CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — After living her whole life as a citizen of nowhere, 39-year-old Omika Khanal swore her Canadian citizenship oath with 122 others from 30 different countries on Friday in Charlottetown.
“I don’t have any words for how to say it,” Khanal said after the ceremony. “I’m really proud and I’m really happy being a Canadian citizen.”
Khanal was born in Bhutan but never got citizenship after the kingdom restricted its definition in the 1980s of who would be eligible. As part of a wave of more than 100,000 people who fled the country in the 1990s, she and her husband found themselves in a refugee camp in Nepal, where they had two daughters.
Urmila, 16, and Usha, 12, also became citizens on Friday, in the gymnasium of Murphy’s Community Centre, just steps from the place where the Fathers of Confederation met to discuss founding the nation of Canada.
“Now I can travel outside Canada and go visit my family. It’s been 10 years since I’ve seen my grandma and my cousins, so I’m excited.”
-Urmila Khanal
Though they may be new Canadians, the two girls have lived the majority of their lives in Charlottetown.
The family arrived in Canada in 2009, when then six-year-old Urmila started Grade 1. Her mother chose Charlottetown “because it’s peaceful and nice for the family”.
Since then, the family has had three more children, all born in Canada and among the first in their immediate family to be citizens of a country. Their father, Bhupati Khanal, has yet to complete the citizenship process.
Even though her daughters, having been taught social studies in Canada, had the expertise to help their mother study for her citizenship exam, Omika did not find her tutors tremendously helpful.
“She was doing it on her own because whenever I was testing her, she was like, ‘You’re way too fast! I want to do it on my own,’” said Urmila.
Even after studying, Omika said, she was nervous on test day.
But the mother of five passed, allowing her and her two eldest children to gain full rights as Canadian citizens.
For Urmila, citizenship means that she can connect with her relatives again.
“Now I can travel outside Canada and go visit my family,” she said. “It’s been 10 years since I’ve seen my grandma and my cousins, so I’m excited.”
Urmila plans on visiting her relatives in the U.S. this summer.
