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Add a little personality to government-issued ID

The picture on my driver's licence is not the loveliest ever snapped. I look, well, either unhappy or mad. One would think I've just been laid off or told my workplace has been moved to the Arctic. The passport shot is just the same.

The picture on my driver's licence is not the loveliest ever snapped. I look, well, either unhappy or mad. One would think I've just been laid off or told my workplace has been moved to the Arctic.

The passport shot is just the same. I do not look happy. I do not even look flat. I look like someone who is about to break into your house, snatch the chicken out of your slow cooker and shoo your indoor cat out into the rain.

Not that I'm being vain. After all, it isn't as though I'm thinking about duplicating my government-issued photos and enclosing them in my Christmas cards.

I just don't know why they can't be, well, a tad more flattering.

Let's just say - they ain't.

Whenever I go to have a government-issued photo taken, the person behind the counter always has the same instructions. Glasses off, he or she will say. Don't smile. Don't go to your happy place. In fact, don't exhibit expression of any kind.

What they are really saying is this: "Listen, sweetheart, we want you to look like you might look in a police line-up. Let's have fun with this! Let's see how much we can make you look like you don't look at all!"

This, I don't get. Seems to me the folks at the Motor Vehicle Branch or Passport Canada should be more inclined to, well, capture a bit of personality, which, like most people, is something I happen to possess.

If they really wanted to take a shot of me that reflects who I am, they might not only ask me to smile and wear my glasses; they might also ask me to bring a prop that speaks to my passions. An apron, say. A laptop. A badminton racket. Perhaps a map of France, which is a country I'd very much like to visit sometime before my current passport expires.

Seems to me this would also be useful to the authorities, were they ever inclined to stop me for speeding. (Something, I must point out, that I've never been guilty of.)

"Can I see your driver's licence, ma'am?" the officer would inquire.

The officer would inform me that I'd been clocked travelling 10 kilometres above the speed limit, then glance at my licence, and confirm who I am.

"OK," he or she would say. "I see you live in Delta, and that you have a Class 5 licence. Also see that you have a special fondness for - now, is that badminton?"

The point, of course, is that people with passports or driver's licences might then become, well, a tad more like people, and a lot less like automatons.

Imagine: a driver's licence would not only say that I know the speed limit in a school zone and the procedure at a four-way stop.

It might also say that I like to visit a happy place - and that my happy place is France.