“It took me a while to feel Canadian,” writes Gael Melville in a recent Globe & Mail essai, describing her experience as an expat who relocated to Toronto from her native Scotland.

She bemoans the difficulty of wading through the bureaucratic issues:

“What’s a carte d'assurance sociale?” “What’s Assurance-santé?” “Why does the bank charge us for taking our own money out of our account?” …”Why can’t I register to vote?” “Why is my credit card limit a measly $250 when I have the proceeds of the sale of my apartment in my bank account?” “Why can’t I use my professional accounting designation in Canada?”

Mais “what proved significantly more difficult to fix,” elle écrit, “was the yawning gap in my cultural knowledge.”

“Qui sont les Groupe des Sept?” “Who are Margaret Atwood et Leonard Cohen?” Canadians indulged my lack of knowledge of the arts with patient explanations and visits to cultural sites, but pop-culture references were omnipresent and perplexing. “What is the humidex?” “What is a two-four?”

Qu'en est-il que vous? What were your bureaucratic challenges when you first came to Canada? Et quelles sont les lacunes dans votre cultural knowledge?

Post a comment and let us know.

Photo odolphie (Flickr)