Thank you for inviting me here today.
My name is Sheila Walshe. I'm a war baby from World War II. I was born in 1943, so I precede you, young lady, and the Citizenship Act. My parents met in 1941, married in 1942, and I was born in 1943.
In 1946 I was brought over to Canada to be repatriated at the end of the war with my darling dad. I had a lovely ordinary childhood until I was nearly nine in 1952, when dad was working away from home and mom took me away, supposedly on holiday. She had always been homesick for her parents in England. She took me back there with no intention of coming back and told me dad was dead. I had a hell of a life in England. It was a very sad time.
I am not a Canadian bit of dirt. Whatever they called me, I'm not. I'm Canadian, but I'm not a bit of dirt. I met Jim when I was 16, my husband. I was married at 17—that's a long time ago—and we had our family. In 1990 I found out my dad was still alive and that my mom had lied to me for 39 years. I contacted him and said it's a long time. His life obviously had gone on. I didn't really expect to hear back from him, but I needed him to know that I had never forgotten my father. Then I had an answer to my letter. He said it was the hardest letter he had ever written. He didn't know where we'd gone. After years he had found out that we had been taken to my grandparents. He managed to contact them and they said leave them alone, leave her alone. He didn't know what else to do so he had to get on with his life.
I came over in 1991 with my husband and met my dad again and the sun came out. If you could imagine having all of the happy birthdays and Christmases of your life put together it doesn't come near what I felt when I met my dad again. I went back to England with Jim and I immediately applied for my previous citizenship. There was nothing else I wanted in the world than to bring my little family to Canada, my Canada. I had this letter. I sent everything—they sent the forms—fees, photos, proof of dad's birth, and everything. Obviously you know what I had to send.
Then I had a letter in 1992 and I thought that was it and I could come over and work because I'm an RN. We all need nurses in Canada. It said I was a Canadian up until I was 24 and I didn't sign some bit of paper or reaffirm so I had automatically lost my Canadian citizenship. That was 1992. I have been trying ever since. Up until coming in contact with Don Chapman about three and a half years ago, I was banging my head on a brick wall. I was sending letters to anybody, any names I could find with the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, saying please help me. They said you just have to go to Canada and live there for a year and then apply.
At that time I wasn't 21 any more. I was actually too old to go the long way around and get sponsored. In England they told me I couldn't immigrate to Canada because it's my country and you can't immigrate to your own country, which left me between a rock and a hard place. I still kept trying. I came over. We bought a mobile in the Okanagan Valley, and I came over to see my dad and my step-mom, and my half brother and sisters. They're lovely. They're the same age roughly as my own children. But I'm so proud to be a member of their family. They've made me a member of the family and not an outcast.
I'm not reading from this any more. I've gone way off what I've tried to practice or write out. I gave testimony before the 2005 committee.
On May 5 I thought it was signed. I was okay, I was me again, I was a human being, I existed, I was a Canadian. So I went straight down to CIC in Kelowna and I got the right forms to get proof of my citizenship. I sent everything off again. It was on May 6 that I sent it off, all notarized papers. On May 17, I had—