Blackcap Blog

Published at 18:04 on 4 November 2021

So I bicycled all over Vancouver today running various errands related to getting settled in here. And it came to me how much I really do like living in a big, older urban core. It’s so nice to have a more human (as opposed to automobile-centric) scale to things, and it’s also a big plus to have a wide variety of stores and services within easy reach. (Such as, for example, an electronic parts supply house, where I could procure a few parts to fabricate a replacement for the fused power cord that I forgot to bring up with me.)

I left Seattle not because I lacked appreciation for the benefits of a large city, but because Seattle forced me to give up access to wild nature in order to get those benefits. In fact, the vast majority of large North American cities have this problem. That Portland did not have it is one of the reasons I clung so tightly to that place, despite it massively not working well for me in either the employment or allergy departments.

Vancouver has that access to nature in spades. Not only is there Stanley Park, which is absolutely huge and contains large wild tracts, there is the North Shore, a quick ferry ride away, where suburbia (a lot of which is old-school, walkable, ferry-and-streetcar suburbia) gives way quite quickly to all-out wilderness. My temporary rental is in fact on the North Shore, and my host talked about bears prowling the neighborhood.

I just assumed that it would be too hard after fifty to convince Canada to let me in. Persuaded by a good friend, who thought otherwise, I decided to conduct a little experiment, and well, here I am.

Now we get to see how long it lasts. If there is one constant in my life, it is that work and living arrangements never last long, so it is not reasonable to expect this one to last long, either. It is reasonable to expect it might last two or three years, which would be long enough to secure permanent residency in Canada. If that happens, I will consider the little experiment a big success.

Published at 17:30 on 8 October 2021

In the synchronicity department, the day it became obvious beyond any reasonable doubt that the Republic is dead (and that it is merely a matter of time before the stench of the corpse becomes more than can be ignored), is also the day that my provincial nomination went through.

Canadian provinces have more power than US States do. For openers, they can definitely secede if they want to. None have so far, but Quebec has floated the issue a couple times, and there is widespread consensus that if the Quebecers ever do cast a majority vote to leave, Quebec gets to leave.

Another, less dramatic, aspect is immigration policy. In the USA, it is strictly a Federal issue. In Canada, it is divided between the Federal and the provincial governments. A provincial nomination is an official statement from a province that said province really wants a person to immigrate there, and would the Federal government please give that person’s request special priority and consideration. (There is even a special allotment of immigration slots reserved for provincial nominees.) In other words, I’m basically in.

Not formally in, not quite yet, however. The ultimate permission is still given by the Canadian federal government. I will be applying for that once I get one final bit of paperwork from my new employer.

The job is in Vancouver, by the way. So it’s a little bit of an odd situation: I’m only moving about fifty miles. It really underscores the arbitrariness of borders: I could move thousands of miles east or south, and I would not have to contend with the slightest bit of immigration red tape.