Sunday, November 30, 2008

Frustration

I took the bus to Saskatoon Friday after work. My van was there (sort of) and I needed to get the plates changed to Saskatchewan plates. My cousin had been working on it for me, doing the myriad of little things that needed to be done so that it would pass a safety inspection. Then my brother-in-law drove it up to PA to a friend of his to do the safety inspection. It passed once two new tires were bought and the wheels aligned. Then he drove it back to S'toon (which is why I said sort of) early Saturday morning.

Saturday morning I went to the closest insurance office to change my driver's license over to a Saskatchewan one and to get Saskatchewan plates on my van. Apparently you can only get Saskatchewan plates if you have a current Sask driver's license, so that was the first step. Except - I can't get a Sask driver's license without showing either a passport or a birth certificate in addition to a driver's license from another jurisdiction and two proofs of a current Sask address. I didn't have all that in Saskatoon, so I phoned down to Regina and asked them to put all that in an envelope on the bus. It arrived at 4:10 pm, so then I went back to an insurance office. I had to show... passport, birth certificate, two proofs of residence (power bill and phone bill) and marriage certificate! The latter was because I was previously registered in Saskatchewan (20 years ago) under a different last name and I had to prove that I had legally changed my name! Then they had to electronically contact the NWT licensing office to prove that my license hadn't been suspended there. That's where the hitch was. Couldn't do that! Therefore unless I could show a driver's abstract, (which I actually had in Regina) they couldn't give me my new Saskatchewan driver's license so I couldn't put plates on the van.

Now, my plates expire tonight, so I guess I have to get someone to drive me to an insurance office tomorrow to go through the whole rigamarole again. Am I frustrated? Just a little bit.

1 comment:

Lauralea said...

Hmm... Passport and birth certificate I can show, but if I need a power bill and a phone bill I could be in trouble when we go to get our Saskatchewan licenses changed over to Alberta ones. That's one of the downsides of living in a "Parsonage". The church pays the utilities, so we don't have any of those things. Besides THAT, we live out in the boonies, and our address is a Rural Route #... which has already proven difficult to navigate as far as opening bank accounts and getting library cards go.

Fun and games, eh. Hope you have better luck when you try again.