Madison's Account of the Border Crossing

Crossing the Border
By Madison Busker

I feel that I should tell my version of trying to cross the US-Canada border on day 5. Our original plan was to spend one night in Minneapolis and to drive to Winnipeg, Manitoba via the I-29 border crossing. Border crossings at major US interstates are very quick to move traffic along, and only the most guilty-looking people ever get stopped or questioned...well in Canada, that is. Our compromise to stay an extra night in the Twin Cities was to skip Winnipeg and drive straight to Regina, SK. The route we drove traversed North Dakota, a state I never thought I would ever visit, and had us cross the border in Portal, ND, population 50.

We arrived at the border station and were the only car there. It took about 10 minutes for a border guard to come to the window, I bet they were taking a nap or something considering the lack of traffic at this particular area. We were interrogated in the car by a pleasant, yet stern, woman. We thought we were done and the guard would politely welcome us to Canada. Instead, she told us to park our car and to come into the office for an ID check. We walked in, gave a very serious man our passports, and were told to wait. Five, ten, and then fifteen minutes passed when finally the man came out and said "Ian please come into the office when you hear the door buzz and close it behind you." The thoughts that ran through my head were "Ian what did you do that you didn't tell me?" "Would the car make it across a few hundred 'kilometers' of farms to sneak across the border" (the US and Canada brag about having the largest unprotected border in the world, if we had to I would have advocated to use it to its full advantage), and "how could we drive to Alaska without going through Canada?"

Another fifteen minutes passed and Ian was still in the office answering questions. He finally came out of the office, and I thought we were good to go. I overheard the guards talking "do you want to do this alone or have backup?" "Oh you know I always like company" the guard answered to the other. "Please pull into garage 8 for a car check" We pulled in and two Canadian guards searched our car top to bottom. After 20 minutes of scrupulous searching and finding nothing but Canadian whiskey, on its way back to its home and native land, they packed our car exactly how it was and pushed us on our way. I never thought we would get the run-around we did crossing into Canada, a country very similar to ours, and the did not even stamp our passports.