update from the border

Well, for the second day running, I’ve driven into Canada in order to drop a u-turn and head straight back into the US. It seems that the Americans can’t get rid of us and the Canadians just don’t want us.

Our troubles started on Sunday afternoon, one mile short of our border-town, Bowbells, North Dakota, with Brian and Anne-Maree’s camper blowing a tyre. Once we’d swapped the tyre, we returned to our trucks, Andrew discovering that he’d blown his alternator and Brian that he had a busted fender. Both problems needed to be fixed before crossing the border.

Most of Monday was spent waiting for parts. We fired up the trucks at 4pm, set out shortly afterward, and counted down what was meant to be our last seven miles of road in the US.

Canadian Customs was deserted when we arrived. Brian went into the office and told us all to wait in the trucks. He reappeared about 20 minutes later, clearly agitated, and motioned for us to turn around. Contrary to advice given by one Customs official, our man in the office insisted that we needed a broker to handle our paperwork.

The word last night was that Greg was considering pulling the pin on the job due to the cost and time associated with the red-tape, however, this morning the decision was made to proceed.

We all went up to immigration to get our visas while our broker went to work. At lunchtime, the call came through from the broker to say that everything was in order. Half an hour later, spirits reinflated, the convoy was back on the move.

We made it past the witches’ hats this time, about 100 metres further into Canadian territory. This time the problem was with the cleanliness of the machinery. Two Customs officers in black flak-jackets came out with extendable wands and pointed at little clumps of mud on the tyres of our ridiculously shiny tractors. They told us that they needed to be cleaner and, what’s more, they needed to be cleaned back in the United States. Once again, we got the signal to turn around.

Coming from Australia, I am familiar with stringent Customs regulations. In one respect I can understand where the Canadians are coming from – they’ve got borders to protect – however some discretion must be shown. From the first bushel that these machines cut, they will never be 100 percent clean again. Mouldy grain, spouting roots in the grain tank is one thing, but a few specks of mud on the tyres of a tractor is another. If we’re being sent back to scrub our tyres, so should every second pick-up crossing the border.

Reality is, the reason we’ve got work in Canada is because they are in desperate need of harvesters and, the way things are at the moment, they’ll be lucky to get their whole crop off. If we’re turned around again tomorrow, Greg will pull the pin on the job. If this happens, quibbling over some dirt will potentially have cost our farmer a lot of money, not to mention Mr and Mrs Maple-Leaf their piece of toast in the morning.

After we’d finished scrubbing the tyres tonight, Andrew summed up our frustration with succinctness that you will only find in the words of a boy from rural Australia.

“If this isn’t good enough, fuck ‘em. They can cut their own wheat. I’m not sure what they’ll use…scissors for all I care”.