My Story

There shouldn’t be a price to claim Canadian citizenship. But for me, the price was high.

So I decided to share my story.

In 2025, I came to the sad realization that I couldn’t safely stay in the United States much longer. I’m a queer, Autistic, disabled, vocal activist, but I also have a lot of privilege as a white, femme-presenting person. I started researching countries that I might be able to immigrate to, but I was really struggling to find a good option for me, so I kept postponing making any serious plans to leave. And frankly, as an activist and community organizer, I felt a little bit torn about whether I should leave.

Image description: The site’s logo is a dusty pink circle enclosing a dark red sketched maple leaf with “Claiming Canadian Citizenship”

But that changed when I became the target of a right-wing extremist who hated my work in the community and started a systematic campaign to upend my life as I knew it.

In early 2026, I saw something online about Canada removing their first-generation descent limit for citizenship. “Gosh,” I thought to myself, “how lucky are those people that can claim that!”

But I couldn’t let the thought go. The next day, I decided to sign up for an Ancestry.com. I put in as much information as I knew about my father and his father - I only knew my grandfather’s first and last name and where he had lived when my father was born, but that was enough to start getting hints! As I read through each record, I gleaned enough information to figure out his father (my great-grandfather’s) name and, lo and behold, MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER WAS CANADIAN!

With that, the adventure began. I was ready to start working on my application for proof that I was a Canadian citizen.

After several months of work, an unscrupulous attorney that sidetracked me, I finally submitted my application for a Canadian Citizenship Certificate. I’m not an attorney or an expert, but I want to share my story in case it helps to inspire you.