Canadian Immigrant Finds a Welcoming Home in Fort Wayne

Vivianne Belanger had a comfortable upper-middle-class upbringing in Montreal, became an accomplished flute player, and earned a bachelor’s degree in musical performance at McGill. After graduating in 2008, she came to the United States to continue her studies at DePaul University with the principal flautist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “I’d met him at a festival, and loved the way he played,” Belanger explains. “I knew I wanted to study with him.”

Getting a student visa was straightforward, and Belanger spent the next four years training in Chicago before returning to Quebec to play for a local orchestra. Soon after, though, she won a position with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. “It was a great opportunity,” she says. “But I’d sold everything I couldn’t fit into my car when I moved back to Canada, so I had to start over!”

Belanger’s colleagues smoothed the transition by offering her a place to stay and helping her with furniture for her apartment. But at the time, getting a work visa wasn’t easy. Several lawyers warned Belanger there was no realistic path for her to come and work in the United States. “There weren’t many resources in Fort Wayne to help me figure it out,” she says.

In the end, an expensive New York lawyer helped Belanger obtain an O-1 visa, for people with extraordinary abilities which she recently upgraded to a green card. “It’s been very complicated and expensive,” she says. “Still, I was extremely lucky—I know the culture, and I speak fluent English, and my family was able to support me financially when needed, so I had a much easier time than some immigrants do.”

Belanger is still playing second flute for the Fort Wayne orchestra, and teaches flute at Purdue University Fort Wayne. She and her husband, a U.S. citizen, have three young children. “Fort Wayne is a great place to raise kids,” Belanger says. “It’s a small community, so as an immigrant you don’t necessarily get all the resources you might in a big city—but it’s very welcoming, and I’m so grateful to have been able to settle down here.”