After two hours and forty minutes of driving through rural New York, my friend and I finally reach the US-Canadian border. We know this because the GPS on my phone announces “Welcome to Canada,” and then proceeds to shut off all cell service. I can tell my friend is anxious to cross—he’s crammed his long legs into the passenger seat, readjusting constantly to find a comfortable position. His dark plume of hair scrapes the top of the car each time he straightens his back. We're both antsy to start our drive across Canada, starting by heading to Montreal.
There are two cars in front of us, so I take the time to soak in my first few seconds of Canada. The surrounding area is stunning. Trees sprout a variety of greenery, grateful to soak up the sun’s rays on a clear day. Little, rocky hills trip over each other as they run alongside the road and the Saint Lawrence River serves as a beautiful, flowing buffer between the United States and Canada. Small, luxurious houses held up by stilts congregate on shattered islands throughout the river (we later learn that the section we drove through was called 1000 islands parkway). By the time I’m done admiring the scenery, the cars in front of us have passed through the border.
Our turn.
This is my first time crossing a border by car and a sudden, constricting nervousness grips at my stomach when I see a hand emerge from the booth in front of me, the fingers flexing to beckon me forward like a dog. Rolling down the window, I prepare myself for the inevitable slew of questions. Twenty years old, I think, you can do this Spencer—be an adult.
I am greeted by a handsome, stocky man with olive skin and sparse facial hair. His squat face somehow amplifies his bored expression. I smile and he does not smile back. Off to a good start.
He starts by saying “hello,” and “bonjour” together so fast that I only catch the latter end of his greeting, and because I’ve just spent the past three weeks on a France study abroad trip I automatically reply with “bonjour.” This is my first mistake. A river of French starts to pour from his mouth, and I have to wait until he’s finished to smile sheepishly and say “sorry, I don’t understand.” The officer looks at me with a strange mix of impatience and disapproval, like a parent listening to their child come up with blatant lies. His accent is tinged with French as he scolds me.
“I say ‘hello,’ mean you speak English. I say’ bonjour,’ mean you speak French. Why you say ‘bonjour’?” he asks, and before I can apologize he continues with more orders, stringing them together with almost no punctuation. “Remove your glasses roll down the back window so I can look inside hand me your passports—both at once I need both of them.”
My friend and I comply, trying to fulfill all three requests at once while I mumble an apology. He sighs and taps a few buttons on the keyboard in front of him before he starts questioning me.
Do you have any dangerous objects or weapons on board?
No.
Do you have any firearms with you in the car?
No, none.
Are you stowing any illegal drugs on board?
No.
How about alcohol?
No, sir.
Where do you live?
San Francisco, California.
Do you have anything worth more than $10,000 on board?
Ha, no.
What is the nature of your trip?
Uhm, pleasure.
Do you plan to leave anything in Canada?
... I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
The officer’s lips tighten, and I start to turtle my head into my shoulder. He takes a second to explain that ‘leaving’ means giving things away like gifts, and that they use the term ‘leave’ to avoid loopholes. I thank him for the explanation (to which he says nothing), tell him ‘no,’ and the questioning goes on.
Do you have any fruits or vegetables on board?
No.
Do you have any food on board?
Yes, junk food.
Describe it.
A lot of chips.
Do you have any animals or pets on board?
Nope.
How long do you plan to stay in Canada?
Uhm…
Mistake number two. I only have a rough outline of my stay in Canada. I know I want to hit the major cities on my way across, starting with Montreal and ending with Vancouver before eventually coming down through Washington state all the way to California, but I have no idea how long that will take. My summer plans are too loose to come up with a definite answer. He raises an incriminating eyebrow at my pause, even more so when my answer comes out more as a question. Near the end of May? He looks me over for a second, scribbles something down on a piece of paper, then tells me that I need to pull over on the left under the roof of the police station so we can be searched.
***
The officers outside the station stare us down as we approach the double doors. I wave, and again I am denied acknowledgement, so I hurry inside where a blonde officer with high cheekbones calls us over for a second round of questioning. We oblige, smiling, and she smiles back. Thank God, I think, human emotion. She asks us questions that run parallel with the previous officer’s—where we’re from, what we’re doing here, how long we’re staying. She takes our passports and tells us to sit in a row of chairs that lines the wall.
The inside of the building is plastered with posters. Some of them depict common non-native insects that might sneak past the border via firewood logs, while others preemptively scold those who plan to start campfires using improper lighting methods. Near the double doors leading outside, a cork board gives those departing a glimpse of the ten or eleven people missing in Ontario at the time, their grainy black and white faces smiling beside the date they went missing. My friend and I pass the time imagining crazy scenarios where we get arrested immediately after crossing the border.
As we laugh, an officer comes up to us with a small canister of gum, and my heart stops. He steps over to me, his thick black combat boots clopping against the floor like an authoritative horse. I know what’s in there, and it’s not going to look good. Flicking open the container, he rattles the contents in my face.
