Whitehorse, The Place Where Canada Began For Me

Whitehorse, Yukon territory, was my Point of Entry in Canada, the first land I walked, the first Canadian place I saw. No less.

In 2018, when I immigrated to Canada with a 2-year work visa, I knew I wouldn’t have enough time to visit the country on my vacation days alone. I had to make travel first. I also knew I wanted to settle down in Toronto, and to start my travels, it made sense to start in the North West and end in the South East, leaving Quebec and the Maritimes for future PTOs.

So there I was, in early June, at the Whitehorse International Airport, flying in from Frankfurt, Germany. I was deeply intimidated by the seriousness and emotional intensity of the moment. The moment I stood in front of the border agent, I had to ask to get my visa edited to live and work in Canada. That was a big deal to me. Despite having lived in other foreign countries, it was the first time I had to get a visa and go through a proper immigration process. 

Thinking about it now makes me smile. I was anticipating a rigid, bureaucratic, and daunting national-security process. I had yet to discover how Yukon, and Canada in general, can be very laid-back, casual, and human.

We were four young women, all under 30, from Belgium, France and Germany. The two border agents would nonchalantly remind us that this visa does not allow us to work in the sex industry: we cannot be escorts, we cannot be exotic bar dancers, and we cannot be sex workers. This made us laugh, but also slightly concerned and worried about why it had to be said. 

When it was my turn to get my visa edited, seated in their small, stuffy offices, the agent asked me about my plans for the next two years in the country. I went on with the speech I had already repeated many times to friends, colleagues and family before leaving: “I’ll travel for a month across the country and will settle down in Toronto and find a job in IT, I’m a software engineer.” 

The man looked up at me with a steady gaze, as if to check whether I was serious. After a long, embarrassing silence, he finally asked, “Toronto? But it’s a big city!” and went on rambling about the dirt, the pollution, the lack of nature, and all the craziness a megacity tends to offer. A wide contrast with life in the Yukon.

A month later, finally in Toronto, I was at a Service Canada office to get a SIN number. When the agent looked at my visa, edited in Whitehorse, and after hearing my well-practised introduction speech, she too looked up straight at me, mumbling, “Whitehorse?! Oh, it’s VERY different than here.” The joke went full circle.

With the visa, edited and stapled into my passport, I left the airport feeling free and excited about what Canada would hold for me. I was stepping out of the airport and stepping into the nature this country is so well known for, and I have yet to discover.

In Whitehorse and around, the nature is so grandiose that a capital N isn’t enough; it should be spelled NATURE. The fresh air cleaned my lungs, which had been fouled by years of living in Paris. Unblocked views of mountains, rivers, lands, and plains, all in a perfect Pinterest colour palette of green, blue, and white, with snow still on the riverbanks. The smell of pine trees and dirt on the hikes around the Yukon River.

The pace of life was slow, and it was exactly what I needed to embrace everything around me: the delicate, never-ending sound of the stream, the gentle light and the sun barely setting in the evening, the cool temperatures, and the beautiful dance of bald eagles in the sky.

All sensorial experiences that were new to me were enchanting. While a part of my brain enjoyed the NATURE so much, I was still slightly worried about encountering a bear. I was learning the best behaviours in bear country through the warning posts around the city.

And while I had the chance not to meet a grizzly on this trip, the first wildlife I saw was mistaken for a big house cat, but after letting my brain process the sight a little longer, I eventually realized I was watching a coyote casually trotting by the river! The experience caught me so off guard that I made it a scene in my graphic novel, 3 raccoons in Canada!

I couldn’t be luckier to have decided to start my journey in Canada, in the Yukon. Those first days in Canada, I was far from imagining the beautiful stories I would live here, so good that I’ll decide to make Canada my home, become a permanent resident and eventually a citizen.

I also couldn’t have imagined I’d be back 4 years later, in 2022, to hunt the northern lights for my birthday. But that’s a story for another time.