Everything was ready for our trip. After three years of separation from the family, COVID won’t get the better of us this year. We buy our tickets in January and initiate passport applications in March. We just have to wait.
Over the weeks, however, the question of passports becomes a subject of interest. We listen distractedly: we submitted our requests on time, the rumors cannot apply to us. However, time passes and concern gradually rises.
6 days before departure
After a month of unanswered calls and emails, I move to an emergency center. I get up in the wee hours and head to the Guy-Favreau complex. In 30 minutes, I gather more information than anything available through Service Canada. The experience of some feeds the strategies of others. Mine will be to go home and talk to an agent no matter what. Anyway, people whose trip is not scheduled within 48 hours are sent home.
After 190 calls and 367 people waiting, an agent confirms the transfer of my file to Guy-Favreau. My appointment will be confirmed within 48 hours.
3 days before departure
Without a call received within 48 hours, tension sets in. I pick up the phone. A second agent reassures me: “You will be contacted within the hour. Phew, more fear than harm.
2 days before departure
But the next day, still no appointment in hand. I join Guy-Favreau’s queue at 5 am and discover with amazement that it extends to the back of the building. Visibly, there are four times more people than last Friday: some sheltered, others in the pouring rain. Guy-Favreau is very tall. Are there 300 people in front of me? I’m setting up.
A funny situation quickly takes place: homeless people come out of their night shelter and discover with surprise our invasion of their space. We are taken for undocumented, unemployed. The back of the building is lively. We laugh and we are questioned. I have the impression of being the itinerant judged by the others.
Little by little, a small community is created, in clusters. Conversations are going well. But, each in his place, a watch is set up within the groups. Me, I’m not worried: my trip takes place in 24 hours, my file is transferred. I will be one of the emergencies treated. However, that day, I learn 30 minutes after opening that only 80 people will have been served, and not by departure date. Just the ones in front of the door. They say they were there for 40 hours. No official announcement has been sent to us, so we hope, and above all, we keep our place.
The community is getting organized. We take turns to go to the toilets located Place d’Armes, we take advantage of the canvases installed by our makeshift comrades to face a night in the rain: 60 mm are announced. We talk, we laugh, we cry. We support each other. A third agent at the end of the line advises me not to leave my seat. At 1:00 p.m., our place is estimated at 250, at 7:00 p.m., 150. Space is freed up, but it is not because passports are issued or appointments are made, it is because some of us give up. Guy-Favreau keeps its doors closed.
D-Day
30 hours after my arrival, here I am third in line. I wait my turn, heart pounding, shoes filled with water, shivering. I’ve never been so close to the door.
In 24 hours, I witnessed all sorts of things: pissed off people standing guard and handing out numbers so as not to get passed, marked off areas of chairs and yellow Halloween tape, toilets of construction set up around the corner, shivering people soaked to the bone. I even witnessed the secret cleaning of a too disturbing chalk marking on the sidewalk by an employee of the complex sent to the rescue: “Passport: this way, four days of waiting. »
It seems that there was a failure, that the minister apologized, that the requests should have been prioritized by departure date yesterday. It looks like they’re all going to meet us today. And it’s true: people are met by section, sorting lines are created. Our little gang celebrates every new breakthrough.
However, from 11 am, I am gripped by doubt: will I make it? My flight is at 4:45 p.m. Will I finally be able to pick up my children’s passport renewals? Should I cancel my family trip or leave my makeshift comrades to take the plane? For the umpteenth time, I redo the calculations ($/time). I’m running out of time and the agents are slow to meet us. My family is finally making their way to the airport and I have to make up my mind.
It’s 3 p.m. It is as exhausted physically as mentally and with a heavy heart that I leave Montreal. Dual nationality allows us to start our trip while hoping to be able to transfer the Canadian passport of our children in time for the return in six weeks. Poker shot. Hoping that this traveling journey is well and truly behind us and that the Canadian Embassy in France will serve us better than in our own country.