04
Jul
As of January 23, 2007, a new American law requires everyone entering the United States by air to have a valid Canada passport. This has a lot more people getting their Canada passports than ever before. Most people expect that applying for a Canadian passport either for the first time or replacing an expired one is stressful. People who have been through this process have many tales of woe regarding the long waiting period at the government offices, scuttling to locate and get all the required forms, and then sweating over the application form for accuracy, else the submission gets delayed.
Going through such a process can undoubtedly be hellish for those who have time constraints. Following the below-mentioned steps can however save you a lot of trouble and speed up the process resulting in quick approval:
Get your Canada passport application form – These application forms are now available online are interactive in nature. They guide the applicants through all the procedures very well to minimize the possibilities of errors and eliminate chances of omission. You can also get them at a Canada postal outlet or passport service location.
Take passport size photos – You need to take a passport size photograph and its two identical copies, not more than a year old.
Get your form and photo identity cards signed by a guarantor – Just take a print out of the form mentioned above and fill it accurately checking all your queries online. You need to have at least one proof of your identity that has your name and signature; the document must have been issued to you by the provincial, federal, or municipal government. One such document could be your provincial driver’s license. You must submit the originals of all the documents along with their photocopies. After the necessary verification, the original copies of all the documents submitted by you will be returned. In case, you are submitting only copies of all documents, your guarantor must sign them all.
Obtaining a guarantor’s signature on the Canadian passport application is a must. Generally, a guarantor is a person who knows you personally for not less than two years and can verify the accuracy of your statements and documents supporting your Canadian passport application. In fact, the guarantor must also sign one of your passport size photographs too along with the documents supporting your identity and citizenship.
Obtain proof of your valid Canadian citizenship – You need to have your birth certificate or that of your Canadian citizenship. In case you are born outside Canada, you may produce certificates of Canadian Citizenship, Naturalization, Retention of Canadian Citizenship, or Registration of Birth Abroad.
Using a previous Canadian passport as supporting identification – A previous Canadian passport may be used a supporting identification provided that all of the following conditions are met: the passport is still valid or is year after its expiry date; the passport itself is submitted with the application form; the name on the passport is the same as the one on the application.
On average, the passport application process takes 10 days if you are applying in person and 20 days if you applied by mail. The Canadian government also provides urgent or express services for emergency or compassionate reasons on a case-by-case basis, applications must be in person and submitted with a proof of emergency.
04
Jul
This morning after our lovely celebrity breakfast, Nigel and I decided to walk along 4th Street all the way downtown. At 7th Avenue we split up and he went to pick up our rental car. I decided to take the C-train, a light rapid rail system part of Calgary Transit.
Right off the bat I had two really strange experiences: I politely approached a very nicely dressed woman to ask her how to get to Kensington. She responded curtly “2 stops” and then she started running away from me. She ran down the elevated platform back in the direction she had come from and stopped several times to look over her shoulder back at me to see if I was following her. I knew it was a bad hair day today, but I didn’t realize I looked that scary……
Then, right after, an older Asian-looking man came up to me and told me “I am looking for a woman, I don’t have a wife”. I told him that I wouldn’t be able to help him in that department. He was very short and not threatening-looking at all, and he really seemed to be desperate for some female company. I wasn’t at all scared, but rather bewildered, somewhat bemused and almost sympathetic to his plight. He then proceeded to ask me a few more questions about whether I was married and where my husband was. At that point he realized he wasn’t getting anywhere with me. Then a young rather dishevelled-looking woman came up on the platform and he tried his luck with her, settling in comfortably in the transit shelter beside her.
I stood there, puzzled, after two really strange encounters: one nicely dressed woman runs away from me (I must have looked really scary), and right afterswards an older man solicits my company (I guess I must have looked good enough to him….). Every urban centre has its interesting characters and experiences, and Calgary is obviously no exception.
Then one young couple restored my faith in humanity. I took all my courage together and asked them too how to get to the Kensington Area on the C-Train. They explained that sometimes 7th Street can be a little gritty and then took me to the automated ticket machine and showed me how to obtain my $2.25 admission onto the C-train to get over to Kensington. The world was sane again….
I was in the mood for a light lunch and right in the heart of Kensington there is this recently opened restaurant called “Indochine Bistro”, a bistro/ lounge serving Vietnamese food. After my filling breakfast at the Twin Gables B&B I couldn’t have handled a big lunch, but by this time (about 2:30 pm) I needed a little meal to tide me over to the evening, so I had a lovely vegetarian noodle soup, which was just enough after my delicious morning meal. .
