“Americans versus Canadians” or “How I am so happy and proud to be Canadian!”

The turn to answer the long lastingly annoying question of “who is better: Canadians or Americans?” has fell upon my fiancee and myself today. Little did we know, the answer was right in front of us.

Now, as it is customary to say, “viewer discretion is advised”, because the text contains intricate subject matter. Rated as SN (Somewhat Nationalistic). Before I make any further remarks, I would like to say that I certainly do not generalise the following image of an American person to the entirety of masses, for I happen to know plenty of people, who carry an American passport of their own, who at the same time happen to be extremely intelligent, interesting, educated and all in all very nice people and who deserve my deepest respect.

In our trip to the Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory (which you can read about here), which is located here
I shall direct your attention that it is located very well on the Canadian side — this fact will come in handy in the discussion below.

So here is what happened. I decided to (blindly) believe my GPS and let it simply guide me to the butterflies. So it did for most of the way from Toronto (the trail I knew very well myself). Unfortunately, any GPS has an error in locating your position on the globe. The error is usually not large (may be about 10 metres off, depending on how expensive it is), but enough to act funny at times, when you pass complicated intersections. Suppose you pass such an intersection with many under or over passes; there is a chance that your GPS will mistakingly detect your position not on the road you’re on, but rather on some overpass nearby. The GPS will automatically recalculate the route you need to take so “you have reached your destination”. A good GPS does it very quickly and sometimes you may not even notice this fact, unless you constantly stare at the screen, which you probably shouldn’t do while driving. Probably.

So this is pretty much what has happened to me. I was supposed to exit at one point, but GPS told me not to, because it thought I was somewhere else. Instead, I was lead to the Canadian-US border. I realised there was no turning back only when I actually stood in front of those gates you have to pass.

Now, we are both Canadian citizens and are of course free to travel to the US with no limitations. The problem was, though, that we didn’t have our passports nor our citizenship cards on us. “Well, — I said — this shouldn’t be this hard: we’re Canadian, we’ll just tell them we are lost and want to turn around. No big deal.”

It has turned out to be a BIG DEAL.

I drove into the closest booth to explain the situation. A typical American soldier is sitting in there with a look of a wall. I am saying “typical” to emphasise his characteristic look, attributable to all sarcastic portrayals of American soldiers (I do not mean to insult every single American soldier; as I said before, I know plenty of Americans and most of them have my deepest respect). Here’s what our conversation sounded like.

[me]: Hello, officer. We have lost ourselves; we were driving to the Butterfly Conservatory and I was blindly following my GPS, which mistakenly lead me somewhere else. I did not mean to go to the USA at all. How can I turn around from here to get back to Canada?

[officer 1]: Any commercial goods?

[me]: (absolutely confused) mm.. no? We weren’t trying to get into the US; we just want to turn around and get back to Canada.

[officer 1]: Commercial goods?

[me]: What? No, sir. (Here I repeated my story with a little more detail, especially emphasising the fact that the Butterfly Conservatory is located in Canada. I also emphasised that we do not have our passports with us, since we did not intend to go to the US.)

[officer 1]: Why are you going to the US?

[me]: (The story is repeated once again…) Can you just help us turn around and get out of here to get back to Canada, officer?

[officer 1]: Well, the fact is that you’re already in the US (which isn’t actually true; as far as I know, you need to cross the border in order to be in the US, which we technically haven’t. Correct me if I’m wrong).

[me]: Alright, but we did not intend to be here at all. We just wanted to go see the butterflies, which are in Canada. The GPS led us here mistakenly.

[officer 1]: Did you see the signs that this is a bridge to the US?

[me]: No, because if I did, we wouldn’t have been having this conversation.

[officer 1]: Your ID please. And your ID, miss, as well, please.

[me]: (I gave him the ID, while continuing to get though him the words “Canada”, “butterflies”, “do not want to go to USA”, “No passport on us” and such.)

[officer 1]: Where were you born?

[me]: Russia (this was gutsy move! I think, though I should have just pretend a plain idiot: “Where were you born?” — “I’m Canadian! O_O”)

[officer 1]: And you, miss?

[Liana]: Moldova

[me]: Are you both Canadian citizens?

[officer 1]: Can I see your passports?

[me]: Officer, as I told you, we do not have our passports on us at the moment, since we were not heading to the US. They are at home; we can call and someone will read the passport numbers off for you to check. Shall we?

[officer 1]: Do you have your citizenship cards?

[me]: No, officer. We did not intend to go to the US so we did not take neither the passport nor the citizenship card.

The conversation rambled on for a little while in the same kind of spirit. The officer (Argh, I wish I’d remembered his name and rank, so I could convey it to you!) has slo-o-owly started to understand what was going on. He asked us to park our car to where the other officer will direct us to and wait inside a building, where our ID’s will be. It seemed like a large relief. It really was, but this is not the end of the story just yet.

The other officer was of the same type, only he was evidently much better hearted. We stopped near him so he can tell us where to park and go. He asked us a couple of somewhat ridiculous questions (which absolutely did not surprise us after a long conversation with an interesting gentleman in the booth: “commercial goods?” O_o). To give you an example of what this guy said, here’s a piece of our conversation:

[me]: (I shortly explained everything that happened to us with the GPS.)

[officer 2]: You to students trying to get to school, huh?

[me]: Mmm.. not exactly, but okay.

[officer 2]: Well, don’t worry. Just park down there and we’ll get you out of here in no time.

We walked into the big booth, where lots and lots of soldiers behind the counters stood with looks on their faces that, I swear to God, were saying “I love America, I love America, I love America, …” Although, come to think of it, some of them were saying ” … “, but that’s a totally different story!

Anyway, we sat down and awaiting to be called. The counters were somehow divided into two disjoint parts. Officer 2 (who, by that time, was already familiar and quite well aware of what happened to us) was standing behind one of these counters, so I decided to come up to him and ask how long the procedure usually takes. I mean the perfectly well-posed question anyone could, would and should ask in such a situation. His answer, surprisingly, was also filled with well-posedness; of a different sort, however.

[me]: Do you know how long this procedure usually takes?

[officer 2]: Oh, I don’t know, I work over here and I don’t know anything about what’s going on over there.

… This just struck me the way a monkey would strike an airplane that headed straight at her. Typical? I think so. Stupid? Definitely! Okay? Not at all! The translation of what he said is “Oh, I only cover this area marked by 4 cm away from my right eye and 4 cm away from my left eye, and I do not and do not want to know what is going on at 4.55 cm away from my left eye.

After a relatively long wait (about half an hour or so) we were finally called up, where another officer took care of us. This officer finally happened to be a human and actually understood the whole situation and helped us get out of there very quickly.

We turned around and headed straight to Canada, at last! The Canadian border post came to us like a little piece of heaven! We stopped near a little booth where an officer, a very kind lady, was sitting. The whole conversation took about 3 or 4 minutes. She asked us for our ID’s. All in all, the talking went something like this:

[officer]: Are you Canadian citizens?

[us]: Yes-yes, we are.

[officer]: How long have you been to the United States?

[us]: Uum, about 40 minutes. (We quickly explained what happened)

[officer]: So they held you there for 40 minutes because of that?

[us]: Yep!

[officer]: What were they doing??

[us]: We’re pretty much sure that somebody knows the answer to that question; to bad he’s not in this world.

And that was it! We laughed about it, we paid the duty (something like 3 bucks), she wished us very rest of the day, and we drove back into Canada!

Ahhh.. Canada! Don’t you love to be a Canadian? Don’t you love it over anything else possible that’s close at hand? I know I do!