Either my head is too big, or they’re just crazy!

I am the first to admit that I will always remain a patriotic Canadian at heart. I love Canada. The pristine cleanliness of the paved roads and street signs, and the friendliness of the Tim Hortons drive-through people as I order my "double-double", all make me crave my red-and-white-flagged home.

Perhaps Canada is leaps and bounds ahead of Israel in many areas, especially customer service. Or perhaps I have just convinced myself of the vast difference between the two countries in this respect ever since I moved to Israel, around six years ago. Could it be because of my subpar bureaucratic experiences in Israel, that I always look fondly at the polite, neat lines in Government offices back home in Canada, and the service-with-a-smile attitude the clerks always have?

My recent dealings with the Canadian Government offices in Israel have caused me to believe that I have just been dreaming over the past few years, and have wrongly led myself into a world of misconceptions. The Consulate office of my beloved homeland is as difficult to deal with as any Israeli office.

This mess all started when I had to renew my Canadian Passport. I am flying back to Toronto in September, and it turns out that my passport expires on the day that we fly out of Israel. Besides the fact that my passport will thus be expired the next day, when I land on Canadian soil, there is the whole issue of your passport being valid for at least another six months from the day you travel. I have never really understood this law. It essentially means that you never really get your full money’s worth of that five or ten year passport renewal. They should just start saying that each passport renewal is valid for only four-and-a-half or for nine-and-a-half years. It’s just deceiving otherwise!

The process is quite simple if you are Canadian and living in Canada. For those of us living abroad, it is slightly more complex. One is required to take new pictures, notarize them and to temporarily part with all the personal and important documents you own.

I went to the photo shop to get my picture taken for my Canadian passport renewal, but it was as if I was out of my mind for asking for a 5 cm. by 7 cm. passport picture. I had to reassure them that yes, I do know that the American passport is only 5 by 5. I know. But I am not American. The first store wouldn’t even take my pictures. They didn’t know how to reformat them so that they would be the size that I needed, or rather, that the Canadian government required.

I finally found a convenience store that said they could make passport pictures of all sizes - a real mom-and-pop type store. Sure, I thought: this is exactly what they envision when they write that the picture has to be taken at a "commercial photography establishment". I stood there, with the directions in hand, reading them off to the scruffy, don't-mess-with-me Israeli that owned the store. He wasn’t paying much attention, and as I stood there, without a smile on my face (as per the Canadian instructions), waiting for the flash, I hoped that he would try and follow the rules...

He took, I think, the worst picture I’ve ever seen of myself in my life. He then tinkered around with some machine in his back room to adjust the pictures to the right size. He handed them to me, and I took a ruler to check the measurement from my head to my chin. It was a good 40 mm, 4 mm too long. I asked him to re-do them, and he grudgingly complied. This time, I inspected the photos even more scrupulously, going over the rules on the application form again and again. Convinced that I had done everything by the books, and that there would be no problems handing them in with my application, I left.

The next day, my husband journeyed out in the blazing heat to take my photos and forms to the passport office. The officials looked over my documents and checked that everything was there. When they got to the pictures, the man at the desk took out his handy ruler, measured my head, and just shook his head: “we’re so sorry, there is just no way that they are going to accept this head in Ottawa. Also, there’s a shadow next to the neck that you can see if you squint and turn your head sideways”. When my husband called to tell me the news, I was heartbroken. I couldn’t help but feel rejected by my own country of origin. Now what?

...I have just gone back to the same "photo shop" to sit for my third set of photos. Needless to say, my application is still pending…