Well I'm done with Canada forever.

I despise tomatoes with a passion but if I were starving, I'd take whatever I could get. Tomatoes included. We bent over backwards for these people and they want more. Give an inch, take a mile.

 

CBC reported a while back that the average refugee family size was 6. If we give anything it should be contraception.

 

As far as I've heard, Canadian border services don't go that in depth unless they have a reason to do so. US customs officers do that because it's their job to do it on a regular basis.

I remember coming back into Canada from a trip to New Orleans over the last Christmas holiday. The lineup into the US was almost 80 cars long (multiple lanes) and they were going through all the people the same way. The Canadian side (we were Canadians returning)? All they asked was the typical eggs/dairy/foul and weapons/drugs/tobacco and we were waved on. It was a joke.

Granted, on our way into the US, I slipped my pocket knife past US customs (forgot I had it, realized I did well after they asked about sharp objects/weapons and they didn't notice the pocket clasp... but the security guard at Graceland in Memphis caught it at 30 feet away and asked me to drop it into my pocket).

 

Yeah, just don't lose your head over it.

 

So I was reading the thread and I saw that the Canadians are still randomly tossing trucks at the border, something about tomatoes, and the picture of rank's truck... Memory stimulated!

So back in the late 80's I was driving for an outfit out of Florida, MC Distributors.. Some may know the name.. First let me say that my OTR days were a lot different from most of yours now... We had big fast trucks pulling reefer trailers, mostly produce. Mine was looked a lot like rank's only blue. We used to haul tomatoes out of Naples FL up into the western provinces, mostly to Regina and Saskatoon. We crossed in North Dakota at an out of the way border crossing called North Portal most of the time. So I'm headed up there and just about 20 miles south of the border I run across one of our trucks headed south. So we get to talking (on the CB, remember those?) and he tells me the Canadians looked like they were having a bunch of extra guys on their side. Back then when you hauled tomatoes they were usually "gassed". So I pulled over and I got up in the trailer and put my personal "things and stuff" in a random box close to the middle. Got a hell of a headache crawling in there. I put a seal on the door and scrawled the seal number on the BOL like it was important. So off I go.. I get there and the Canadian guy asks me the usual questions about tobacco, alcohol, anything to declare... So I give the usual answer... He tells me to pull around to the side of the building. When I get there a much nastier Canadian comes out and asks me to get out and follow his buddy inside. Keep in mind it is winter and snow is about knee deep everywhere except the road and it's cold. So I follow the guy inside and he say's they want to search my truck.. There are windows so I watch them pull everything out of the truck, including the mattress! All out on the snow, clothes everything. They are going through it all. Well we didn't have laptops, or smartphones, or any phones back then. What I did have though was a bank bag, some of you remember them. A zip up bag usually used to make deposits for small businesses. I kept all my change in one, and various junk. So this Canadian looks in my bank bag and finds a grungy old scratched and corroded unspent .38 round... Just an old round that I had forgotten was even in there with all the corroded pennies.

So one of them comes inside and gets me, I am trotted out there and the guy starts interrogating me. His first words were of course "where's the gun eh"... I told him the gun was back in Florida at home. He of course doesn't believe me because everyone knows you don't keep one corroded old bullet unless you have a gun to shoot it with, right? I told him that I had been to Canada a lot of times and was aware of the gun laws. He told me he was "going to get a dog to sniff it out" and that I would remain there until they found the gun but if I confessed right then he would just keep the gun there at the border station and I could pick it up on my way back out...lol... I told him I didn't have no gun and he would have to do what he thought best, he didn't like that answer from an American. So I was taken back inside and they proceeded to search more, I thought they were going to start cutting the seats next! All this time I was nervous as hell, I figured after that it was only a matter of time before he went into the trailer. I'm sitting there and I watch two of them walk to the back of the trailer. They look at the seal and they call over the dude who had been grilling me. He goes back over to the little booth I was parked by and I see him looking at my paperwork. They had my BOL's, logbook, license all that stuff. Then he comes out and calls to the two guys in the back just as one of the ones in the tractor comes out with my magazine stash. (penthouse, hustler, etc) and shows it to the guy in charge. The guy in charge grabs all my paperwork, the magazines, and my bank bag and comes into the main building where I was. He comes over to me and starts chewing my butt out about knowing I probably had a gun somewhere and that if he found it I would go to a Canadian prison and be deported, then he produces the magazines and tells me it is illegal to bring pornographic material into Canada and that he could deport me for that but he was going to give me a break and that I had better get unloaded and proceed directly out of Canada. He tells me I can go so I walk out there and there is my "stuff" all over the snow, including my mattress, bedding, well everything.. I turn around and start to go back inside to ask them to put it back when one of the flunkies outside tells me I better just get my "stuff" and go. So I shove everything back in the tractor and haul butt. I wasn't mad all that much... I was actually laughing when I left... That seal had saved my butt... There was things in that box that would have extended my stay in Canada by about 10 years... After that I always stopped on the US side and got a locker. Yeah, there once was a time when some truck stops had pay lockers like the bus station... Some things never change... Don't let it get to you ethos, it's all a part of the game. I'm much older now and I work a local job but it sure was a lot of fun back in the day

 

Yeah......right....sure.

 

Actually, that's true. They issue you a receipt , and you pick it up on the way back.

 

Silly rules on both sides; one thing came up during the recent Powerball craze. It is illegal to take lottery tickets into the U.S.--it's an outdated, but still in-force, and occasionally enforced, morality law. So if a foreigner had won the Powerball, but had left the U.S. and then tried to return to claim their prize, their ticket could be seized.