Driving

The drivers license office in Montreal, the SAAQ, appears to be located in an abandonned K-Mart building. The strip mall attached to it reminds me of the Westwood Mall just across the train tracks from where I grew up. This morning, there was a crowd of people outside the door and a surly guard refusing to let people line up any earlier than their alloted time slot.

This morning was my second visit, having yesterday brought Angie's passport rather than my own. The requirements for getting a Quebec drivers license are a bit unusual: Proof of citizenship (Passport or Birth Certificate), provincial health card of province of origin, drives license of province of original, proof of residence in Quebec. The proof of residence is interesting. A visa bill is NOT good enough, despite what the people on the phone tell you. The reason is that the bank will send you letters wherever you tell them to. Instead, they need to see a visa bill with transactions in Quebec, and sent to an address in Quebec. Or an Hydro Quebec or Bell bill. Or something that shows that's you're sticking around. Your appartment lease isn't good enough. I was able to get through this morning because my Visa bill happens to show the U-haul rental, several stops for gas on the 401 and then a few transactions in Montreal. Pretty clear that we moved.

Given the problems that we had yesterday, we asked the lady to review some of Angie's documents so that we could know whether to make an appointment for her or not. She immediately got hostile and said that she had to make an appointment. Pretty stupid considering that the appointment I booked had to be two weeks in advance, and they told us that a visa bill was fine. We finally managed to describe to her what we had (after having pissed away more time than a glace at a sheet of paper would have taken) and she said no, a letter from the hydro company confirming that you have an account is NOT good enough. You have to have an actual bill.

Julie Lavoie had told me at one point that the Province of Quebec doesn't actually want you to move here. I can see a bit what she means. These problems aren't insurmountable, but I see I'm going to have to go back to my old habits of documenting names and employee info for each person I talk to and recording it in a paper tail.

I did get my drivers license, though. I now have a proud slip of paper, and will receive my photo ID in the mail soonish. Angie doesn't, but this will pass soon. We're looking at communauto but I suspect we'll need local licenses first.