We've finally 'landed' and we're Permanent Residents

After a 6-hour delay at Gatwick we finally boarded our Thomas Cook flight to Toronto at 5.00pm. Having been up since 4.00am, and sat in Departures since 7.45am, we were all pretty grumpy to say the least. Incidentally, of the 50 odd departures listed on the info board there were 4 flights which were delayed……all of which were Thomas Cook! It didn’t get any better once we boarded the plane either; I’m 5’ 9” and my knees were wedged against the seat in front. There was no room in my overhead locker or the locker above my kids; they were full with other people’s ‘hand luggage.’ I say hand luggage in the loosest sense of the word; some people had 2 each, which were bigger than what we’d put in as hold luggage. This particularly aggrieved me as we (my family of 6) only had 2 small backpacks between us, yet there was no room to stow them. The cabin crew did make a point of complaining over the tannoy and reminding the offenders about the rules of hand luggage……a bit late for that once we’re all on board really! The flight was pretty uneventful apart from the constant queues for the ‘working’ toilets – 2 of the toilets on board were out-of-order so the 300 odd of us had to fight over what was left. Once we’d landed we sat on the tarmac in a queue for about 20 minutes because there was no room at the terminal (more about the fallout from this later). We eventually stepped off the plane at 7.45pm local time feeling absolutely buggered.

Having had to queue for a place to park the plane, it was no surprise to find that we’d arrived at the same time as ½ a dozen other planes, this was clearly apparent as we walked into the arrivals lounge. Well, we didn’t actually walk in because we were queued at the door with literally hundreds of other travellers waiting to go through passport control. It took about ½ an hour to get through before we finally got into the immigration office. Fortunately, this is where things finally got better (although there is a sting in the tail which I’ll mention later). After about 5-minutes I was called forward to process my paperwork; the Immigration Officer (IO) was really friendly and it only took about 5-minutes. I gave him a friend’s address to have my PR cards sent and he didn’t have an issue with it. My family were then called in one-by-one and we were all done in about 20-minutes in total. Upon exiting the immigration office we were given a nice bag full of useful paperwork (claiming benefits etc) before we moved on to Customs.

In Customs we were met by what can only be described as the most mono-syllablistic miserable b*stard I have ever met – in total he uttered less than a dozen words (I counted). I’d taken the time to produce 3 printed excel copies of both our accompanying and goods to follow lists. When I handed these over you’d have thought I’d handed him a note saying his mother was a whore judging by the reaction I got. After lot’s of huffing and wandering (in slow motion) to the office and back he finally handed me my completed copy and then wandered off without saying a thing. I had to walk after him to ask if we were done. He had no interest in my accompanying list and left the spare copies scattered on the desk.

Fast-forward and we’ve now been here 5-days and we’re settled in at the Super 8, Barrie. There were no dramas picking the hire car up at the airport (Dodge Grand Caravan) and the hotel is clean, comfortable and offers an excellent complementary hot breakfast. There’s been a fair bit of snow, which has hampered our travel, but we’ve managed to open a President’s Choice Financial bank account (free banking), we have our Social Insurance Numbers and we’ve visited 6 potential schools for the kids.

Now back to the sting in the tail I mentioned earlier. I didn’t notice it at the time but on my Confirmation of Permanent Residency (COPR) the IO has written the wrong year, i.e. he’s put me down as landing on 3rd Jan 2010 instead of 3rd Jan 2011. Funnily enough, he didn’t make this mistake on my family’s forms, just on mine. Having telephoned CiC I have been told that the date is correct on their computer system so it shouldn’t affect my PR card, however, I will have to get the COPR amended to reflect the correct date.

Not exactly the smoothest ride, but we’re getting there

One final point; I can highly recommend a Moneycorp account for moving money to Canada. I did an online bank transfer from my Nationwide account to my Moneycorp account on Tuesday and the money arrived the same day (faster payment). I then used my online Moneycorp GPS account to convert the sterling to dollars and send it to my new President’s Choice Financial bank account. When I got up on Wednesday the money was sat in my Canadian account, cleared (with no fees) and ready to withdraw.