The Man With Two Degrees and a Shovel

The morning Chidi shovelled snow for the first time, he laughed.

Not because it was funny. But because he kept thinking of his over a decade of work experience. Fourteen years of managing drainage systems, supervising site crews, presenting to government ministers, signing off on infrastructure budgets worth hundreds of millions of naira. And here he was, in a parking lot in Mississauga at six in the morning, in a coat that was not warm enough, clearing a path for cars that belonged to people who were still asleep.

He laughed because crying would have taken too long.

He arrived in October 2019 with Chiamaka and their two-year-old son, landing papers in hand, the result of two years of meticulous Express Entry preparation under the Federal Skilled Worker stream. His CRS score was strong just like his professional profile. A master's degree from the University of Lagos. Fourteen years of civil engineering experience across Lagos State infrastructure projects. English proficiency that needed no proof beyond a conversation. The system had looked at his profile and made a clear determination that they wanted him.

What the system did not tell him was what would happen after he landed.

He knew the accreditation process existed because he had done the research. What he had not absorbed, could not have absorbed, was what it would feel like to be an engineer with over a decade experience behind him who could not legally sign a drawing. To sit across from a hiring manager who looked at his résumé and said, your experience is impressive, but without a P.Eng designation we cannot move you forward, and to smile and say he understood, and then walk to his car and sit there. He had his many days of silent tears, and wondering if he made the right decision coming to Canada.

He took what was available. Warehouse shifts first, sorting packages at a facility near the airport at hours that made no sense to his body. Then delivery driving. Then a facilities technician role at a property management company in Brampton that managed commercial buildings, which was at least adjacent to the world he had come from. He understood structures. He understood what made buildings work and what made them fail. His manager noticed this within the first three months and stopped explaining things to him the way you explain things to someone who does not understand them.

Chiamaka did not complain. That was the part that undid him sometimes. She had left her job at a Lagos bank, rebuilt herself into a customer service role at a telecom company in Mississauga, and she woke up every morning and moved through her day with a quiet determination that he found both inspiring and crushing, because he knew what she had given up to be standing in this life with him. She believed him the first time he said it would get better. By the third year she had stopped asking for timelines, and he was not sure whether that meant she trusted him or whether she had simply decided to live without the comfort of knowing.

What nobody tells you about accreditation is that it is not just an exam. It is a years-long argument you make to a regulatory body that already has enough engineers, that the ones they have are fine, that the burden of proof sits entirely with you. The exams were expensive. The bridging programs had waitlists. The language around recognition was always careful, always professional, and always placed the obstacle just far enough away that it felt almost reachable.

He passed his first Professional Engineers Ontario exam on a Wednesday afternoon in 2022. He was sitting in his car in the exam centre parking lot, phone in hand, when the result came through. He did not shout. He did not call Chiamaka immediately. He sat there for a while in the quiet of the car and felt something move through him that he did not have a clean word for. It was not joy exactly. It was the feeling of something finally clicking into place after years of forcing the wrong fit.

He called Chiamaka. She picked up on the second ring. He said: I passed. She said nothing for three seconds. Then she said: I know you would. And he could hear in her voice that she had always known, even in the years she stopped asking about timelines, she had always known.

His full Professional Engineer designation came through in 2023. He is licensed in the province of Ontario. He joined a mid-sized infrastructure consultancy in Mississauga. His business cards say P.Eng after his name. He has told no one in that office about the parking lot mornings. He does not need to. That chapter closed.

He became a Canadian citizen in 2024, in a hall in Mississauga with thirty-seven people from nineteen countries who raised their right hands together on a Tuesday afternoon. He thought about the parking lot. He thought about Chiamaka at the airport, their son asleep across her lap, both of them crossing something they could not fully name.

He still knows how to shovel snow. He just does not have to anymore.