What you say is true-I know, because for many people they are just fine if the politics is left aside. LOL, I don’t know when I will be going up to Canada again-last time I went up, I remember thinking that I won’t be going back.
You will probably laugh at this...it is long, so don’t read it if you don’t want to. This is my story of that little trip...which I wrote down to document shortly after it happened, since I have found there are a lot of things that I have forgotten in my life, and I only rediscover them by a chance conversation with my wife or a friend. This is long, but as I said, I write them down for myself, and occasionally share them with others. This is long, but...these are only electrons and bandwidth which are cheap!
And I tell all this in the knowledge that at that time, tensions between the USA and Canada were starting to go poorly, and I have been told that this process I went through may have been retaliatory for visitors from Canada to the USA. It surely seemed more than the activities of bored border officials at night.
To this day, I suspect my name was on some list, or at least I was profiled that way.
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I travelled up to Canada in the late Winter, just by myself, going on a road trip. I had vacation time and was going to lose it because I had so much of it, a nice “First World Problem”. But it was early in March, and my wife could not take any time off. So I just picked Prince Edward Island (PEI) out of a hat, so to speak, and thought it might be interesting scenery if nothing else.
I was a middle aged, white, short hair, glasses, wearing a military Navy veteran hat.
I had been driving for several hours straight (through northern Maine) when I hit the Canadian border. I figured I would stop and use a restroom at the border crossing facility, which was good, because at that point, I had to go pretty badly.
When I got there, they asked me questions at the window, then told me to pull my car to the side and come inside the building. When I came in (this was around 20:00) there was one person in this big room with benches, and when I asked him if I could use the men’s room, he said no. I had to wait.
I had to urinate pretty badly at this time, but felt like I had no option, so I paced back and forth, getting more and more uncomfortable.
After about five minutes, two border guards came out (male and female) and walked me to my car, asking me questions about whether I owned guns, etc. and then proceeded to take the entire car apart. Took my luggage out and completely emptied it, pulled out floor mats, emptied my glove compartment, emptied my trunk, searched the engine compartment, etc
The female Canadian border guard pulls my container of prescription pills out (to save space when going on short trips, I just take what I need and throw them all into one container) and asks what they were, so I explain each one, and she admonishes me and says “You shouldn’t put them together in one container” which starts to REALLY piss me off. They are pulling other stuff out saying “What’s this? Why do you have this?”, etc.
Then, they pull my secured gun safe from under my seat, and ask if I had a gun in it. I said no, I already told them about a half dozen times I did not have a gun with me. They asked me to open it, and for some reason, the key didn’t work. At this point, I had to go so badly I said “Look. Why don’t you get a crowbar and force it open, I really have to go to the men’s room!” But I did finally get the blamed thing open.
All this took about 30-45 minutes, and by the end of it, as anyone who has ever had to go that badly knows, you almost begin to salivate from the discomfort.
I was pretty pissed, and not from the “chipping of the porcelain” that took place when I got to go, either.
Anyway, I found a hotel, and stayed there the night. The next day, I drove up to Prince Edward Island, and it was pretty dead, as anyone who travels up there in the winter knows. But I was just driving around smoking my pipe, and listening to music. No agenda. No destination. I went to the “Ann of Green Gables” house, but it was closed. It was at this time, as I was leaving the closed grounds, that I got the notice that I my phone was being inactivated due to non-payment or something stupid like that. So I called ATT, and found that somehow, I had roaming on. I ended up only paying a few hundred dollars instead of a few thousand, and was glad for it.
I stopped that evening at a Chinese restaurant in PEI, and it was the most gawd-awful, worst Chinese food swill I ever had in my life, and I had ordered a lot of it because I was really hungry. I usually have a wide latitude for what I will eat and even enjoy for Chinese food, and this fell outside those boundaries. I ate very little of it, it was that bad.
I found out that to serve Chinese food up there, you have to have some kind of “special” license. Figures.
So I stayed overnight and drove back the next day. I was still steaming about the Border crossing the day before, and as I drove South past St. John, Nova Scotia, it was a beautiful, sunny day. There was absolutely NOBODY on this major (for them) highway, but I was tooling along, listening to music.
I passed a police car parked off the road, it was sitting there facing the road, and as I went by, I reflexively looked down at my speedometer, spot on the speed limit as I was using cruise control when driving through localities I am unfamiliar with. I absolutely do not speed in those areas.
I looked in my rearview mirror, and to my surprise, saw the police vehicle pull onto the road and accelerate after me, turning on its lights. Puzzled, I pulled over.
The police officer approached my car as I watched him in the side mirror, and asked to see my license and registration. I am past the point in my life where I ask “Why am I being stopped?” I figure at this point, I should just let them do their thing, and go passively along, so I handed them over. The Canadian police officer asked if I had any firearms in the vehicle, and when I gritted my teeth, I forced myself to answer politely in the negative.
He walked back to his vehicle.
As I sat there on the side of this wide, sunny, deserted highway waiting for them to run my plate or whatever it is they do up in Canada when they stop someone, I saw another police car come zooming up, lights on, and pull up behind the first police car.
