Canada Blog: From Work Permit To Permanent Residence

Post by William MacDonald

I immigrated to Canada about three years ago. I was born and raised in Syracuse, NY in a residential area called Strathmore. It was a nice neighborhood; homeland of Onondaga Park, Syracuse’s Historic Preservation District.

I moved from Strathmore to attend Syracuse University, majoring in Broadcast Journalism. I was very happy with my university experience but if there was anything that journalism had taught me, it was that I needed some real life experience too. And, to gain it, I would have to step outside my Syracustic comfort zone.

Okay, so I didn’t venture off to India or anything, but come on, I had been living in Syracuse all my life! And, I knew that Canada had cities like Toronto and Montreal, which embraced a great variety of cultures that I could surround myself with.

Deciding between Montreal and Toronto was tough. Both cities had a lot to offer. But I was very attracted to the idea of Montreal- a bilingual city. French Canadian culture and politics fascinated me and I thought it would be good to learn a new language.

I figured the best way to integrate myself was to apply to school. So I applied for a student visa at College Platon, a language school in the city’s Plateau area, in order to learn French. A few months later, I got my acceptance and it was finally time to say goodbye to Syracuse.

I did quite a bit of traveling back and forth from Syracuse to Montreal, trying to find an apartment near school. It was a great area, surrounded by trendy bars, shops, restaurants and a wonderful community of local artists. What a change from my home town! It was every bit as cool as New York City, but so much more intimate. I was in love.

I found myself a small studio apartment on St. Viateur Street (just across the street from the best bagel shop in the world). Once I was settled in, the job search began. I desperately needed a part-time job while I was going to school. This was a bit tricky though, considering the language barrier. The Canadian business directory became my new form of literature. I called just about every broadcasting, media, and newspaper outlet I could find, over a month’s span. I attended copious interviews, until finally, I got hired!

It was a part-time job as a technical writer for a pharmaceutical company. Not that I had much experience, but they needed English writers and I was willing to do anything at that point.

I became very good friends with one of my work colleagues and she helped me improve my French. She was like my own personal tour guide, introducing me to all the best kept secrets of the city. We went to great local restaurants; the Jean Talon market; theatre productions; live music shows; jazz clubs…. Needless to say, I fell madly in love with this girl and after six months, we moved in together.

After about two years of living together, I decided to propose, and lucky for me, she said “yes”. I was thrilled. By this point, I was done school and had started working as a Personality Afternoon Host for AM Talk Radio station, CJAD. I am currently still working at the station. My wife is now a Senior Medical Writer and Research Assistant for another pharmaceutical company.

Montreal has become my home.

And again, after quite a long period of silence on this blog I’ll try to start writing here. So, pretty soon I’m going to cover the following news from our life in Canada:

• We’ve got new US visas for me and Tanya, this time - in Toronto consulate
• We’ve applied (yes, finally!) for Permanent Residence in Canada
• We’re still thinking about buying an apartment in Toronto
• And finally, we’ve been to Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario

One more update on this blog future: today we’re saying Welcome to another blog author here, William MacDonald, who was born in Syracuse, NY and immigrated to Montreal, Canada. I hope his stories will be interesting for my readers and we’ll make this blog more fun to read.

It took a long time before I decided to continue writing about our life in Canada. I wasn’t writing too much because many interesting and (sometimes) disturbing things were happening here, but now it looks like everything is fine again so it is time to tell our story here (see this and other following posts)

So, as you maybe noticed in this post’s subject, I’ve changed my work place. It was quite a painful process because my new employer is a company from the US. Actually, there were many factors which made this process painful and one of them was the fact that we didn’t know (we weren’t sure) that a US company could hire non-canadian citizens who are temporary canadian residents now. At the end we’ve retained really great lawyers (the best immigration lawyer in Canada and one of the best in the world) and they’ve helped us to fill all papers and make it easy to switch to the new employer.

My new employer is Scribd.com - online document publishing company which is in top-500 sites in the Internet now (and growing). My primary duties there as a Scalability Expert are “simple” - our site needs to be able to keep up with growing popularity of the service. I still work remotely from Totonto, company’s head office is located in San Francisco, California.

So, here we are, I’ve started writing new posts again And, to emphasize the major idea of the post I’d like to say it again: if you’re not a canadian citizen, you CAN switch to a new employer even if it is non-canadian company (at least it works for the US companies).

Here they are - our latest photos.

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I was going to fly to US at the end on May and it was my first visit to this country. So, entire visa system of US was really new for me and because it is little bit messy I want to describe it here in this short article.

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Hi, All! It’s been a long time without posts here, but next few months I’ll post really many information here. Why? Because:

1. I did CELPIP test (it is test like IELTS, but computerized and could be done only by Canada residents).
2. We’re going to apply for permanent residence really soon.
3. We’re going to prolong my work permit next month.
4. We think about moving to Toronto (from Brampton) and I’ll describe this process thoroughly.
5. We are going to visit Ukraine this spring, but there are lots of questions about obtaining new visa.
6. We did some research about apartments pricing in Toronto and about mortgage in Canadian banks.

So, stay tune and you’ll get lots of interesting information about live in Canada.

This week was really rich for entertainment and trips for us. On monday we were on Niagara Falls and on Sunday we have got great trip to Toronto Downtown.

Speaking of Niagara Falls, I’ve never seen any natural phenomenon with such power as I saw in Niagara Falls! It was awesome, really beautiful and very interesting for us! So, I want to thank my employer, Kan, for this opportinity to see one of the most beautiful places in the World. Photos from this trip you can see in our gallery in Niagara Falls secrion.

As for trip to Toronto, we have trying to get there for last 2 weeks, but unfortunately there were some problems, because of which we was not able to make this trip. But today we have done it - we were in Toronto Downtown! It was as good as Niagara falls, but Niagara is creation of nature, and Toronto Downtown created by human hands. Really huge skyscrapers and, of course, CN Tower - one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World - Toronto’s most recognizable landmark. So, what I can say, I like this City! And some day I would definitely like to move there. As for now, I have lots of photos from this beautiful place for you. You can take a look at them here.

Btw, if you will move to Canada and will need to trip somewhere near Toronto (in GTA), you can use GO Transit service - it has great prices and very good conditions. Their site is http://www.gotransit.com. You can find there lots of information about schedules, prices, bus stops, etc. So I will suggest this service - it is really good.

Minimum cigarettes pack price here is about $7-9!

Have no posting here for long time… But there are lots of interesting experiences in our life.

First of all, I have got my new Mastercard credit card from Bank of Montreal. To be more precisious, need to note, that it is not a real credit card as most canadians have. Because I have no any local credit history, I can’t get any credits in local banks. But I put some money to bank account ant they gave me my credit card with exactly the same credit limit as my deposited amount of money. But later, when I will get some credit history using this semi-credit card, I will be able to get real credit card with much bigger credit limit. So, this is their credit system - there is no life without credit history

Another thing I like here are mail-in rebates. Idea of mail-in rebates is following: sometimes in bug shops you can find some goods (hardware, office supplies, etc) with marks like “$20 mail-in rebate”. If you will buy these goods, then mail your receipt to main rebates processing center or fill form on their site, yo will receive 20 bucks cheque my mail in 3-6 weeks. I just rereived my $20 cheque from Zellers, where I bought great Wireless Broadband Linksys Router for $48 last month. So, its price for me is $28 only, which is really good price for this device!

And the last interesting thing are ATMs… If you have some Visa card and want to withdraw some money from your account, don’t try to find ATM with Visa logo - simply put your card to any ATM and you’ll get your money! I’ve spent lots of time trying to find Visa ATM and then asked about it in one of near banks