Just Where The 49th Parallel Lies?
by Paul McGoldrick
It has been an interesting week (in some ways), a stressful one (in
nearly all ways), but it is finally playing out as it was supposed to. I
have already talked about my family move to Canada.
A large chunk of it is now completed.
At the end of last week our house in Oregon was packed up by four locals who know all about the World Wrestling Foundation, and all its participants (actors?) They knew little else, it seemed, and the cartons that they packed used more apostrophes in their content marking than I have probably employed in the last ten years. Their spelling was also atrocious and you have to wonder how any of them got through High School -- but somehow they did. It magnified the reasons why we are making the move: to get our daughter the education she deserves in an environment where she will meet up with other children from a mixture of cultures.
At the end of the week, during the Columbus Day/Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, the house contents were loaded into a 53 ft moving truck by a wiry Canadian trucker hailing originally from Istanbul. He came to Canada for school and stayed on, undocumented, before he got legal status five years later. He was quite a character and after he realized just how red-necked, parochial and uninformed his hired loaders were he really put the jabs in on them.
They had no idea that pot smoking in BC is a relatively minor thing. They had no idea where Alberta is. They didn't know that Canada has Provinces, not states. They had no idea where Turkey is (after some 20 trips there on one contract some years ago, I rather wish I didn't either). It made the eight hours of loading a rather different experience. But we were fortunate that this move was in October. Next month every able-bodied male in that part of Oregon will be in the woods hunting deer and elk, and the collection boxes will be placed on the main drag in town marked "hides for vets." (Believe me, I really don't know what that is about either.) There will also be bins to collect deer teeth.
When our driver left he went up to Seattle to collect a much smaller load before heading for the border crossing to deliver that new load in Vancouver, BC.
All during this time I was ensconced in a local hotel which had high-speed access but where the little bucket chairs that were provided had the seat cushion about 3 feet below the table top making my arm angle to be at about ninety degrees to get to the keyboard of my laptop. It made creative work impossible, but I was able to handle my spam and edit other content.
The morning after the loading I also started my drive northwards with the rain chasing me all the way. The next morning I completed my drive and made the ferry crossing from Port Angeles to Victoria as a foot passenger, to be met by the family at the other end.
Our driver, meanwhile, was having his own fun. Living in his truck he has a fridge, DVD player, Wi-Fi Internet access, a satellite navigation system: everything but a shower. But he was given a hard time with customs at the border, at the 49th parallel, of course. His other customer was there to meet him to clear his shipment. But they wouldn't let him drive the short distance to Vancouver to deliver the small load because the majority of the load was ours, and uncleared. They sealed his complete truck, turning him into a mobile bonded warehouse.
Last night he crossed the 49th parallel again, but this time going South on a BC Ferry from Tsawassen to Vancouver Island. I like the Canadian cheek at that ferry terminal where the causeway to the docks goes Southwest to smack on the line of USA waters: because of the absurdity of the chunk of USA land, Point Roberts, that is attached to Canada at that point.
That peninsula community has no border checkpoint between it (part of Washington State) and Canada, and has become a haven for smuggling -- even to the point of pot being carried on a school bus into the mainland USA (Point Roberts has no schools).
Our driver spent the night parked near Victoria's Inner Harbour and hijacked a Wi-Fi connection on one of the moored yachts…
This morning we met him at the Canadian customs office in downtown Victoria and got the shipment of household goods cleared, with all the paperwork being completed in about 30 minutes. Very professional, very polite.
The two locals that were hired to help unload were such a difference from the Oregon team! They were worldly, thoughtful, amusing. One even had a grown-up daughter who went to the same school as our daughter is going to now. She is completing a four-year theology degree in the UK.
Eight hours to load, four to unload. I'm surrounded by boxes, again.
But they are here.