mari is a permanent resident

Today we went to the border crossing at Niagara Falls and "flagpoled"; Mari is now a permanent resident of Canada.

After having retrieved the errant passport last night, we rented a car and dashed off to the Queenston-Lewiston bridge. Dropping Kenny off with Grandma, we got to the US Customs and Immigration, and emerged an hour later with some paperwork indicating that we'd been refused entry. Then we went back to Ontario, where we were sent to the Canadian Border Services Agency (or whatever it's called) and got more paperwork done. (No one said as much as "Welcome to Canada" but they certainly were a decent bunch to work with.)

Then we stopped in St. Catharines, which is large enough to rate both a "Services Ontario" office at which to apply for Ontario health insurance (there's a three month delay, so no sense on waiting a day when Mari's pregnant) and a "Services Canada" to kick off her application for a tax number.

No more paperwork, no more lost documents, inexplicable waits, no more police checks and health tests and no more customs agents refusing to release our goods. It's been a long year, 2011. Now we can live without an asterisk hanging over us.