1.2 Arriving in Montreal

After I got the acceptance letter in late October, I immediately began to apply for a student visa. I was told the visa application process usually took at least three months. It seemed to me that I was not able to catch the deadline for registration. It was Dr Noumoff who helped me again to resolve the problem. He sent a fax to his friend in the Canadian Embassy in Beijing. In his fax, he stated a very good reason - he needed me to come to Canada as soon as possible so that his project was able to continue without a stop. He suggested my application be processed a little bit faster than a regular case. His letter worked effectively. It is understandable that visa officers are always concerned about their own people’s requirements. Thus, I received the visa and student authorization just before the New Year’s Eve.

Then I started to prepare my travel right away. This was my first time to leave my family. My son had asthma for a while. My wife had a full time job. She worked at a company located in a suburb about 20 miles away from home. She felt very difficult to take care of a four-year old boy on her own. My youngest sister gave me a full support. She bravely took over the responsibility to look after my son although she was still single. She worked for my cousin Gao so she was relatively flexible. My mother was also living with my sister. She had a chronic multisystem disease which already threatened her life. I didn’t realize she was dying. My son’s joining was like a placebo to my mother - living with her grandson more or less made her feel much better.

I also faced funding problem. I didn’t have enough money to support my two-year study and living in Canada. I had about $8,000 US dollars savings but this tiny amount was not even enough to cover the full first-year international tuition fee. I borrowed $12,000 US dollars from my cousin Gao. That was my first study loan in my life. With the then exchange rate, one US dollar was equivalent to one and half Canadian dollars. So I raised a total of $30,000 Canadian dollars. I finally resolved the funding problem. But I felt a lot of pressure. It was a risk for me at that time. I had no any idea whether I could find a job or not to pay off my debt after graduation.

I purchased the air tickets from Air Canada. The flight departed from Shanghai, via Tokyo and Toronto, to the destination Montreal. This was not my first time travelling abroad. I had been to the USA and Japan a couple of times before. So I was familiar with the immigration and custom procedures. The entire trip was about twenty eight hours. Due to a huge snow storm in Toronto, my last connecting flight to Montreal was canceled. I waited two hours more at the airport until I was informed to board. Finally when I arrived in Montreal-Dorval International Airport, it was already close to midnight. Dr. Noumoff had been waiting in the baggage claim area for a while. We greeted each other by shaking hands.

I will never, ever forget that specific night. It was January 14, 1999. Throughout 30 hours long-haul flight, I finally arrived in Montreal, where I regard it as my second home town. That night the temperature dropped to minus 29 degrees Celsius. It was the coldest weather I had ever met. It seemed to remind me in the future I could confront all of the kinds of difficulty. The driveway was full of snow. While sitting in the Volvo, talking to Dr. Noumoff and watching the streetlights outside the window, I suddenly realized a completely different new life was coming.