Auf wiedersehen, Geocities.

I started a website (not a “blog” as I almost unintentionally wrote just now) on Geocities back in 1998, and kept it modestly updated until, the site says, 2004, though I can’t see any evidence of updates for it after around 2001 when I posted pictures of our then-new-to-us condo. I might have updated the link on it to my CV, but that’s not working now, so as far as I know I basically abandoned the thing in 2001.

The site as here, but it won’t be for long since Geocities will disappear into the ether tomorrow (26 October 2009). Geocities was purchased by Yahoo! in 1999 for–wait for it–$2.9 billion. That’s $290 million a year for a site that, I can only assume, didn’t generate much revenue. I considered paying extra for an ad-free site, for a few minutes maybe, but aside from that brief thinking, I just reveled in the free-ness of it. Now, the whole idea of having any mostly-static “website” is archaic and silly. Geocities was generally a pain to update (not impossible but not straightforward either), and compared to the inherent dynamism that the blog format encourages, something like what Geocities offered is not only old-fashioned but also boring. You visit once, and then, what, a year later? It’s amazing to reflect on how much things have changed in terms of our potential web presences and how much easier it is for people to interact with the web and one another. Still, I loved the idea of having that presence and advertised it to family and friends as much as I could. Now, I have this blog, twitter, facebook and picasa, all dynamic and all enable the sort of conversations (using the term broadly) that Geocities couldn’t anticipate. So adieu, Geocities, and thanks.

Going over my site, there is some good stuff, and God knows I spent a lot of time teaching myself how to resize thumbnails (now done automatically at photo hosting sites and by facebook) and how to program frames (now something I’d avoid, for reasons among which is the fact that I’d want any site I ran to be smartphone friendly) and other things related to customizing my site. It was fun and diverting. Now, I have all (I think) of the picture files, rendered there in low-res as that was all I could manage with the scanners at Kinko’s, and if there is any text I’d want to save for posterity, it’s what follows: my narrative about my journey to Canada, updated through the day I got my citizenship.I even had a background of a Canadian flag that I created in MS Paint or whatever the Win 98 drawing program was.

HOW I BECAME CANADIAN

Moving to Canada had been a deferred dream for me long before I actually emigrated. My first visit was to Vancouver over US Memorial Day weekend, May 1985. Despite the striking beauty of the city, the impression that really overwhelmed me on that trip was that the people there were conspicuously civil and, well, quiet. Civility is, for me, a virtue greater than charity. I wanted more.

On learning that one of my classmates at Reed was Canadian (from Mississauga, Ontario), I gushed to him about my epiphany in Vancouver and how struck I was with its general niceness. He said that Toronto was the greatest city in Canada. I wasn’t aware, at the time, of the competitiveness between Toronto and Vancouver, and for the matter between Montreal and Toronto and further between Toronto and the rest of the country, but I suspected that Toronto was a city I would have to visit. Four years later, I got my chance; my ex, Timm, and I spent a week there in June 1989. It was a good time. Toronto astonished us with its diversity. It lacked the gentility of Vancouver (although now I know one can find a fair amount, by Canadian standards, of roughness in Vancouver and a great deal of refinement in Toronto) and Vancouver’s spectacular beauty, but Toronto had an assortment of peoples that I had never seen anywhere, living cheek-by-jowl in beautiful diversity. Toronto also had an amazingly open gay scene. I took another vacation in Toronto in August 1993, my graduation present to myself (after the PhD), and again in June 1995, an extra week while attending the Law and Society Association conference there.

But on that last trip I had more than a vacation. In May 1995 I was finishing a two-year post-doc at the University of Kentucky. I had been having a pleasant e-mail correspondence with a guy named Brian Singh, whom I had met via a gay men’s mailing list on the internet. Our communication was pleasantly distracting, and was looking forward to meeting this smart, cute-sounding Trinidadian (he calls himself “Indo-Caribbean Canadian”). We met on the evening of my first day there, and the rest is (our) history. Throwing all caution and reason to the wind–I’d just accepted a tenure-track job 600 miles further south, at the University of South Alabama in Mobile–we embarked on a long-distance relationship. After a year, and a mutual desire to make this work 24-7, we decided (given the outrageously better position for same-sex couples in Canada) that I would try to emigrate to Canada. But the process was stressful, to put it mildly. In calendar terms it looks pretty simple, and in retrospect things did indeed go remarkably smoothly:

August 1996: I spent June 15-september 6 in Toronto, and so we could (and did) both work there on preparing my immigration application. This included all the standard forms, a letter full of legalese requesting “humane and compassionate consideration” if I didn’t make it on “points” (standardized evaluation of education, occupation, “cultural fit,” and so forth) since we were a same-sex couple whose inability to marry “presented us an undue and disproportionate hardship.” We included pictures, copies of phone bills, airline ticket receipts, all the evidence for the durability of our relationship that we could find. Heterosexual couples could be strangers to one another and yet they qualify easily with only that marriage licence. It’s an unfair double standard that we had to verify our “love” as well, but compared to what our treatment by the US INS would have been… so anyway…

September 1996: I got a receipt for fees (it was about $1450!) and a hopeful note that said that my application could be processed without interview. The package included medical forms and required that I see a Canada-approved physician, so on October 8 I had to drive the 170 miles to Montgomery for my physical. Brian chided me that they would draw “seven or eight” vials of blood, God bless ‘im. It was actually only one vial and thus was the best part of the trip. Montgomery was hideous, the parts that I saw anyway, which were overflowing with prolifers protesting the women’s clinics near my medical exam site.

And then waiting and panic and waiting and a stressed-out Christmas and waiting and waiting and panic. And waiting. And panic. A month on Xanax (really!) and in that time not a word, not a whisper, from the folks in Buffalo (where the immigration processing centre is) during these four months. I now know, based on the timelines of other immigrants, that I was outrageously lucky to have such a short processing time.

And then…

February 6, 1997: MY LANDING PAPERS ARRIVE! Just before Brian’s Febuary visit to Mobile. Perfect timing, oh happy day, oh happy, happy day. We then had a lovely trip to Destin, Florida to celebrate. Note this smiling shot of me in Destin. Now you know why I was smiling!

March 15, 1997: I “land” at Pearson Airport, Toronto: I am as of this date a landed immigrant (actually the new term is “permanent resident” but everybody still uses the old terminology), can apply for a SIN card (Canuck version of SSN card), get an Ontario driver’s licence, look forward to applying for OHIP (that’s universal health care, American friends), walk around on the clouds and feel very Canadian…. until March 30 when I have to return to Mobile to polish off my contract there. I had resigned from my position just before my landing.

June 15, 1997: With U-Haul in tow, Brian and I arrive after the 1300 miles from deepest Alabama to the border, at Sarnia, Ontario, I import my goods and my car (it wasn’t cheap). I return to earth as a full-time resident of Canada.

As I write this, in January of 2001, I have applied for Canadian citizenship. I sent the application last summer (June 2000); the application has been processed and I have now to wait to write my exam. I trust this won’t be in the too distant future- in fact my test has now been scheduled twice, but in the Toronto office… not where I live anymore. I can only sit and wait, and let you know when the next stage happens.

Update- on January 26, my file was finally transferred to the Calgary office (after a test was scheduled twice, on December 11 and then January 7, in Toronto). Not long now!

FINAL UPDATE! I wrote my citizenship test on March 8, passed it (it’s an easy test), and on June 1, 2001 I was sworn in as a Canadian citizen. I AM CANADIAN!