o canada...

My dad is Canadian and despite the fact that he has lived in the States for almost 30 years now he has never renounced his Canadian citizenship. When we were little he would tell us that as his children we also qualified for Canadian citizenship and that when traveling throughout the world it is usually safer to travel with a Canadian passport anyway. My brother and I would smile widely at each other, grinning at the idea that we were eligible for entrance into this secret club of world traveling northerners who had an extra measure of security than their neighbors to the south.

Over the years we would periodically pester our father to fill out the paperwork to make us dual citizens, but nothing ever came of it. Then, in 2009 when I was away at college, I saw this commercial:

I thought, Hey! That could be me! I could wake up to the Canadian national anthem with a hockey player in my room and a Mountie at my door because that's not creepy at all! (But mostly I'd be in it for the tuques and the maple leaf pajama bottoms.) However, the issue wasn't really a pressing one and after perusing the official citizenship website I got confused and forgot about it.

Until yesterday.

Braeden, Nikki, and I were watching this episode of The Daily Show where John Stewart was talking about how the 9/11 first-responders health care bill doesn't cover cancer, the illness that first-responders are being over-whelmingly diagnosed with. The reasoning? They can't prove with 100% certainty that the cancer was caused by their work at Ground Zero. Really? Really. Why would you not want to take care of those who have served your country in an incredible and important way? "How about everyone who worked down on the pile gets a pass on the exact origin of their personal tumors?"

The Daily Show - I Thought We Already Took Care of This S@#t
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I told Braed and Nikki that in Canada when my grandpa was old and sick and needed a live-in nurse to help take care of him the government paid for it because he was a veteran. Braeden and I were already big fans of Canada because the people are Midwestern friendly but with liberal political views. (In other words, Iowa City is the Canada of the Midwest.) Oh, and did I mention that my dad is from there? I told Braeden that I was pretty sure I qualifed for Canadian citizenship because I'm what they call "first generation born outside of Canada" and he immediately hopped over to the computer and looked it up. He answered a few questions on their site on my behalf and this lovely screen appeared:

(Click to enlarge)

Hooray! Now the only thing we have to do is fill out some forms and pay $200 (American? Canadian? I guess we'll find out) to claim citizenship before my 28th birthday and we're golden! We'll be using in loonies and toonies, eating Tim Hortons, and saying "eh"  before we know it. Oh, and benefiting from universal heath care.

i know that you want to be canadian

In the spirit of the Olympics and my northern heritage. Best. Music Video. Ever.

over the falls in a barrel

Today we arrived in Buffalo! This time we had TWO hotel rooms with king sized beds (thanks, Dad!). The beds were so big that we could have fit about four people in one AND Jace could actually stretch all the way out. (PS He is 6'6".)I'm pretty sure that was his favorite part of the whole trip. Honestly we could have both slept in the same bed and not even been anywhere near close to touching, but, don't worry, Dad, we didn't.

After we checked into the hotel and brought in everything we thought we'd need for the night, we hopped back into the Yaris and drove up to Niagara Falls. We parked on the American side in a Duty Free shop parking lot (it was free) and walked over to the Canadian side because neither of us had ever done that before and I tell you what, I highly recommend it. All you need is your passport and you're good to go! As we were chatting with the Canadian border guard guy (and by chatting I mean he was looking at our passports and we were waiting to be allowed to go) there was a group of kids around our age that were being escorted back across the border by a police officer. It is one of Jace's goals in life to be asked to leave a country, so he was sufficiently jealous of their luck. We're still not sure what they did, but they seemed unaffected by the whole thing.

We wandered around the Canadian side for a while, mostly just strolling along the river/waterfalls and enjoying a nice walk after hours spent stuck in the car (the drive from the campsite to the hotel alone was about 6 hours). The most fun thing we did was the Journey Behind the Falls. It's where you get to go through these tunnels that have little look outs and you literally walk behind Horseshoe Falls (one of the smaller waterfalls in the Niagara vicinity). They gave us yellow plastic ponchos but Jace still got really wet. I, on the other hand, was prepared and brought my rain jacket. Sucka.
Also, remember how we were so clever and got free parking in the Duty Free shop lot? Well it was a good trick because the only exit out of said lot was to pay the $3.25 toll and cross the bridge over to the Canadian side. Lame sauce. So we crossed the border twice in one night. Good times. We had to explain to the border guard that we just wanted to turn around and he directed us to the customs building where for some reason they felt it necessary to search my car. Really? I think they might have mistaken the exhaustion in my voice and demeanor for something else (maybe, I don't know, drugs?) and wanted to make sure we weren't transporting any of the stuff back to the US. We weren't. Though with all the secret compartments in my car I bet we could have and not have gotten caught. But we didn't. But we could have. But we didn't.