Almost Getting Deported Was The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me

I have a book out next month. It’s called Adrift. It’s about a trip on the worst tour bus ever, and it’s in space, and everything is on fire. I think it’s the best damn thing I’ve ever written, and I can’t wait for you to read it. But since we’ve still for a few weeks before it drops (although you can read the first chapter here) I want to tell you the story about how it came to be. Put simply, it would never have been written had I not almost been deported from Canada. If a single moment in a lawyer’s office in Vancouver had gone the other way, Adrift wouldn’t exist.

Since early 2014, I’ve lived in Canada. The land of moose and cheese curds and people who are very good at apologising. Compared to the situation in our bonkers neighbour to the south, the immigration system here is positively delightful. But that’s a relative term. Becoming a legal resident here is still a total shit-show of notarised documents, byzantine requirements, legal interventions and bribes to malleable border officials (note to any Canadian intelligence officers who are reading this: I did not actually bribe border officials).

I won’t bore you with the details of our application – even thinking about it, years later, is enough to cure any insomnia I may be having – but I will say that it was a time of suspense and horror and disbelief, and not the good kind. And we were doing it above-board, with a reasonable expectation that our application would be accepted. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for those claiming refugee status, or those without the wherewithal to afford lawyers. It must be like getting a testicle removed with needle-nose pliers.

Let’s zero in on a specific incident. It’s October 2015. My wife and I have just been on a trip to the UK, and we are making our way through immigration at YVR Airport in Vancouver – yes, that’s its actual name, because the Canadians are practical sorts. We are tired and jetlagged and quite keen to get back to our little apartment downtown. And that’s the point, you see: by this time, we’d been in Vancouver for nearly two years, quite legally. We’d paid taxes, rented a home, chosen a local bar, eaten poutine, learned to say eh and aboot correctly, essentially moved our life to the frozen North. We did not expect to be held up by a snotty immigration official telling us that we were in serious trouble.

There was an issue with our visas. Again, I won’t go into the details, because it is far too technical to lay it all out. But the upshot was, while we could stay as visitors, we could not work. And if we left the country again, it was a bit of a tossup as to whether we would be allowed back in, or be deported on the spot. This was more serious problem than you’d think: a week hence, we were due to go to Chicago, to visit my parents while they passed through the city. I hadn’t seen them in a while, and was very keen not to let the opportunity slip.

Which is how we found ourselves in the downtown offices of a dour immigration lawyer. He was South African, ferociously competent, possessed of the kind of grim countenance that suggested he was going to slam a giant book on the desk at any moment, look us in the eyes, and whisper “Doom.” We wanted to find out exactly what legal standing was, and whether we could actually risk leaving the country at this point. Put simply, it’s a lot easier to fight your immigration case if you’re actually in the country already. Do it from outside, and you can literally add years of decision time to an application. As much as I love the UK, and our friends there, I didn’t feel like cooling my heels for a decade or so while Justin Trudeau worked through his inbox.

Our lawyer hemmed and hawed, and eventually said that we could probably risk the Chicago trip. Yes, there was a chance that we’d run into a particularly sticky immigration official, as we had before, but there was also an equally good chance we would be let back in the country on the same understanding. This left us in a bit of a quandary: did we suck it up and stay in Canada, and miss not only a great trip but a chance to see my parents – a chance that might not come along again for a while? Or did we risk it? If you’re of a practical bent, then obviously the answer is the latter, but I’m not an especially practical bent, especially where family are concerned. When you have parents who live quite literally on the other side of the world from you, and who are not getting any younger, you take every chance to see them that you can get. My wife and I thought about it, then looked at each other, and more or less said in the same sentence: “We’re going.”

Not that it was as cut and dried as that. We knew it could go either way, and that our lives in Canada might come crashing down around our ears. When we arrived in Chicago – and you’ll note that Canada had no problem whatsoever with turning us loose on their closest neighbour – I was struck by a feeling of nameless dread. There were a few moments where I genuinely thought we’d made a very silly, very shortsighted error. That feeling persisted throughout the trip. It was, for the record, very pleasant, and it was a total blast to be able hang out in one of my favourite cities with two of my favourite parents. We even went to the United Center to take in the greatest basketball team ever to walk the planet – by which I mean, a total joke of a squad that couldn’t find a basketball net with GPS. But all the same, I couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that this was all going to come crashing down.

Towards the end of the trip, we hopped on a tourist boat for a jaunt around Lake Michigan. It was a crappy ship. A clunky rustbucket with slimy plastic seats and a PA system from the 1920s. Our guide seemed hopelessly, almost comically out of her depth, fumbling with her notes and talking in the most annoying singsong voice imaginable as we putted out into the harbour. And as we toured the lake, taking in the admittedly quite beautiful sight of Chicago in the late afternoon sunshine, an idle idea snuck into my brain.

That’s often how really fun books happen. A single germ of an idea takes root: a simple What If question, one that refuses to dislodge itself. The idea that came to me, as we made our way across the lake, was this: what if Chicago was hit by a nuclear attack, right now? What would happen to us? We’d see it all, and we were far enough from shore to survive it… But what then?

Well, said the logical part of my brain, you simply turn around and head for the opposite shore as quickly as your shitty little outboard engine could take you. Ah, replied the fun part of my brain. What if you couldn’t? What if you were…in space?

It sounds a little silly, writing it down like that. But I really can’t describe how much of a lightning bolt moment that was. By the time we got back to shore, I had the entire book written in my head: all of it, every character, every story beat. I knew exactly what I wanted to happen, and who would be doing it. I knew that there was no way, whichever part of the world we ended up in, that the story would not be written. It was too good. Too much fun to not explore.

Although I will confess that I wasn’t thinking of it much as we touched down in Vancouver. I was deeply worried. I really didn’t want to upend my entire life eighteen months after I’d just done it. It’s exhausting. The line was long, and filled with grumpy visitors – some of whom, presumably, were going through the same emotional rollercoaster we were. Eventually, we were called forward – and the official doing it looked like the most unhappy, unfulfilled bastard on the face of the planet. I almost felt like giving him a hug to cheer him up. If it wouldn’t have gotten me thrown in jail more or less immediately, I would have.

He looked at our passports. Looked at us. Look at our passports. Looked at us. Typed something in his computer. “I’ll let you in on visitor visas,” he said. “You can apply for leave to remain from inside the country.” I may not have the exact wording down, but that was the general idea. We nodded and said thank you and bid him good night, making our way to the baggage claim on shaky legs. Our secret high-five on the way was especially sweet – and the whiskey when we got home tasted glorious.

We’re still in Canada. And the idea I had on Lake Michigan is now a book. You gotta read this one, man. It cooks.