Great. Now I have two police cars behind me, as I sat on the side of this deserted highway.
The female Canadian cop saw fit to walk up to my car, and asked if I had any weapons in the vehicle. Now, I am really starting to get pissed, but again, politely answered negatively. I almost blurted out “What the Hell is it with you people up here and guns?” but the vision of having a cavity search performed in a cold cell by an enthusiastic non-binary police officer compelled me to just shut my mouth.
The other cop eventually comes back and says “Do you know why we pulled you over?” I answered no, and he said “We got a call from a gas station about forty miles north of here who said you filled your car with gas but didn’t pay for it.”
I am sure I arched my eyebrows at this, as I am not the stealing type, and said “Yes, I filled up, but I definitely went inside and paid for it. Look, I would have no problem driving back and squaring it away with the gas station. There must be some kind of mistake, because I know I paid for it.”
The cop handed me back my documents, and suggested I go straight back and not take any detours. I agreed, and drove forty miles back.
When I parked and walked inside, the guy at the counter saw me, and his face exploded with all signs of happy familiar recognition, and before I could say anything, he said in a breathless torrent “I’m sorry-I told the police what happened, and that I was sure it was a complete misunderstanding and asked them to go easy on you...”
I turned out I had stopped for gas, filled up and gone inside to pay manually. The pump didn’t like my card for some reason, but told me I had to pay inside after I pumped, which I did. When I went inside, I grabbed a soda, and went up and paid for it with my credit card, which it happily accepted. However, I assumed I was paying for the gas as well, and as the guy behind the counter and I chatted amiably about the weather, non-Canadian credit car rejections, and the empty road, I did not get a receipt (Didn’t need one!) and jumped back in my car to drive away.
Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling any love from North of the Border. Don’t feel like going back up to Canada again. I probably never will.
You’re a nicer man than I am.
You didn’t travel to Canada, you travelled to commieland.
We in the west don’t even go that way much. Once you get past Manitoba going east all bets are off. There is no end to the lack of common sense and depravity. Of course all the people aren’t like that there, but most end up moving west that don’t like it. There’s some multigenerational families in those areas that are stubborn to leave though.
Canada customs has a long history of being absolutely useless and a bunch of kids who were picked on too much. I’ve had several run ins. I can go from Abbostford BC, cross at Sumas going south, there can be no traffic because it’s 0400 and the US border guards and I will have a 30 min BS about commies and Clinton’s idiocy etc. I’ll go get some diesel and what not, and be away for 20 mins and then come back. The Canadian guy will ask me the purpose of the trip and I say to breath the free air. He then gets mad and asks what I mean, and I say if you can’t figure it out you have no business sitting there. He then proceeds to get mad and tells me to get lost before he does something he’ll regret. That’s about how it usually goes when I deal with Canadian uniforms. I have zero respect. US side is different. I’ll sit in Denny’s in Washington, PA and sit down with 4 other uniforms state trooper types and we’ll BS about guns, the lack of common sense in Canada, the crappy healthcare in Canada etc.
I went to the Phillipines in 2011 because it was cheap and I was still an apprentice. I was only 2 years out of the military. My buddy was high up in the Air Canada world, so he is able to get me on for almost free, then when first class doesn’t fill me up, he just goes on his laptop and moves me up. When I came back in landed in Vancouver, I had to make a connecting flight to Edmonton, but my parents where there for a short visit in between flights. I didn’t buy anything and said as much to customs and they flagged me red. Next thing you know I’m pulled off into the side room for a detailed search. Some young girl trying to flex her authority. My mother had called and I said hang on mom, some female with a power trip is trying to harass a Canadian infantry vet. She didn’t like that and said if I felt harassed just wait for it. She started getting into harder and I asked if she joined just to harass men because she looks like a man hater. We’re going just about as well as you can expect when I hear my name yelled out from behind me. I turn and see a family friend of my parent’s who had previosly been RCMP and now it turns out he runs the customs in Vancouver as his retirement gig. He scolded the now very upset female and used his card to get me the fast way to my folks. If Mel hadn’t shown up right then, I’d probably still be there.
It’s not just Americans they harass. I’ve had several occasions though where I do interfere. If I’m driving down the highway and see Americans on the side of the road I’m always stopping. I usually do for a few reasons. If they’re in trouble, they are far from home with limited resources, or if a cop pulls over because someone forgot miles isn’t kms or things like that. I once brought an 82nd Airborne guy home to my land in Alberta because he was so lost. I took him home, built a fire outside, we roasted some hamburgers and hotdogs while I devised his plan with him. He couldn’t call his wife or something because of his phone, so he used mine as I had free US calling with my plan. He was leaving Alaska posting for Raleigh area or something like that. NC anyways, I forget exactly and that’s a long drive. Pulled out the old fashioned map and advised where to cross, I said Manitoba go south and then miss Chicago etc. It’s just an example of how we treat our southern brothers despite what media says. If you ever come back up, you make sure to come west, it’s night and day difference.