By Paula Halpin
I’m a nervous flyer. The white-knuckle kind. Scared to loosen my seat belt during the flight. Reluctant to walk around the cabin to avoid blood clots. Squeezing my husband’s hand so tightly during take-off, he has to vigorously massage it to get the feeling back. Silently bargaining with God, promising to return to the Catholic faith if he will just get me safely back on solid ground.
Paradoxically, it took a stressful experience on solid ground to snap me out of my fear of being 35,000 feet above the clouds in a metal box . My husband and I were at the Helsinki airport in May preparing to fly back to Toronto after a two-week vacation in Finland and Sweden.
“Do you have another passport,” asked the woman at the Finnair check-in as she studied my EU Irish passport, a frown developing above her Scandinavian blue eyes. I stared at her stupidly, trying to understand the question.
“No, just that one. But I’ve lived in Canada for 47 years,” I told her, pointing to my certificate of citizenship which I’d attached to my passport with a bulldog clip. “That is not an official travel document,” she said. “You need a Canadian passport to board the aircraft.”
There has to be a mistake, I thought. My heart rate skyrocketed. My brain shut down. For the first time in 27 years, I wanted a cigarette. I felt all eyes on me as I argued with blue eyes, to no avail. People in the line behind me began grumbling about the delay, some giving me hostile looks that suggested I was at best a criminal or at worst a terrorist. It was as if I was barefoot and carrying my belongings in plastic bags. My face flamed with embarrassment.
Meanwhile my husband — always cool in a crisis — was politely asking the Finnair women if she would mind checking her information. Clearly exasperated, she phoned Canada Border Services and they confirmed that, by law, Canadian citizens (including dual citizens like me) must present a valid Canadian passport when flying into or transiting through Canada. I could, however, apply online for an eTA (an electronic travel authorization), she explained. If I was approved, I would be allowed to travel on that one day on that specific flight.
So, rolling both our hefty suitcases and wearing an over stuffed backpack, Rob made a beeline for the airport Starbucks where we could sit and use our laptop. I limped behind him, my recently operated on ankle beginning to throb. We grabbed two large coffees and began filling out a long, complicated eTA form. We submitted the form along with a processing fee of $140 through our bank. Twenty minutes later, we realized it was the wrong form!
By now, we were only 90 minutes away from take off. What to do? Then a light bulb went off in my addled brain. We should call the Canadian Embassy in Helsinki. The Embassy quickly transferred us to an angel of mercy at consular services who told us where to find the correct application. She then stayed on the phone helping Rob complete this other form which was even more challenging than the first.
“I’ll ask the eTA people to expediate your application and email you their decision,” she explained. “If it is a yes, you can show that on your laptop at the check-in counter.” But what if it is a no, I thought. I would have to fly to Dublin and throw myself on the mercy of my family there. Rob would have to wait for me in Canada, for God knows how long.
During the agonizing wait that followed, I thought about how I had ended up in this hot mess. Despite my neurotic over-planning, why had it never occurred to me in the months leading up to this trip that I would need a Canadian passport to come home to Quebec?
I think it is because for more than 40 years I had travelled to and from Canada on an Irish passport and a Permanent Resident (PR) Card, which is an official travel document. I never bothered becoming a fully-fledged citizen, procrastinating for decades. Then three years ago, prompted by my children, I bit the bullet and filled out the many forms, frequently swearing at the red tape.
Months later, my citizenship certificate arrived in the mail and my PR card became redundant. I was invited with hundreds of others to attend a virtual new citizens’ welcome ceremony. It was a surprisingly joyful and moving event that left me ashamed I had waited decades to completely embrace Canada, a country that many people around the world had risked their lives to come to, seeing it as a beacon of hope and freedom.
Meanwhile, back at the Helsinki airport, it was about 30 minutes to departure and we still hadn’t received word about the eTA. We dragged our bags back to the check-in in time to hear that the gate was about to close. Simultaneously, the eTA approval finally pinged in my inbox. Blue eyes hastily phoned the flight crew and asked them to hold the gate. Another Finnair staff person cleared a path for us through Security and Passport Control, and the race to the gate was on.
It felt like it was two football fields away. Rob began sprinting, while I hobbled behind, my ankle screaming at me now. Mercifully, he found a wheelchair and ran back to get me. I had no idea he could run that fast. Fortunately, he is a relatively fit man, eight years younger than my 76, a junior-senior as he describes himself.
As we got nearer to our gate, two flight attendants ran towards us, urging us to get a move on. At the doors of the plane, I jumped out of the wheelchair (to the surprise of some who had reasonably assumed I couldn’t walk). Dismissing us as laggards, some of the other passengers stared at us with disapproval. Others looked amused.
We quickly found our seats, stashed our overhead bags, and tightened our seat belts. It was exactly one minute to departure.
Two hours into the flight, we hit turbulence. I didn’t care. I was so happy to be on that plane, I forgot all about being afraid. I even took a stroll around the cabin, beaming at my fellow passengers.
The morning after I returned home, I emailed a thank-you to our consular angel in Helsinki and applied for a Canadian passport. I filled in the forms without once whining about the red tape. I expect I will soon receive one of the newly-designed passports. Have you seen them? They are lovely.
Wandering Wakefield 