after passport submission - what else for PR?

[romba]

We submitted our passport to get the Pr visa issued.
What else is needed"?
Do we need to leave Canada and come back in to activate?
Can we leave while waiting for the PR card? We heard that if your card did not arrive yet, even though you have your visa, you can not leave/enter the country. Is this true?
We have plane tickets for vacation in March. What can we do?
we live in Canada
thanks!

[rubyalabar]

if you are already in Canada and have a valid TRV or work permit, you can do landing formalities at a local CIC office, you just need to call the CIC call center to determine which local office and to make an appointment. or if you live near the Canada/US border you can do what others call "flagpoling". You drive to the border crossing and when you reach the US side, you tell immigration officers there that you do not wish to enter the US but just need to make a U-turn so you can land as a permanent resident in Canada. Once you have made a U-turn, you can do landing formalities at Canada side of the border crossing.

You need you PR cards in order to re-enter Canada by air. But if you will re-enter by land, you can use the COPR. YOu can also get a travel document from the Canadian embassy in the country that you will go to for your vacation.

Seniors may give you more details about the PR card as I have not landed yet. Let's wait for what they have to say.

[romba]

We have study permits.
1. Does that mean we can go to a local office INSTEAD of driving to the border? We live in Calgary
2. How long after we get our passports can we go? and only after that they will issue our PR card?
3. And what after that? Just wait for the card?
4. Again, if we need to travel after we activated our PR by going to the border/CIC but before we actually get the PR card (which takes 4-6 weeks according to their website), What can we do?
or should we wait with the activation to when we are going on vacation anyways?
5. What actually makes us permanent residence - is it the visa in our passport or the card? do we get like a number which qualifies as our PR (asking for changing the status with the university from international students to PRs)
Thanks!