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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
