It's only been 46 years...

As I work my two beloved jobs right through the summer (no posh Finnish six-week vacation for this freelancer with no job waiting in TO), Mr. O has been crossing things off a long list. One of these has been The Documents, which first had to be translated (traded a friend's services for our big off-white shag wool rug), and then notarized, legalized, etc. at three or four different offices, which is not only a big pain in the ass, but also expensive. According to Mr. O, the Notary Public in Finland charges €6 per document, then the Foreign Ministry of Finland charges €20 per document, and then the Canadian Embassy (God bless 'em) charges $50, which is about €35 per document. For five documents (the bare minimum) the grand total is 305 euros, or 436.67 CAD. This turned out to be the reason behind the recent muttering and one ranting email...and I had to admit it seemed a bit exorbitant.

Most countries avoid this kind of extortionist Brazilian bureaucracy (the film, not the country) with a fancy little thing called the Hague Convention of 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents. (If that kind of thing makes you hot you can read the full text.) Pretty much everybody and their mother, certainly the rest of the formerly-known-as-the Commonwealth, has signed this puppy, like, before I was born. But not my motherland. Nope, apparently the provinces have their own special ways of notarizing things (everybody gets their own stamp) and the federal government body known as DFAIT has been slaving tirelessly for the past 46 years to push it through on the federal level. If that's the kind of thing that gets you hot, you can read the weird PDF.

So let's recap:

2 certificates for getting an Ontario driver's licence
+1 spotless criminal record
+2 population data records
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Nearly the same price as our second-hand, mint condition, queen-sized Sealy Posturepedic Sweet Escape Eurotop (Health Plus) mattress, giftwrapped in an allergen/spill protection cover and purchased in advance today from a nice girl on Craigslist. And I'll have that mattress for at least 46 years.