Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
Random mutterings
This year’s blood donation schedule. Six donations this year. Next year will be another seven donation year.
Valentine’s day is in a couple of weeks. I guess I’d better figure out something nice to do for the wife.
With the new US passport rules coming into effect now, there’s been a surge of passport applications in both the US and Canada going. Fortunately mine doesn’t expire for a few more years yet so I’ve got a little time.
I was just reading on CBC that a bunch of people applying for their Canadian passports are finding out that they’re not Canadian citizens anymore. What a shocker that must be.
Many applying for a Canadian passport have been informed their chance to remain a citizen expired years ago because of an obscure provision in the Citizenship Act, a little-known law that applied between 1947 and 1977.
The law states that if you lived outside Canada on your 24th birthday and failed to sign the right form, you automatically lost your citizenship.
So there could potentially be 10’s of thousands of people living in Canada, thinking they’re Canadian citizens, but really have no citizenship at all. You can bet there’s going to be a lot of really stressed people out there.
According to Canadian census data, there are an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people in Canada who could find out they’ve lost their citizenship if they apply for a passport.
I hope the Liberal government does the right thing and makes it easy for these people to re-establish their rightful citizenship status.
As the Google Maps crow flies, it’s a long 4200 km (2610 miles) drive back home which, according to Google Maps, would take less than two days (41 hours) of continuous driving to make. Mapquest puts the trip at 4160 km (2585 miles). Either way it’s a long drive through 8 states and 3 provinces. I bet it would be an interesting trip to take though. I may have to try it one of these days.
