Thought I would share briefly about our Citizenship Ceremony yesterday.
It was all done in the same room as the test. They had fitted in all the candidates that they could, and the seating was numbered so that they knew where everyone was sat. There were guest chairs at the ends of the room. We were restricted to one guest per family (due to the Kitchener centre being a bit small), and not everyone had brought a guest.
Most people were dressed fairly smartly, and were a bit early (which is good, as it takes them time to process people), and the ceremony probably finished about 1hr15 after the official start time (I would guess that we started about 5 to 10 mins after the start time).
The staff were friendly, explained everything, and they were quite keen that the mood be positive. There was lots of encouragement to read the oath nice and loudly (apparently they watch to ensure you are actually saying it, and don't announce your name afterwards to collect the certificate if you don't), and it was done as a repeat-after-the-judge kind of method which worked easily for everyone (it was done in French and English, although a couple of his pronunciations in the French version were a bit off IMO).
The judge was keen to learn about the folks in the room, so collecting the certificates wasn't really a photo moment, but he was very obliging in posing for photos with people at the end.
We can do passport applications in two business days.
The day felt very positive, and I suspect that anybody's concerns about processing time vanish as they walk out of that room
It was all done in the same room as the test. They had fitted in all the candidates that they could, and the seating was numbered so that they knew where everyone was sat. There were guest chairs at the ends of the room. We were restricted to one guest per family (due to the Kitchener centre being a bit small), and not everyone had brought a guest.
Most people were dressed fairly smartly, and were a bit early (which is good, as it takes them time to process people), and the ceremony probably finished about 1hr15 after the official start time (I would guess that we started about 5 to 10 mins after the start time).
The staff were friendly, explained everything, and they were quite keen that the mood be positive. There was lots of encouragement to read the oath nice and loudly (apparently they watch to ensure you are actually saying it, and don't announce your name afterwards to collect the certificate if you don't), and it was done as a repeat-after-the-judge kind of method which worked easily for everyone (it was done in French and English, although a couple of his pronunciations in the French version were a bit off IMO).
The judge was keen to learn about the folks in the room, so collecting the certificates wasn't really a photo moment, but he was very obliging in posing for photos with people at the end.
We can do passport applications in two business days.
The day felt very positive, and I suspect that anybody's concerns about processing time vanish as they walk out of that room
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