How a transit visa for Canada kills my trip to US for #AAA2016 meetings…

I hope I will never need a Canada visa again!

After the EASA meeting in Milan, now I am missing annual AAA meeting at Minneapolis. Last Wednesday I have learnt that Canada demands a transit visa. This is surely my mistake. I should have checked it before. I thought an American visa must enough. I had flown to Houston through Frankfurt for years, even Germany does not need a transit visa.

I was to fly through Toronto to Minneapolis on Monday (yesterday). I immediately applied online. They have a fancy online application site. [Let me remind you, it is better to apply offline. This online application does not really help much for those like me who are from 3rd world countries] However, that was the election day in US and Americans really made the Canadian site not work. After 3 hours of stressful application process, I have applied, explaining my situation. The next day [Thursday, 10 Nov] I had a call. I was told if I come to Ankara the process could be fastened, however, 11 November was a Canadian national holiday and my case could only be submitted on 14 Nov (yesterday). So i changed my flight to 16 Nov paying a good amount of fee. I had thought of skipping Toronto flight but all other alternatives were too expensive.

With a 6 am flight, I came to Ankara to suffer more humiliation from the Canadian embassy. There is no way to communicate with the visa department, so I emailed and waited. In response, through the application site, I received a message that requested “employment documents”. I was in Ankara, I had to get in touch with our human resources department, had a file prepared to be sent to Ankara embassy. I had given up at that point.

I have American, Schengen and UK visas and just for a fking transit visa, Canada embassy really broke my heart. Many years ago, I had an urgent situation and I am still grateful to Finnish embassy for that.  Thanks to Canadians, a) I got my own share of humiliation for being a citizen of failed country, b) I am missing a meeting I was excited to attend, c) I suffer for an unspeakable amount of cost in non refundable tickets.