Oh! Canada?

We were sitting in Burlington VT and we got a load offer picking up in Montreal, delivering to Wilmington, OH. Now the pay per mile was low but this is an area that not much freight moves out of, the temperature that morning hit eightteen below zero, it was the middle of the afternoon on a friday and the clock was ticking. The last thing we wanted was to get stuck in this icebox for the weekend, and Ohio would be a good place to start on monday. So we took it.

Well the first problem we noted was when we got the info, there was a note about not sending tractor-trailors to this address, which meant it was going to be a tight fit for our truck, even though it is just a straight truck. Then we saw it was in downtown Montreal. Then the directions were off and we had trouble locating the address. Long story short, we had to squeeze the truck down an alley to get near the dock, and it was too tight to back up to the dock, so we had to load 43 boxes at 50 pounds each in subzero temps. We finally got on our way but missed a turn and had to work to get back on track. But we did, which led up to the border crossing, which we always are nervous about because, well, a lot of the border guards are assholes. And that leads me to the topic of this blog.

Our first crossing into Canada occured when we were still newbies. Donna was driving, I was in the sleeper. The agent took our paperwork (which we send in to a broker when we make the pickup and the broker clears the freight through customs for us), asked questions like where she was from, how long would we be staying in Canada, do we have any weapons on board, etc, and then asked if there was anyone else in the truck. Donna said, "Just my husband who is asleep in the back.) The guard snapped, "Get him up here!" So I got into the front and he barked, "You're supposed to be up front! You could have been a terrorist!" I just kind of gave an apologetic smile. He glared at me and snarled, "You see I'm not laughing!" Well, we had heard these guys don't have a sense of humor. I remember a story from Sports Illustrated about a ballplayer who when asked by a Canadian customs agent if he had anything to declare stated, "I'm proud to be an American!" He was promptly detained for questioning. Anyway, we made it through and made our delivery.

Early on, we applied for and recieved something called FAST cards, which is another type of ID cards that have our pictures on them and says we have been approved by both the US and Canadian government for delivering freight across the border. We always give those cards as ID with our shipping paperwork and that has never been a problem....except once. We were crossing into Canada and I was driving. I usually have Donna drive in, because most guards are male, and Donna is pretty and, well...you get the picture. (Yeah, its sexist. Sue me.) Anyway, this guard is a matronly heavy set woman who looks at our FAST cards and says something about needing photo ID. I made the mistake of questioning her, saying we always have used the FAST cards with no problems. She said something about this not being a FAST approved load and then stated very matter-of-factly, "I am making my SECOND request for photo ID." Well, I didn't think there was going to be a third request that didn't involve multiple guards and physical violence so we dug out our passports and she let us on through.

The US Customs agents are the worst however. The best of them usually are just robotic, and the others have attitudes that make you think they are sitting there all day with a raging case of hemmorhoids, just waiting for someone to give them an excuse to go off. Which I did once. Border crossing policy and procedures change quite often since 9/11 and one of the changes was something called an ACE Manifest. Which all it was, and still is, is a piece of paper with the FedEx Custom Critical load number, driver's name and truck license plate number on it. Thats it. Nothing else. Originally we able to just hand write this info down on any piece of paper and give that to the US Customs guard. Until.....I was driving (first mistake) and gave the paper to a guard crossing into the US at Buffalo. He looked at it like I had given him used toilet paper, practically threw it back at me and starting giving me attitude. I stated our dispatchers told us that a handwritten ACE form was OK. He snapped some more and then ordered me to go to the Xray machine and then go inside the customs building. I was flabbergasted by this point, and pulled forward, then realized I didn't see where the Xray machine was. So I pulled over to the customs building, and started to open the door to get out of the truck to go into customs. (This is starting to sound like Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" draft induction story) I got the truck door open about an inch when there stood another customs guard pushing my door closed with his Official US Customs Flashlight with one hand with his other placed on his US Customs Official 9mm Pistol and snarling, "YOU WERE TOLD TO GO TO XRAY!" I explained I didn't see the Xray. Turns out I had already passed it, so the customs guard jumped into his Offficial US Customs Minivan and led us in making a U-turn to lead us to the now infamous Official US Customs Xray Area, where we had to all exit the truck while it was scanned for nuclear and biological or any weapons of mass distruction. We then were told we didn't have any nuclear or biological weapons or any contraband of any type on our truck, so now we had to go into the Customs office where they would tell us when we could cross with our EMPTY truck. Yes, our truck had no freight in it at all. We were crossing empty to get back to the land of our birth, and we still had to have a piece of paper saying our name, load number (when empty you use the number you crossed in with) and truck license plate number. And this is only when crossing from Canada into the US. Empty or loaded. I guess thats what galls me the most, being treated like a criminal by my own country. At border crossings, The US Constitution is ignored. You are guilty until proven innocent.

