mrokern wrote: And the ending to that story??? You don't get to leave us hanging!
Sorry. That is bad form, isn't it? Here's the good stuff.
After five hours they returned everything they'd seized, including my shoes which I assume were questioned in a separate room. They didn't stamp my passport, and firmly requested that I sign a statement such that I wanted to "voluntarily withdraw my application to enter Canada and depart from the country without delay". They told me that they were letting me go, and laid it on pretty thick that they were kind of doing me a real solid. For anyone not comfortable making assumptions, a good question to ask a cop friend would be: in his professional opinion, out of every ten slam dunk cases of weapons trafficking encountered by the US or Canadian border services, about how many do they decide to just cut loose and wish them the best, on average?
Then I took the Drive of Shame back across the bridge to the American side where I, an American, had no Canadian entrance stamp but rather my voluntary withdrawal that I used to explain how and why they wouldn't sign my permission slip. Of course, the Canadians had called across the way and informed CBP about me, so they were waiting, and I got the pleasure of going through the same dance with the Americans, although our guys managed to do it all in less than an hour, including their own deep-tissue analysis of my car. Between the CBSA and the CBP, well, I am amazed at how much stuff was actually in my console and glove box. There was an ocean of unfolded paper when I was finally on my way. Unfortunately, I have to come clean about the fact that, as soft and ridiculous as the CBSA were, I definitely wasn't too cool for school quite the way I wish I'd been in the face of all their bullshit. I kept it together, but there was a part me shaking in my boots, or lack thereof, and I'm sure it was obvious even to those clowns. On my side of the scoreboard, however, I did land at least one haymaker.
Between interviews they told me about how bad gun crime is in Canada, and how most of the guns come from the United States, and the unbelievable violence, especially in Winnipeg, and especially in Vancouver, and especially in all their cities, and especially how it's people just like me driving them across the border from the United States. When I suggested that it sounds like their tight gun control, the stuff of legend in Minnesota, has proven ineffective in lowering crime, they exasperatedly pointed out how it obviously, absolutely works, but for the US fucking it all up (kind of makes you think of an unmasked Scooby Doo villain, "...if weren't for you meddling kids!" doesn't it?).
They were quick to point out the dire crime stats in all their cities, over and over. And at one such juncture, captured and bound, like the Duke Leto tonguing a tooth, waiting for his moment, I let it out:
"God. If I knew your country was such a fucking shit hole, I wouldn't have come." It really struck bone. I saw it. And I saw that they knew I saw it. And it felt fucking great.
kecker wrote: Moral of the Story : Don't go to Canada....just breathing the air makes you stupid.
Yep. I know. I kept running into a lot of Serves You Right while I was thinking about the whole thing on the drive back.
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