Our Canadian Immigration Story (III)

Apart from the embarrassment, I had to have a cardiograph to make sure I was ok. This delayed the medicals being sent back by a week as the cardiograph had to be analyzed by a cardiologist. I didn’t feel too clever! We checked out the different shipping agencies.

Kerry recommended PSS shipping - a family run business with a good reputation and a good quote. When we called to book we had almost left it too late. They managed to fit us in as we only had a relatively small load to ship. We agreed on a shared container for the shipping on a door to door service. They would arrive to pack everything on the 28th August.

We just hoped the Medicals were OK! While I was deployed away with the Air force, the house sale had stalled due to an argument between the lawyers! We couldn’t sack them as then the whole process would have to start again and there would be no chance of us making a deadline for a currency transfer we had booked. There were large penalties for missing the date. We couldn’t cancel the removals at such short notice either, as it too would incur large penalties. So we were facing moving out to Andie’s parents and leaving the house empty whilst still paying the mortgage, taxes and bills.

On top of that the insurance was only valid for 30 days once it was empty and we were booked on flights to Calgary to go house hunting! Eventually, Kerry phoned with the news that we were accepted and just had to sign some documents and send in our passports and photo’s to claim our visas. At last the relief of knowing took away the house nightmare for a day or two. The date was set – January 11th 2003. There is only a 3 month window where the forms were valid so we decided to send the paperwork off once we had returned from Canada as the house drama was starting to become serious.

We were about to set off to Canada for a month with the house sale still in limbo. We managed to gain assurances that things were moving behind the scenes and that all would be completed in time for our money transfer, all we could do was board the plane and hope for the best!