Crossing the border leaving and entering the United States is no slam dunk these days, or so news reports would have you believe. I take the tales of people thrown into detention for minor immigration offenses seriously. I was born in the United States over seventy years ago but we’re now all living in Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s world where law enforcement, meted out by agents hiding behind masks, feels increasingly arbitrary.
That sense of foreboding wasn’t what prompted me to spend July 4th in Canada. I wasn’t making a political statement, not that I’d object if it appeared that way. Our travel plans were mostly the luck of the calendar. We were visiting friends in Maine and decided to keep going, to Grand Manan, an island ninety minutes off the mainland in New Brunswick.
That was my wife’s idea. She planned the trip. If things suddenly went south when we tried to cross the border back into the United States I could always point the finger at her. Grand Manan was where Newton Bowles, our upstairs neighbor for many years, spent his summers. Newton, who passed away in 2012, was a thoroughly impressive human being. Born in China to Canadian missionaries, he worked for the UN and UNICEF, becoming worldwide program director. He was also an accomplished professional painter. One of his watercolors hangs in our bedroom, evoking the sea surrounding Grand Manan in a few confident brushstrokes. There was every reason to believe that a man of such taste and accomplishment also knew how to pick his summer resorts.
I wasn’t especially concerned about crossing the border into Canada; though I’d heard that Canadians have understandably soured on their neighbors to the south. The sole bumper sticker on our cars identifies me as a supporter of a program to assist amphibians in getting to the other side of the road during their spring mating migration. Caring for one’s fellow creatures seems a rather Canadian thing to do.
There was no line at the border and after a few questions about where we were headed and what we were transporting — I opted for radical transparency and revealed the presence of a partially consumed bottle of Smirnoff and a couple of cans of All Day IPA — the customs officer ushered us into Canada.
Grand Manan is sort of as I imagine Maine was fifty or seventy-five years ago. We took dazzling walks along soaring cliffs overlooking the sea without running into another person. My favorite moments may have been sitting on a bench below the lighthouse on the island’s northern point at sunset, our only companions several seals and a dolphin grazing along the ocean’s placid surface.
I don’t know whether it’s indicative of anything but there were no barriers on those cliffs, not a single rope, separating us from the hereafter. Perhaps Canadians assume a degree of common sense spread evenly among its citizenry; either that or the legal barriers against suing because of one’s own stupidity are higher than in the United States.
Grand Manan, with a population of 2,600, doesn’t have much of a restaurant scene, or any restaurant scene at all. I was surprised to discover that while Maine raises the consumption of lobster to something of a fetish — and one where I consider myself a proud fetishist — it wasn’t easy finding the crustacean on Grand Manan. Why, I’m not sure.
If the island is identified with any food source it’s dulse, a nutritious seaweed sold in the island’s supermarket and from people’s front porches. We purchased a couple of bags for our more culinarily adventurous children but didn’t sample it ourselves.
My spouse spent some of her time when not reading — our bungalow came with an excellent library — searching for the cabins of Mr. Bowles and also of the author Willa Cather who spent summers on Grand Manan starting in the 1920’s. Her home was on the same cove where we were staying. Deb claims to have found both but I remain skeptical.
Canadians take pride in their ferry system — whether those crossing the Bay of Fundy or the archipelago of islands off Vancouver in British Columbia. They’re spic and span, and come with decent cafeteria style restaurants and gift shops. Both of our passports were in the pocket of my cargo shorts; I know because at some point I examined them, comparing my wife’s stamps to mine. It’s one of those activities that I occasionally indulge when no other reading material is available.
So it came as a shock after the boat docked on the mainland and we stopped at a nearby convenience store to stock up on Cadbury chocolate and traditional Canadian butter tarts to discover that my passport was gone. I was already fearing uncertainty crossing back into the United States but how was I going to convince the customs agent to let me back into the country without proper documentation? I had a New York State driver’s license, but not an enhanced one. I was also carrying a Global Entry card but had no idea whether that would suffice.
We rushed back to the boat with minutes to spare before it began its return voyage to Grand Manan. I ran or rather speed limped back on board — a case of chronic achilles tendonitis makes running painful — and desperately searched high and low for the passport without success. I was contemplating the possibility of becoming Canadian (not the worst of all possible worlds) when I returned to our car and discovered the document on the floor of the back seat. It had apparently slipped out of my pocket.
That was a relief but after I finished hyperventilating I realized that perhaps even greater obstacles awaited at the border. Feel free to call my alarmist — I’m not alarmist, I’m a catastrophist — but I’d already scrubbed my phone of any incriminating messages. And by incriminating I mean any texts that cast doubt on the perfect genius of our president.
The customs agent didn’t ask for the phone to check my social media but he did check our trunk where he discovered a lemon and a banana. He’d asked whether we were carrying agricultural products and I’d foolishly neglected to mention the contraband. When I think of agricultural products my mind gravitates to plants or live poultry; not a breakfast banana or the fruit for my nightly vodka tonic. My wife belatedly revealed the seaweed. The customs officer gave us a stern warning but let us pass. He must have decided that a couple of Caucasian baby boomers didn’t meet the definition of an invasion.
Ralph Gardner Junior is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found in the Berkshire Eagle and on Substack.
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