It’s a letter telling her to show up on March 8 so she can take the oath and become a citizen!
They include the oath, in case she wants to practice: “I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada and fulfill my duties as a Canadian citizen.”
Wikipedia talks about the decades of controversy around the oath. Some people want to remove the reference to the Queen; others want to add Canadian values that must be upheld, like equality of opportunity, freedom of speech, salmon, basic human rights, hockey season and the rule of law.
She’ll be able to keep her American citizenship (basically, ain’t no country that can mess with a U.S. citizenship) and travel on either passport.
Though it doesn’t change much in practice, I’m happy Susie’s officially going to be Canadian. Maybe now she’ll laugh at more of my pun-based jokes and understand the rules of lacrosse. At the very least she’ll be able to sew a BIG Canadian flag on her backpack and have it be legit! Plus, now she gets to vote and doesn’t have any excuse for ignoring Canadian politics.
“Almost every American I know does trade large portions of his life for entertainment, hour by weeknight hour, binge by Saturday binge, Facebook check by Facebook check. I’m one of them. In the course of writing this I’ve watched all 13 episodes of House of Cards and who knows how many more West Wing episodes, and I’ve spent any number of blurred hours falling down internet rabbit holes. All instead of reading, or writing, or working, or spending real time with people I love.”
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)