Nomad No More

What About the BSF186 Form?

Series preamble: To settle into a city you just lease an apartment and change your driver’s license, right?  Well, it is not so simple if a) you’re a nomad with no permanent address; b) your most recent permanent address was in a different country; and c) there’s a pandemic.  Here are some of my amusing obstacles to becoming a documented member of structured society again.

Third up – getting my stored furniture

I decided that if I was ‘settling in’, then I’d be happiest with my favourite stuff.  Thus started the effort to get it from a storage unit in San Francisco, across 2,800 miles, over an international border, to my new place – during a pandemic.  Just hire a moving company right?  Well…

  • Moving companies want to see the items before committing to a quote.
    • The items are packed up and in an ‘appointment only’ storage warehouse.
    • One company offers to work from an inventory – they win the gig.
  • The border between Canada and the USA is closed because of the pandemic.
    • Moving vans had recently been deemed essential services, and were being let through.
  • There aren’t many vans going between San Francisco and Ottawa these days.
    • They set the window for delivery as 30 days.
  • The process of moving personal items into Canada, includes filling out a form (there’s always a form!) when you enter the country.
    • When I entered the country, it was entirely to leave Thailand during a global health crisis.  I was a nomad, with no plans for ‘moving’ here.  So – I did not fill out a BSF186 form when I landed bleary-eyed in Vancouver back in March.
  • The process also involves my meeting the van driver at the Canada Border Services Agency.
    • Thankfully this didn’t mean going to the actual border, but a 20 minute Uber ride to the Ottawa airport.
  • The reason to meet at CBSA is so that I could connect the items in the van with the Goods to Follow on the BSF186 form.
    • When I was hiring the moving company, I was able to get a CBSA agent on the phone – for a conversation – and after I asked if I could “catch up and submit it”, she advised me that when the day came to meet the driver, to simply ask the agent for an exception given the current, highly unusual circumstances.
    • I was pretty sure it would be okay…..but I was also very relieved when the agent just nodded as I immediately said he wouldn’t find the form in his system because….Thailand…nomad…pandemic…sorry?

A collection of wonderful friends loaned me the basics to get the empty apartment to the level of a functioning AirBnB.  After the moving company picked up the stuff from the storage unit, it went into their warehouse, then finally got onto a van aimed for Ottawa, but was then diverted to Palm Springs, before eventually making it out me – in 33 days.