When I married Mac in September of 1979 St. Vincent was still a British Colony, although the country would achieve Independence the following month and be re-named St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Up until our wedding I had been given temporary residency that had to be renewed each year, but marriage to a Vincentian would make my status permanent. Or so I thought!
When we returned from the wedding in Canada Mac presented our marriage certificate to the Immigration official, who in turn wrote a note in the visa section of my Canadian passport stating that I was “deemed to belong to St. Vincent”. For the next 16 years I quite happily carried that passport when I traveled; whenever my passport expired, I attached the old passport to the new ones as proof that I “belonged”. During those 16 years I ran a restaurant as well as a villa rental business, gave birth to children, became a ships’ agent and served as chairman of the Bequia tourist committee.
One year I decided to fill out and submit forms so that my family could have Vincentian passports. Vanessa and Rachel, although born in St. Vincent, were also Canadian citizens and had always carried Canadian passports. I figured it was time for them to have Vincentian passports too, and submitted the forms and passport pictures to Immigration.
When I went to the mainland to collect the passports the Immigration officer happened to be one of my former students, and expressed his dismay when he returned to the desk minus a passport for “Miss Armstrong”. He said I hadn’t included my Vincentian citizenship number on the passport application form, evidently a necessary detail for those not born in the country. What Citizenship number? I had never been given a CITIZENSHIP number when I married Mac – I simply “belonged”!
I immediately crossed the street and went to see the Prime Minister in his office, and he advised me to dig out my Certificate of Citizenship for the Immigration officials. When I showed him my shabby old Canadian passport proving that I “belonged” to the country he roared with laughter;
“You mean you never applied for Citizenship after you married Mac?”
Well, did I ever feel dumb. I had assumed that “belonging” was all I needed, and had happily traveled many times with that hand-written note from the old colonial days. It had never occurred to me that marriage to Mac didn’t automatically make me a citizen, that I still had to apply for and be granted Citizenship by the Prime Minister of the country!
Still laughing, Son Mitchell asked his secretary for a Citizenship form, a form that was approved by the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines immediately so that I could have that oh-so-necessary Citizenship number in order to get a Vincentian passport. With that stamped certificate I officially (finally!) belonged to the country.
As I turned to leave the Prime Minister’s office, he suddenly stopped laughing at me and said;
“Wait! You mean all these years my chairman of tourism has been a TOURIST?”
Correct. Son Mitchell had appointed me as chairman, a position I held for 10 years before becoming a real “belonger!” The Prime Minister was suitably horrified.