Canada Moms Blog

An American Girl in Canada

I got pregnant four months after I moved to Canada.

Somehow, through all the rigamarole of applying for permanent residency and applying for a work permit and tearful phone calls from relatives who were convinced I'd lost my mind and gone to the North Pole (Students in the United States are NOT taught as much geography as Canadian children are - the entirety of Canada is left as 'our friendly neighbor to the north' ) and trying to fit into an area with a much smaller-town feel, the stars aligned and the heavens sang (or, come to think of it, could have been all that newlywed sex) and I started feeling....off.

I held off going to the doctor until I was convinced I was dying. We were fumbling with bills and finding our way as a new couple - why would I put the added stress of co-pays and office fees onto our plate? Surely this would go away. Conditioned from years of having to drop thirty dollars every time I even set foot into a doctor's office, I was panicked by the idea of having a chronic illness far from home. The tests that would have to be run would bury us. And what would happen if whatever-this-was was classified as an existing condition?  I knew my husband loved me - but what if this was something ....big?

And how in hell were we going to pay for this? It was enough to make an American girl heave.

When I finally confessed that I was scared out of my mind that I was going to bankrupt us and force us to live in the streets, Jamie was less than comforting. He was completely uncomprehending.

Can You Get Deported Over The Alphabet?

I am an American in Canada.

In the two years I've lived here, I've learned that in Canada, almost anything goes.  You can walk into a courthouse and get married to anyone.  You can have a peaceful assembly protesting the criminalization of your drug of choice and get police escorts.  You can have any color skin, go to any church, speak any language, have any amount of money in your pocket and people will still treat you just about the same. 

The one thing you cannot be under almost any circumstances is an American.

We are thoroughly American, my family and I.  My sons were seven and nine when we moved here.  My husband was 34.  I was 32.  Assimilating us is going to be damn near impossible.  My daughter, however, was only onewhen we moved north, and since she's lived the majority of her life in Canada we can see some major differences between her and the rest of us.  And don't think we having been using her as our litmus test for how well the rest of us are Canadianizing ourselves.