“What is this?” he asks, and I stutter because he’s so close that I can actually count the threads on his bullet-proof vest. White, half-inch long pills clack against the metal container. I’m almost sure they’re aspirin, but the officer’s proximity wipes the answer from my head. My mouth hangs dumbly open. I don’t want to tell him the wrong thing, so I decide to say that they look like aspirin, and that I can’t be sure. Unfortunately, that isn’t what comes out of my mouth.
“It looks like gum,” I say, and immediately regret my third mistake of the day.
The officer takes a closer look at the pills, frowning almost comically before firing back an answer.
“Gum? That’s the strangest piece of gum I’ve ever seen.” he says, and I shrug because I have no idea how to convince him they aren’t the hardcore drugs he probably thinks they are. I settle on ‘sorry, I don’t know’ and he gets in closer and tells me that he’s going to send them behind the counter for testing, and that if I have anything to admit, I should tell him now. My friend and I shake our heads, and the officer stalks away with the gum container.
Now that we’ve attracted the attention of almost every person in the building, my friend and I elect to sit on our phones to avoid any sort of eye contact. Alright, you can still make a graceful recovery. Just apologize profusely and don’t act suspicious, and you should be golden. In the corner of the room four officers complain about the price of bullets, discussing firearm statistics and tactical shooting techniques. I try to ignore them.
It takes him fifteen minutes come back with the gum container. He tells my friend and I that we should keep any medications in their original containers and sends us on our way. We hurry out the door without another word.
***
Three hours later, we arrive in Montreal. French graffiti lines the highway exit, and city structures fill up the skyline, reflecting the orange sunset. Our hostel is a stone’s throw from the freeway, and we soon come to find a perky white building hiding behind a construction site with a sign hanging on the front of the building that welcomes guests in a multitude of languages. In the center of the street a well-tanned man in paint-blotched shorts and a red t-shirt swings a graceful arc on his rollerblades. He appears to be in his mid-forties. I watch as he glides over the cement, his feet threading over one another as he rides in effortless circles. He watches as we pull up to a parking zone, skating over once he realizes that we’re struggling to decipher the rules and regulations. His voice is slow and tired, and I can’t help but think of the stereotypical “surfer dude” as he explains the parking schedule. He tells us that we’re okay to park on the sidewalk for the next three days, which is more than enough time. The only spot available is a packed tight between two cars, and the rollerblader offers to help me parallel park.
“Alright, my man,” he says, “why don’t you just put your bumper flush with that one, alright? Then all you gotta do is crank, dude.”
It only takes a few minutes for me to successfully park, and the rollerblader laughs victoriously before pumping his legs and skating backwards into the street. My friend and I exit the car and stretch, throwing our hands into the sky, surrendering to our tiredness. The rollerblader swoops back and forth across the street like a bird of prey, circling around to stop and lean on the hood of my car.
“Y’know I wouldn’t hold it against you if you bought me a beer or whatever at the bar, you know?” he says, and I agree. But before we start to head inside, my stomach sinks with a sudden, horrible thought. Turning around, I jog back to my car, flinging the front door open. I rifle through the glove box, the middle seat container, and the sliding pocket that sits under the radio. None of them have what I’m looking for. I’m getting frantic now, and I hurry to the trunk to grab my backpack, unzipping each pocket and rummaging through them, cursing when I come up empty again. My friend raises an eyebrow.
“What are you looking for?” he asks, and I answer with a question of my own.
“Where are our passports?”
***
We spend the next half-hour taking the car apart, despair lurching towards my heart with each fruitless minute. The rollerblader interjects helpfully, informing us that our situation can be classified as a ‘major bummer.’ I grit my teeth, laugh, and spend the next fifteen minutes checking the same compartments three times before giving up. Heaving out a sigh of defeat, I decide to buy the rollerblader the beer he wanted for helping me park, but looking around I find that he’s disappeared. My friend and I joke that he probably skated off into the sunset like some sort of Canadian cowboy, and it lightens the mood a little. We head inside for our first night in Canada.
***
The hostel is a quirky three-story building filled with chalkboard drawings and informational maps of Montreal. A woman with curly blonde hair and crooked teeth greets us at the front desk, and I only catch a slight French accent as she checks in on the computer. We thank her as she hands us a pair of key cards, walking up two flights of stairs before coming to our room. Faint chatter from the pub downstairs floats up to our floor, tipsy laughter and bar chants echoing the promise of a good time.
Inside we find that the ten-person suite is surprisingly empty. A man speaking hushed Afrikaans into a pair of headphones pauses to stare at us as we walk into the room. He blinks twice before going back to his conversation. My friend and I find our assigned bunk beds, setting down our backpacks and collapsing onto the sheets.
“We’re competent adults,” I say to my friend, “we’ve only managed to lose our passports in less than twenty-four hours, but whatever, right?”
That gets a good laugh out of us both before we pass out, waiting to tackle what tomorrow brings.