We have had positive experiences in Canada however. The people there are generally very friendly. We had a delivery 250 miles north of Toronto going to a town called Timmons, Ontario. It is famous for being the hometown of Shania Twain, as the billboard going into town proudly proclaimed. I stopped to get a picture of it. Donna just rolled her eyes. Obviously on that trip we were deep into Canada. We stopped at a remote rest area that had a large sign in it that one side stated "All water on this side of the sign flows into the Atlantic Ocean" I was shocked when I went around to the other side which proclaimed, "All water on this side of the sign flows into the ARCTIC Ocean" (Caps mine). We also had a great day on a beach in Toronto on Lake Ontario. We have wondered about living next to water that is too cold to swim in, even in July. Seems frustrating to a Southerner.

Early on, all our pick ups and deliveries in Canada were in Ontario, which, aside from the border crossings and the currency, is not much different from being in
the US. However, then we had to go into Quebec. THEN you know you are in a foriegn country. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is in French. And often you get to a pick up or delivery and no one there speaks any functional english at all. Which then you get to do a primitive version of sign language and piecing together my extremely limited french vocabulary with their similarly limited english. It has always worked, eventually. I did enjoy a rare occasion when I had to go into the main office of a business instead of the docks. A pretty woman behind the receptionists desk looked up at me and said liltingly, "Bon Jour!" Ahh, the French. I am remembering two vastly different movies. In "My Fair Lady" Professor Higgins is berating all countries for not teaching their children their own languages. About the French he states "the french don't care what you say, just as long as you pronounce it properly". In the second Matrix movie, the french bad guy soliliquies on the beauty of cursing in french. Quebec is doggedly determined to remain French; back in the sixties or seventies there was a secessionist movement, some bombings occurred and some people actually were jailed. One person told us that in Quebec the schools are highly restrictive about teaching english.

Another thing we have noticed is that Canadians don't shut their blinds at night. We were driving through rural Canada one night and I noted it to Donna. At first, she thought I was crazy. Then we both got to looking, and it was true. Large windows, with no blinds pulled and we could see whatever they were doing in the house. Shortly after noticing this, we watched "Bowling for Columbine" in which Micheal Moore is noting that while Canadians have guns like us, they don't shoot each other nearly as often as we do. (He opined that he thought that it was that our media, with its "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality has generated a fear culture among Americans. Which I thought was unusual; a liberal blaming the media for something.) Anyway, it came out also that Canandians don't lock their doors. And he went door to door just opening doors to people's houses without knocking and then interviewing them. So I wonder if the blinds thing is related to the unlocked doors. No secrets, no fear.

Anyway, thats my take on Canada. We will be posting pix on Facebook of our Canadian adventures soon.

This past week, we started in Atlanta, delivered a load of Guitar Hero III to Brownsville, TX, moved up to Houston and caught a load going to eastern Indiana, jumped to western Ohio to pick up a load going to Vermont, from there a load of videos in Montreal going back to Ohio, and here we are just south of Cincinnati in Kentucky, ready for the next week to start.

"The road goes on forever, and the party never ends....."
Robert Earl Keen