Often my curiosity gets the better of me and I started talking with the owner. It didn’t take me long to realize I had stumbled over a really interesting human story.
Kevin Nguyen is 31 years old and was born in Saigon / Vietnam (today’s Ho Chi Minh City). He grew up in a well-to-do middle class family and lived a very good life until he was 12 years old. Then his family had to flee the country due to Vietnam’s political problems.
His mother, his sister and Kevin became “”Vietnamese boat people” and spent about 2 years living in a refugee camp in Malaysia. Kevin describes the living conditions as incredibly difficult, hundreds of people were squeezed into long buildings that were subdivided into different sections that each held many families. In addition to the cramped conditions, there was never enough food and Kevin’s aunts and uncles kept sending money from Canada to help. Kevin summarized his experience as “living in very poor conditions, but there was also a lot of love and humanity”.
Originally Kevin’s family wanted to move to the United States. But because they had family members in Canada and Great Britain, that would have meant that these two countries would have had to reject their refugee status application first before they would be able to apply to go to the USA. Kevin’s mom decided that the wait would be too long and applied to go to Canada instead.
At 14 years of age Kevin came to Canada, more specifically to Calgary and his family settled in. Kevin said that to this day he is very grateful that this country took him, his mom and his sister in. Upon his arrival in Canada, Kevin went straight into Grade 10 at Western Canada High School in Calgary and said that he never really experienced rejection from his class mates as a newly arrived refugee. He did say that he went through a major experience of culture shock adjusting to Canadian culture, food and traditions.
After high school he went to the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and studied electronics and petroleum engineering and graduated with a Bachelor of Petroleum Technology. He worked for several oil and gas companies and consulting firms in Calgary before he decided to partner up with a friend to open a restaurant.
Although that business venture did not work out, Kevin was hooked on the hospitality industry. Despite the fact that there is a significant amount of risk involved in running your own restaurant, he enjoys being his own boss. He opened his own restaurant, Indochine Bistro, in October of 2005 and he intended it to be different from the usual Vietnamese restaurants that resemble cafeterias more than comfortable eateries. The name of his restaurant is from the French word Ïndochine which used to be the French name for Vietnam.
Kevin enjoys owning a restaurant and said he loves meeting people. In particular he loves working behind the bar and calls it a dream job. Kevin explained that the Kensington area is a great neighbourhood for his restaurant since there are so many people taking a stroll and it’s a really close-knit neighbourhood with the feel of a real village. In the summer there are many street festivals so there is lots of action going on.
Indochine Bistro features an extensive menu with 73 items of quality Vietnamese cuisine. Eating out at Indochine is extremely affordable: only one item was over C$10.00 and most of the dishes cost between C$6 and C$8.
I enjoyed my little exploration of Calgary’s Kensington area, it definitely had a very cozy, village-like feel to it. And it was great meeting a young Calgarian who has made an amazing life transition from living a comfortable middle class life in Vietnam to becoming a refugee to making his mark as a successful young entrepreneur in Canada.
03
Jul
After our arrival in Ottawa this afternoon and a very brief rest at our hotel, we went out in search of a satisfying dinner. The Lord Elgin Hotel is just about 15 minutes walk away from the Historic ByWard Market area, which is one of Ottawa’s main entertainment areas.
Winterlude is a great time because during this winter festival, many of Ottawa’s restaurants offer entertainment and special events. Our destination was Fat Tuesday’s, a New Orleans-style restaurant that is known for its Cajun Creole cuisine and its contemporary dishes.
After we refreshed ourselves and got organized, we headed off at about 6:45 and started our walk toward the ByWard Market, Ottawa’s prime entertainment area. We crossed the Laurier Bridge, which is the setting of quite a few of my husband’s anecdotes about Ottawa’s winter cold which he got to experience in full force during his time at the University of Ottawa in the early 1980s.
We too noticed that there was a stiff fresh breeze coming off the Rideau Canal and by pure coincidence we did a smart thing: we headed into the Rideau Centre, Ottawa’s largest shopping centre. For about 15 minutes we got to walk inside past all the retail stores, totally sheltered from the biting wintery wind.
Well, it didn’t take us long at all to get to the heart of the ByWard Market, and a friendly guy at a Beavertail sales booth (Beavertails are Ottawa’s famous trademark pastry) gave us directions to Fat Tuesday’s, home of Ottawa’s Mardi Gras experience.
