I'm Not Allowed In Canada

As a kid, I always wanted to travel for business. The lure of distant cities and strange adventures has always had a mysterious glowing appeal to me. A month or so ago I was promoted, and with the promotion came the opportunity to do just that. Now I would get to travel, and I'd be getting paid to do it.

My first trip was to a relatively small island North West of Seattle. Not bad for getting my feet wet. Throw a ferry in there, a cool rent a car, a nice little hotel, and it was a pretty nice trip overall.

The thing is though, when I think of travel, be it business or leisure, I'm looking for some action. I don't mean that like A-Team style action either, just a little good old fashioned excitement. Upon making my way up to a small city of Regina, in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan I got a little more than I bargained for.

I walked out of my front door at the brisk hour of 5AM. I began the 10 minute walk to the airport bus in style, nodding my head un-rhythmically to Tool's epic 46 and 2.

I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
Cleansing I've endured within

My timing was bad, as I approached the intersection upon where I would catch the elusive AB bus to DIA. As I began to cross the street, going a list of items in my head. At that moment, it struck my sharply and painfully. My passport was still sitting on my desk at home. This seemed to set the tone of the day. If I only knew what I was in for.

I angrily walked home grabbed my passport and caught the next bus. This put me at the air port about 60 minutes before departure. Not ideal for an international flight, but it would do. As I snaked though the rapidly moving and dreadfully long lines of security I recalled an unfortunate even that had landed me in a Denver court a little over a year before. How I had forgot to remove a knife from my book bag I can't say. Why I had an illegal switch blade in the first place is easy. It was a gift from a friend a few years ago who was leaving town on a plane and knew better than taking it to the air port. As I put my shoes back on and headed for the terminal I felt a sigh of relief move though my body, no arguing with the TSA goons about what constitutes an illegal knife this time. Things were looking up.

Upon arriving in Calgary, I quickly made my way to customs and started in on the rat race. Upon refection, this is the one place I could have strategically avoided the mess I was about to be in. "I'm just visiting a friend" is all I would have had to say. Instead I said I was on business, which then lead to the inevitable "what kind of business?" and catastrophically to "you ever been arrested?". At this point I did what I have done for the past 9 years when asked that question, or at least some situational variation there of. I though of course he was looking at my conviction for brining an illegal switch blade into the airport. I threw it out there, being truthful, "I accidentally brought a knife to the air port". He pried, "what kind of kife?" I dropped the bomb. "a switch blade". A tense silence gripped the air. "ever been arrested for anything else?" he dropped nonchalantly. "uhh yeah, I stumbled" quickly catching pace. "Once in Ohio, for disturbing the peace." "and what happened there" he quickly questioned. I knew I could leave out the details on this one. There was no need for me to dip into the gritty details. What good would do for him to know about how we were snaked from the back and chased down that icy river bank by an unknown number of cops with lazer guided tazers. "Oh you know, my and a buddy drank a little to much, just out side causing a ruckus." I though about sitting in that cop car on Christmas eve, as the cops tried to mad dog me. "we know what you did, if you admit we'll let you go" there wasn't a chance I was going to fess up. Apparently my buddy already had, and even though I refused to break, they let us go with a pay out ticket. It was then that the real bomb dropped. "what about 99, you get in any trouble then?" I knew right away this was a problem. Confused and shook, I answered with a question "in 99?", in the same way that Ron Burgandy might if some one were to throw a question mark on his teleprompter. "yeah it uhh says here you have a felony, trafficking a controlled substance, Marijuana". The last time I had heard or seen a word about this case was just over 9 years ago, and I was signing away some plea, that apparently I did not read closely enough. For the last 9 years I was under the impression that as my lawyer told me, the charge was dropped to some minuscule offense, "attempting to bring prescription pills into interstate commerce with out a prescription." This apparently was not the case. I pushed the confusion aside to deal with the matter at hand. If I was denied entry into Canada it could potentially have a relatively unsavory effect on my job. I was not prepared to let this happen. I was search and questioned relentlessly. Every credit card was removed from my wallet, the bottoms of my pockets searched for residue. I realized how bad things could really get it they were to run some swabs on my ID or probably half the cards in my wallet. I stared coldly into the air as the woman sifted though my underwear. I was taken back to the customs officer and asked to wait while they discussed what was to happen next. I pondered the Canadian law that kept felons from entering the country. I pondered the idea that I had been felon for the last 9 years and not known it. I was called to the desk by the customs official. I was convinced I was going home. He engaged me in some conversation about the quantity of marijuana I had on my possession at the time. "funny thing is I told him, we didnt even have any", Which is entirely true. (we did have Hash but they didn't even know what it was) He looked at me blankly. I though about explaining to him what had actually happened on that cool Nevada night. I though about the cute blond girl back home that I had a crush on, and couldn't stop thinking about. "two grams" I corrected. "thats it?" he said. "Yeah, Nevada is no tolerance state there is no such thing as a 'personal amount'." I said. "Really?" he said, "well in Canada there is, and there is also a thing up here that we practice called balance, I'm going to seize your passport, and let you go do your business, but I'm not actually admitting you into Canada". For that moment, I had a small amount of faith in humanity temporarily restored. I signed a few papers, he took my passport, I headed to nearest airport bar, gulped down two large Heineken's just in time to jump on my connecting flight to Regina.