? And at least in the Toronto area, could this be changing? Are Canadians wanting to “Americanize” themselves much as we Americans* pine to be more Canadian? And why the heck do we know so little about our northern neighbors?

(*Note: partial inspiration for the title of this blog is that Canadians refer to U.S. citizens as “Americans”. Probably due to the fact that “U.S.” offers no viable monikers for a person – “U.S.er”=User? United-Statesian?...)

The "ins and outs" of Immigration

A lot of people have expressed utter confusion upon learning that Sean and I don’t have the same benefits as any other married couple. After all, we live only 6 hours apart, speak the same language, and have basically the same culture. So, here, I’ll try to explain some of the ins and outs of immigrating to Canada.

When we first started talking about living together, we came across this concept of “permanent residency”. Permanent residency gives a non-citizen the right to work, live, and receive healthcare in Canada. There are basically 3 ways to obtain it: through family (ie marriage, or a parent who has already immigrated), as a student, or through a job. We had heard that getting a workplace to sponsor you was quite difficult, unless you could prove that you had skills that could not be found in a Canadian citizen (a tough task in a thriving city of 4.5 million people). Since I was already interested in going back to school, I then started looking around at music programs in Toronto. However, the reality hit that since I hadn’t paid my existing loans off, it really wasn’t preferential to take out more unless I was going into a highly-paid field. So we decided that wasn’t a great route. Eventually, we realized marriage would be the best way, so that’s what we did.

Once we got married, we did not have a typical honeymoon period. We both had to return to work, since we had taken off so much vacation time in the last year to visit each other. So Sean returned to Toronto to his full-time, 9 to 5 job, and I returned to working 4 days a week as a counselor at a community health agency. We knew we had a lot of work ahead of us. Basically, it works like this: the “sponsor” (Sean) is responsible for the financial well-being of the “primary applicant” (me) and I have to do a shit ton of paperwork. So, I found that my days off were quickly filled, not just with filling out the complete history of every visit we’d ever paid to each other, including dates and locations, but also obtaining information like the address of my studio apartment from 2004 and had I ever belonged to a professional or terrorist organization. 3 months, 40 pages, and a trip to a Niagara Falls clinic later, we submitted our application! And now, finally, we can relax and wait.

People ask me, and I often ask myself, why I didn’t move to Canada sooner. The truth is I didn’t know I was allowed. The immigration website makes it sound like you choose one path or the other – “inland” or “outland”. An inland application is one in which you, say, met your husband while studying, and decided to marry him and stay on in Canada. The catch is that you’re not allowed to leave the country until your application is fully processed, which could take up to two years. As an outlander (that’s me), I can travel freely between the U.S. and Canada during the application processing time, which is shorter - between 6 months and a year. That’s it – you can’t have your cake and eat it too. We heard horror stories, too, about married people being turned away from the border because the border guards thought they were using it as an excuse to steal Canadian jobs. You say you’re married, and they think you’re just going to come and live in Canada forever. I could see it happening, so I kind of get that. After a few phone calls, we got reassurance that we could cross the border safely with the appropriate paperwork proving that we were who we said we were.

However, the really good news came from the least likely source – a border guard at Niagara Falls. I was crossing the border to meet Sean for a weekend and to get my medical check done at a local clinic. I noticed the line I’d pulled into was very slow, and almost changed lanes because I was afraid I’d get questioned and possibly not allowed through. Pulling up I saw a short, stout, gray-haired woman with one of those faces that tells you not much would surprise her. “I’m coming to meet my husband in Niagara Falls,” I told her. She glanced at my passport. “Your husband, huh? Why don’t you live together?” she asked. “Well, I’m applying for my permanent residency.” She nodded. “You know, you don’t need your PR to live in Canada.” I was dumbfounded… “oh… really?” “Yeah, you just have to do a visitor record. You can’t work while you’re up here, but you can be with your husband.”  

We did a little more digging, and found that I could live with Sean for up to 6 months provided that I did not work and that I brought certain documents to prove that we were married and had the money to support ourselves. So basically, I would be a housewife until my PR went through. I had mixed feelings about this, since I had long wanted more time for my hobbies and interests, but I also have a great need for social stimulation and a certain amount of challenge. Because of those needs, and for other sentimental reasons, I originally planned to stay in my “Ohio life” until June 1. However, I slowly realized that it was kind of pointless to hang on, since I had married Sean and wanted to start my life with him. My attachments to my career and single life (which was never as profitable as I would have liked) began to loosen up, and I moved my departure date to April 26 - the earliest I could gracefully go.

One thing I will say about this move is that it has shaken up my priorities quite a bit. Ever since I was 18 I have planned to be self-sufficient, and have moved from coast to coast always with ingenuity and money in my back pocket. For the last five years, I have worked ceaselessly to get my career off the ground and build a life for myself. And now, I’m leaving it all behind for a life which, at least for now, will be all about love.