After I published my post about pregnancy, a lot of people asked about the birth itself and how things are organized here. Honestly, I think the birth experience is even more individual than prenatal care — it depends on how your contractions go, which hospital you deliver at (at least from what I’ve read on Reddit), which province you’re in, and so on. But I’ll do my best to share from my own, rather not-so-simple, experience....

Hi everyone! We’ve been in Canada for almost three years now, and if they won’t give us citizenship (or even PR), at least a new family member will get a Canadian passport — he arrived on November 9th 🙂 In this post I’ll talk about how prenatal care works in Canada, specifically in British Columbia (though on average it should be pretty similar in other provinces). I won’t be sharing my personal experience, since everyone’s pregnancy is different — I just want to explain the actual process....

Today I’ll share my experience of looking for a condo (an apartment) in Toronto. A disclamer: I’ll refer to our condo as an apartment just because it sounds more familiar to me. While we have a temporary place till March 3, we have recently signed a lease to a new place, and we should get the keys on February 17. As a person who has recently moved here from Russia, I still feel that it’s all a fraud, but hopefully, this country is more civilized, and a signed lease gives you some guarantees....

Finally, we have all the necessary documents (work permit, to be specific) to proceed with further bureaucracy. Here is how the process usually works. A person lands in Canada with a work visa (let’s say during the COVID pandemic). After the arrival, they get a Work Permit at the airport and take a two-week quarantine, which I mentioned earlier. While they in quarantine, they can apply online for a SIN (social insurance number0, contact a bank to get an account, and get employed remotely with their Work Permit....

Today is the 11th of January, which means that we have to go to the airport to check if there are any news regarding our case. I had insomnia, couldn’t eat in the morning, but we finally went to the airport to be there by 2:30 pm. CBSA office looks similar to the police station (I haven’t been at any, but I see it that way). The Officer on duty got our documents and checked if we were who we said we were....