Now that I have an ounce of time between all the hustle and bustle both good and bad (I landed on Saturday and found out I'm being laid off 2 days later...), here is my landing story:
I took a full week off of work and drove 16 hours (not counting stops) back to Indianapolis from Montréal, spending the night in a hotel in Rochester, NY. I spent most of this week going through everything I had left in my parents' house and designating it as either import now, import later, or give to Goodwill. During this time I also had preparations to make for my best friend's wedding (I was the maid of honor). My husband flew in and joined me the day before the wedding. Fortunately, he has expert packing skills! He helped me load up the car and finalize my lists of goods importing and goods to follow.
The morning after the wedding, we ate brunch with my relatives then took off at about 2pm. Rather than landing at the NY/QC border (and saving gas money, I might add), we were forced to land at the Detroit/Windsor crossing since it was the only place with 24/7 Export Control to export my car on a weekend. We got to Detroit around 9:30pm Saturday, and man is that town creepy! Burnt out and abandoned warehouses and businesses everywhere! The export officers on the US side weren't nice with us at all. They stamped my papers coldly then told me to pull up and wait outside the gate labelled "Return to Canada" and that it could take up to 30 minutes for an officer to come assist me. Having been on the road for so long, I decided to wait outside my car and stretch a bit. Bad decision, apparently! An officer walking towards me started yelling from maybe 30 yards away (of course I couldn't hear him from the wind and nearby highway traffic), telling me to get back in my car. I asked him if I was at the right gate and he said no. Apparently there was another "Return to Canada" gate for which the sign was impossible to see from where I had been parked initially. :
Eventually 3 officers came up, played 20 questions with me, then let us go.
We crossed the Ambassador Bridge to Windsor (which was down to 1 lane with construction), and on the other side, the guard who greeted us was friendly and had a good sense of humour! He took my passport, called in my case, then directed us to Immigration.
In the immigration office we handed in all our paperwork (CoPR, his passport, my passport + visa, both lists of goods, and my CSQ for Québec) then were dismissed to the waiting room. There were 3 other cases that came and went while ours was being worked on. At one point, he called me in just to ask for my address then re-dismissed me. He had me carefully sign the green box at the bottom of my CoPR, saying that signature would be transferred to my PR card. He also had me sign some papers for importing my car and told me to go on the RIV website to follow up (still trying to figure this one out though). He explained the other government services I had to get set up with (getting a new SIN, getting on the wait list for Assurance Maladie). He finally stapled a copy of the CoPR in my passport and when I asked about having to leave and re-enter the country before getting my PR card, he stamped my passport, wrote my client ID #, and initialled it, saying that his stamp would be valid to permit my re-entry regardless of what other officers might try to argue because they are revamping the system and trying to integrate customs with immigration more closely. When he was done, he told me I was good to go, and I said, "What, I don't get a 'Welcome to Canada'?" He grinned sheepishly and said "Welcome to Canada!"
After handing back all my paperwork, I was directed to the cashier to obtain a receipt saying I didn't owe/pay them anything (apparently needed for part of my RIV registration), and then I was on my way! (Didn't have any taxes or A/C fees on my car - a 2003 Subaru Forester).
The whole process took an hour and a half
but the officers (at least in Canada) were all nice and lighthearted.
