Well we attended the ceremony and became Canadian Citizens on Monday 18th October. Well we are actually dual citizens and intend to maintain our British nationality. The ceremony was interesting and took about 2 hours. First a Judge addressed us and talked about our responsibilities as citizens and the rights that we now enjoy as citizens. We all took the oath of allegiance to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the second, queen of Canada and then various dignitaries stood up and congratulated and welcomed us to the Canadian family. There were 32 new Canadians from 16 countries!

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We received a certificate and swopped our Permanent Resident card for a Citizen ID Card. A Canadian flag pin (mini brooch) and some leaflets about Canada and the rights and responsibilities of a citizen. We finished by singing the national anthem (loudly).

O Canada!

Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Short sharp and to the point. A nice anthem that is meaningful and easy to sing. Apparently written in 1880 and only designated as the Canadian National Anthem in 1980. Before that it was Great Britains National Anthem (God save our Gracious Queen) and O Canada was sung much like Land of Hope and Glory is the unofficial anthem for England.

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Anyway enough history lessons. We received a personal letter  from Brad Woodside (Major of Fredericton) with a book on Fredericton welcoming us as new Canadians. It was presented at work by my colleagues who also gave me a Canadian Flag and we all ate cake with a big red maple leaf on it. It reminded me of my leaving do from work in the UK were they presented me with an Axe, French phrase book and a flag.

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We have been busy little bees preparing for winter, yesterday we loaded our wood (which has been drying outside for a couple of months) into the garage, for those of you who remember we had 1/2 cord left over from last year and we purchased 2 cord (our usual) so the wood pile is up to the rafters. Boy I'm stiff after we moved 2 cord of wood in an afternoon. 

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Also the tree's are looking beautiful with their leaves in all there new colours

This is the Maple tree as seen from our deck  beautiful eh? (Canadians nearly all say eh, after the sentence). OK time for me to finish this post, I need to get onto the list of other jobs that Jules has listed for me.