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Border Crossing

Border Crossing

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 8:15 am by Vance Morgan

Border Crossing 2015-06-19T08:15:30-04:00 Vance Morgan

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As a youth growing up in northeastern Vermont, a trip to Canada was pretty much the same as a trip to Hartford or Boston—except it took less time. We lived about forty miles south of the border, and most of my family’s favorite hangout spots were north of the border. Montreal, about three hours away, was our big city; Quebec City, about four hours away, was our destination when we wanted to pretend we were in Europe (where none of us had ever gone); Sherbrooke, only a bit over an hour away, was the location of our favorite Chinese restaurant (actually the only Chinese restaurant I ever ate at before I turned twenty). Our trips over the border were so frequent that the border guards at the Newport, VT crossing eventually started waving us through—we just needed to slow down sufficiently for them to realize who it was. Sort of like EZ Pass decades before its time.

My family loved Canada so much that we made significant forays north of the border on our frequent summer driving trips from one coast to another. I became particularly familiar with the natural beauty of British Columbia and Alberta, considering to this day the Canadian Rockies of Banff and Jasper National Parks to be superior in beauty and majesty to the American Rockies (with the possible exception of the Grand Tetons). When I was a freshman in high school we explored the Maritime Provinces for the first time—a highlight was eating my first full lobster at a community lobster bake on Prince Edward Island. I spent a couple of Canada-less decades after my teens, but once Jeanne and I returned to New England in the mid-nineties, I enjoyed exploring with her the Montreal and Quebec City of my youth, even staying in the very same B and B in Quebec City at which I had stayed several times with my family twenty years earlier. Canada is a bit more of a trek from Providence than from northern Vermont, but that’s why they invented airplanes. I have loved Canada for as long as I can remember; several summers ago during the brouhaha over the Affordable Care Act, comparisons to Canada’s universal health care system were frequent. “We don’t want to be like Canada, DO WE??” one outraged letter to the editor author wanted to know—somone replied “What’s wrong with Canada? Canada is freaking awesome!!” I agree.

In the spring of 2002 I was pleased when an academic group I am involved with chose to hold their annual colloquy at the University of Toronto, offering Jeanne and I our first Canada opportunity in a few years. As we checked in at the Providence airport, the counter lady said “Don’t forget to have your passport out!” “My passport??” I thought—“We’re going to freaking Canada! Why do we need our passports?” We had forgotten that a minor event called 9/11 had happened since our last visit north of the border. We actually did have passports—it just had not crossed our minds that we would need them for Canada. We did not have sufficient time to run home to get them and return to the airport to catch our scheduled flight. When it turned out that rescheduling for a later flight would cost more than what we had paid for our original tickets, we chose not to go to the colloquy, using our tickets several months later instead to visit a different Canadian city—Halifax—that neither of us had ever seen for my March birthday. Don’t ever visit Halifax in March. It’s cold. We spent most of our time in our warm hotel room watching the international curling championship that was in town that weekend. Really.

Fast forward twelve years to spring 2014—this time my academic group’s annual colloquy was being held in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city that I had visited only once when I was a teenager. Jeanne’s work takes her to Canada frequently and she vouched for how awesome Ottawa is. I was pumped—I liked the paper I was going to be presenting and I even made a note to self not to forget my passport. A passport that I realized just a couple of weeks before the colloquy was expired. Discovering that an expedited renewal application would be prohibitively expensive, I chose not to go. I placed the renewal application papers on my bedroom nightstand, intending to get a new passport forthwith so this wouldn’t happen again. And there they sat for several months.

Until just a few weeks ago, when Jeanne let me know that she had a chance to do a weekend’s work in Toronto from June 19-21 and wanted me to go with her. I never can travel with her when classes are in session, so with the semester over this sounded like a nice way to kick off my sabbatical. I filled out my renewal application form, attached a passport photo of moi taken at CVS, and mailed it off on May 1, sad to be including in the submission my expired passport with its Cuba stamp from 2002 (a future collector’s item). Paying $170 for expedited (two to three weeks) service, I was in business. Or so I thought. Two weeks later I received an email, followed the next day by a priority mail letter, reporting that my application was on hold for two reasons.

I had forgotten to sign my application. (“Bullshit!!” I exclaimed until I checked my copy of the application and saw that they were correct—I hadn’t signed it).
My picture was unacceptable because it was “overexposed” and my defining features were not clear enough. (That’s what I look like, morons! I have white hair! My skin is Scandinavian white! Even my eyebrows are white! I’m the whitest person I know!).

After a “What the fuck!” moment or two and a few deep breaths, I calmed down, got a new picture taken, this time at the main Post Office, filled out a new application, and sent it off on May 15th. With still more than a month before travelling to Toronto, no worries. Or so I thought.

On May 28th I received another email, followed by priority mail the next day, informing me that my application was on hold—again! This time apparently my picture was okay but the letter claimed “You did not sign and/or complete your original application. Please submit a completed, signed, and dated application.” Checking my copy of this second application I confirmed that I fucking well did sign and date it and fucking well couldn’t find anything wrong with any of it. And now it’s only a bit over three weeks before the scheduled Toronto visit. I decided to deliberately descend into the lower levels of hell and call the passport 1-877 number on May 29. After twenty minutes on hold during which I was advised at least twelve times that “due to an unusually high volume of calls the wait time is much longer than usual,” therefore I might want to try the passport website (I already had done that several times—it isn’t helpful), I heard “Thank you for calling, this is James, how may I help you?”

Practicing my Benedictine Zen, I calmly explained my situation to James, who helpfully walked me through the passport application so simple that a fifth-grader could fill out but that I had failed to successfully complete two times in a row. He was (most unhelpfully) not able to tell me what I had done wrong on my second attempt (“It could have been anything,” he offered) but seemed confident that it would work this time. But would my passport make it to me by June 19th (now a mere three weeks away)? No guarantees, but my chances were better if I would be willing to pay $14.85 for overnight delivery in addition to the $170 I had already paid for expedited service. This is turning out to be an expensive trip to Canada I thought as I wrote out the check and sent my third application into the priority mail slot at the Post Office.

While Jeanne and I were visiting friends and family in Florida June 5-15, I managed to convince myself that my passport would be waiting for me when we returned. But it wasn’t—and now I was moving into serious WTF and panic mode. A Monday afternoon call to the 1-877 number produced Mia, who was less helpful than James had been. Couldn’t say anything other than that my application was “in process,” couldn’t guarantee it would get to me by Friday, couldn’t think of anything more that I could do from my end, and generally couldn’t wait to get me off the phone. Shit. I prepared for the likelihood that I would not be going to Toronto, and even started planning what I would do at home with the dogs this coming weekend while Jeanne went north of the border. But yesterday around noon Jeanne called to let me know that my wayward passport had arrived—with about forty hours to spare. Here is proof:

In four hours Jeanne and I will be on a plane to Toronto with our passports in tow. I hope mine works—but if it doesn’t, I’d hope I get stuck on the Canadian side of the border. I’d be happy to spend my sabbatical in Canada. Canada is freaking awesome.

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