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Click here: The Times Argus Online - When Canada Customs meets an NRA sticker When Canada Customs meets an NRA sticker August 12, 2001 By DENNIS JENSEN So you’re thinking about taking a fishing or hunting trip to Canada, are you Bucky? Well, before you pack the old pickup truck –– the one with the NRA, Ducks Unlimited and rod and gun club stickers on the bumper and all around the back of the cap –– you might want to think about taking another vehicle. That’s the advice of Tim Lajoie, an outdoor writer out of Baldwinville, Mass. Lajoie and fellow outdoor writer Michael Roberts of Meridan, Conn., were both thrilled when their names were drawn for an all-expenses-paid fishing trip to Gogama Lodge, a spectacular fishing venue in Gogama, Ontario. The two avid outdoorsmen were looking forward to landing trout, smallmouth bass and big northern pike as they approached the Canadian Customs crossing at Alexandria Bay, N.Y., on July 28. What happened next really jolted the two anglers. Lajoie says our neighbors to the north were far from hospitable. “As soon as we got to the border, a lady in the customs booth who was wearing a bullet proof vest, by the way, asked us if we were U.S. residents. We told her we were from Massachusetts and Connecticut,” Lajoie says. “The first thing I noticed was that she wasn’t looking at us, she was looking at the truck,” he says. The 40-year-old Lajoie says that the woman closed the window at her booth and picked up her telephone. When she did, the woman in the next booth picked up her phone and closed the window to her booth. Lajoie says the women were clearly talking to each other. And he is convinced that the two border guards were discussing the various stickers that were glued to Roberts’ pickup truck. “He’s got North American Hunting Club stickers, Ducks Unlimited stickers, rod and gun club stickers,” Lajoie says. “One of stickers says, ‘Kids that hunt and fish don’t mug old ladies.’” One of the border guards told Roberts to pull his truck over and the two men were instructed to step out of the vehicle. “A woman came over with two pushcarts and she proceeded to take everything out of the truck. Everything,” Lajoie says. “They went through that truck with a fine tooth comb. They found nothing.” What were they looking for? The evil that lurks in the outlaw states of the free; the one thing that Canadian politicians fear even more than the next election. “They were looking for firearms,” Lajoie says. “One of the lieutenants told us that this is a different country. He said we had no right to have firearms in their country and they wanted to make sure we didn’t have any.” One of the women customs agents went so far as to insinuate that the reason their truck was singled out was “because we had gun stickers on the truck.” As outdoor writers, the two men were headed to Canada to fish and to then return home and write about their experiences. “We were up there to promote the Canadian fisheries,” Lajoie says. “We were up there to promote Gogama Lodge as a place to go to.” Lajoie, a former corrections’ officer in Massachusetts and brother of Pete Lajoie, the talented, award-winning taxidermist out of Shrewsbury, said he was troubled by what happened but said his fishing partner was livid. “I told Mike, now you know what it’s like to be discriminated against,” Lajoie says. “Mike was totally horrified that that happened,” Lajoie says. “He was just totally blown away by the fact that we were picked out of thousands of cars coming across the border. He kept asking why and they would not give us a reason.” “The lieutenant said that they have a computer system that randomly picks automobiles. We asked him if it had anything to do with the appearance of the truck and he would not answer the question.” Lajoie says that he was finally told to be careful about his line of ques tioning. He quoted the customs lieutenant as saying: “We could literally take that truck apart right now and we wouldn’t have to tell you why,” he said. Lajoie says the two anglers were delayed at customs for about 90 minutes. “It was pretty gestapo-like,” he says. “My advice to fishermen going up there would be to take a generic vehicle through the border. Pro-hunting stickers will cause delays.” While the two men were deeply troubled by the police state tactics at the Canadian border, they both would return. “We both enjoyed it up there,” Lajoie says. “I’m going back to Gogama Lodge. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. The fishing was phenomenal, the food was incredible.” Hunting in Canada is an altogether different issue, as far as Lajoie is concerned. “I run the Camou Kids program, a non-profit organization and we take kids out on instructional hunts and fishing trips. I’m leaving tomorrow to take a blind kid on a wild boar hunt. But I would never hunt again in Canada,” he says. One can only imagine the amount of heroin, bootleg liquor, cigarettes and Lord-knows-what-else is going through Canadian customs these days. But the border brown shirts had the cunning to pull over a guy who is so “dangerous” that he cares enough to take a blind kid on the trip of a lifetime. A few years back, Canada passed a series of gun laws that would bring a smile to Hitler. Today, Canada has made it such a hassle to get a gun into the country that some hunters who are American citizens refuse to hunt there. Reasonable anglers might want to think twice about fishing there as well. For the record, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard horror stories about harassment of hunters coming across the Canadian border. If that’s the way the Canadian government wants it, then Canada can kiss my bait-caster good-bye. Not only that: Canada can have its fish and its deer. I want no part of this country or its resources. Maybe it’s about time hunters and fishermen organized and fought back with their wallets. Maybe we ought to consider boycotting every bottle of Canadian beer, every trip to Montreal, everything that is Canadian. After a few years of sticking it to the Canadian economy, attitudes at the border would surely change. I can see it now. A big sign, yeah, a big sign with blinking lights that says, “Welcome, hunters and fishermen.” |
