My truck was tossed for eight hours by Canadian Customs at Beaver Creek. They pulled everything out of our camper shell, rifled through everything...even ruffled through all the pages of all our books and undid our toothpaste!
They threw everything on the muddy ground, in the middle of a driving rainstorm.
It was the most unpleasant crossing experience I’ve ever had.
I asked him why they were being so destructive, he kept saying we were bringing drugs into Canada.
We had transferred from the USFS at the Kenai Lake Work Center, Seward Ranger District, where we built and maintained trails in the Chuchach, to Yellowstone NP. We looked like scruffy, grungy rednecks, but neither one of us had ever touched drugs in our life.
Finally, at the end of eight hours he told us that we can leave. I looked at all our stuff thrown all around our truck and camper shell, all over the muddy ground, while they had waved through dozens of other vehicles, and asked him “NOW do you believe us?!”
He said “NO, I’m positive that if I called down and got some dogs up here, that we would find where you hide them, in an axle, or tires, or whoever.”
I said “DO IT!! I challenge you, DO IT!” as I was so angry and upset with him.
He said “No, I’m tired, my shift is over, now get out of here.”
This was during the D2 land seizures by Jimmy Carter way back in the ‘70’s, so a long, long time ago, but I’ll never forget being treated so rudely.
I moved after Yellowstone to North Idaho where I worked construction/BLM in the summers and security in the winters for Schweitzer and Watson Security, and traveled to Canada countless times after that, and they were always polite!
To this day I miss Alaska, Montana and North Idaho!
bttt
When we crossed over around Sweetgrass, Montana, in ‘71, they destroyed everything in our pathetic little Hornet. We were 21 so they must’ve figured “drugs”. We had just finished seminary and wouldn’t have known a drug if it bit us in the ass.