Once inside this stylish yet cozy bar/restaurant we had a chance to get a lay of the land from Manny Garcia who’s the general manager and one of the co-owners. He told us that Fat Tuesday’s was created about 4 years ago and is an independently owned restaurant (not part of any restaurant chain). Fat Tuesday’s combines an upscale Cajun/Creole kitchen with live entertainment and great friendly service, and it’s a place where people of all ages congregate.
When we were there the place was packed and the waitresses were dressed up in bustiers and some were wearing face masks in keeping with the Mardi Gras theme. The staff seemed to have a lot of fun and they enjoyed interacting with the customers.
Our appetite had been building up appropriately and for me, the escargots in a garlic-white wine sauce were just the thing to warm up the palate. After this tasty appetizer I followed up with a Mediterranean salad of baby greens with goat cheese and a citrus vinaigrette. Manny came over and persuaded us to try the Pacific rim seared tuna with a pepper crust in a sweet teriyaki sauce, accompanied by shaved ginger and a wasabi mayonnaise. A delicate and tasty treat.
We even had a chance to meet the chef himself. Executive chef Neil Baker told us about himself and we found out that we had a true cosmopolitan world traveler in front of us.
As the child of diplomatic parents, Neil was born in Singapore and has also lived in Barbados, Kenya and Thailand. He’s run restaurants in Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, New York City and now Ottawa. Needless to say, Neil is going to be my next contact for an interview about this international lifestyle.
Neil also made a couple of interesting comments about global cuisine. He mentioned that the same culinary themes reappear across the globe. Chinese fried rice is essentially the same as Jambalaya which is essentially the same as Biryani, with a slightly different mix of spices thrown in. And the world’s most popular cuisines are those based on the dishes of poor people.
Neil insisted that we have dessert and we had Bananas Foster, which is a mouthwatering concoction of flambéed bananas with caramelized sugar and rum and some vanilla icecream thrown in with a twist of cinnamon on top. I was going to stay away from dessert, but Bananas Foster totally corrupted me. I wasn’t going to worry about the extra calories since we are going to go skating on the Rideau Canal tomorrow anyways.
At 10:30 every Friday and Saturday night Fat Tuesdays serves up the dueling pianos, a live show where the audience can request their favourite songs from two piano players. Today unfortunately the second piano player was significantly delayed, and given our packed schedule for Saturday, we were unable to stick around for the second piano player to show up. But virtuoso no. 1 played his heart out and really got the crowd going. The place was packed and everybody was in a great mood.
So, it’s just past midnight now and I am looking forward to another action-packed day tomorrow: some skating on the Rideau Canal (to work off that delicious banana dessert), watching the famous Bedzzz Races on Dow’s Lake and then the Fire and Ice Culinary demonstrations at Confederation Park right across from our hotel.
It is definitely time to get some rest for a big day and hit the hay……
03
Jul
The country of Canada is well known for its vast expanses of wilderness, and the unique habitats it offers both marine and terrestrial life. One of the best-known features of Canada are the Great Lakes, huge bodies of water which are like inland seas. Unfortunately as Canada developed, a lot of damage was done to several of the Great Lakes, resulting in catastrophic and irreversible damage to some of these unique ecosystems. Quite a few efforts have been made to preserve what is left of these wild spaces, one of which is the Georgian Bay UNESCO reserve on Lake Huron.
Georgian Bay
Georgian Bay is definitely one of the most beautiful and unique spots in all of Canada, and possibly all of North America. It is about 320 kilometres long and 80 kilometres wide, on the northeastern side of Lake Huron. More importantly, the Bay itself is almost as large as Lake Ontario, one of the smaller of the Great Lake. The Bay contains literally thousands of small islands, known collectively as the 30,000 Islands. Canada’s own Group of Seven made the Bay and the islands famous throughout the art world.
UNESCO
UNESCO stands for United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. It is a specialized agency of the United Nations, established with the purpose of promoting international co-operation through science and other areas. In 1971, UNESCO began to promote the Natural Science side of its operation through the creation of biosphere reserves. These biospheres are designed to demonstrate a balanced relationship between man and nature; part of the UNESCO condition for these biospheres is that they contain both marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Once established, these regions have an area that is protected under the laws of the country they are in, a buffer zone, and a transition zone where some economic activity can be pursued.
The Georgian Bay UNESCO biosphere reserve was established in1990. The reserve contains a great variety of plant and marine life, including several species of reptiles and amphibians, which are rare in Canada. In fact, as amphibian populations plummet around the world, the importance of the populations in Georgian Bay is being highlighted as never before.
The Georgian Bay UNESCO biosphere reserve is an example of how international bodies can work to create important sites for the preservation of treasures that are both national and global in nature.
