The Perpetual Immigrant
Since I was 18 years old, I have been an immigrant 12 times. My entire adult life has been spent as a foreigner to those I live and work with. Always being different. Never quite fitting in.
Immigration Canada
A Bumpy Road to Citizenship
November, 1972. California-born musician Mike Stockstill and two friends packed their instruments into the car and headed for Alaska. The car was a 1942 Dodge truck that had six months earlier been a chicken coop. Mike, a mechanic, and his friends turned it back into a truck. “It broke down every 300 miles so we …
Trying Something New
Ploytida Samanachangphunk had one sister living in Whitehorse before she immigrated to Canada. Now she has three sisters and an extended family here. Ploytida’s sister would return for family visits to their hometown of Nan, in northern Thailand, and tell her about life in the Yukon. Ploytida became intrigued. “I love my country. Thailand is …
Interview at the Embassy
The status of one’s permanent residency quickly becomes the crux of conversation among the Yukon’s new Canadians. And it’s the crux of this column. No two people have the same story to tell. Not only are there various ways to immigrate, each person’s reason to immigrate is different. Some are poignant, others humorous, like this …
We wanted a community we could call our own
“We were in Pakistan — as ever, saving children,” Martin Crill says at the Baked Café, where the sun has finally come inside. “We believed Canada had forgotten about us.” He worked for Save the Children UK, an independent children’s charity, often intervening in war situations to help displaced children find families. Martin’s Canadian journey …