Sometimes it’s not necessary to travel far and wide to have fun travel stories. Sometimes, unwittingly, they happen in our own back yard. Of course, what some of find humorous, others do not.
Thursday, December 19, 2024
LaColle, Quebec
Smack on the 45th parallel, smack on the Can/Am border
And I mean smack on the border
Snow flurries fill the air. I’m out and about on a misson that brings me to the absolute end of the United States where I visit and interview my new friend, Baptiste, who’s been renovating an old, 1932 customs house at the end of the Meridian Road in Champlain, NY. I leave his home, walk the few steps to the border, walk under the barrier and enter Canada for 90 seconds to take a close up photo of the boundary marker that marks the 45th parallel. US on one side; Canada on the other. No drama there
Curiosity has always led my travel life. It’s never about the destination but what’s around the next bend. I start thinking. Hmm…I wonder where that road leads to that extends from Champlain into LaColle.
I’d planned to do so banking and shopping in the village anyway, so I clear customs at another port of entry, enter Canada legally, get a reading on my map and find the road—Rang St. Andre. The Quebec side of the Meridian Road. Prior to the closing of the border that now marks the location of the home Baptiste is renovating, it was a primary port of entry from 1932 until 1967, when the larger border crossing took over and reduced this little crossing to cows and horses.
Off I go, find the road, drive to its end, and place I’d been to 30 minutes before, but just across the barrier in the United States. I park my car. Walk around. Take photos of the boundary marker, the old custom’s house. I meander northward to look for any evidence of a hotel that once stood here. I walk back to my car. That’s when I hear it. A helicopter. Low. I ignore it until it circles round again, this time lower. It circles again, in tighter concentric circles. Then it hits me. This is about me. I start a video of the helicopter, the whole thing bordering on absurd, which I sort of thrive on when I’m in situations like this.
The I hear a car approaching, shift myself and the camera around. Three police cars approach, fencing in my car. Fencing in the gringo. Ok, I think. This is getting good. I was doing absolutely nothing illegal so I wasn’t afraid.
I approached the three officers and began to speak. Then one in charge stopped me abruptly. He’s not smiling.
“Before you talk, you need to know your rights. Then he quoted the Canadian version of my Miranda rights. This was now bordering on international drama.
Me: Am I doing something wrong?
They: What are you doing here?
Me: I’m working on a book and doing research.
I knew enough not say What are you doing here?
I explained that I’d just interviewed the guy in the house they could clearly see a hundred yards away—on the American side of the border. And now I’m looking for any evidence of the old Meridian Hotel that once stood on this side of the border.
By the now the helicopter had disappeared. Two of three cop cars had left and I was left alone with the officer in charge and his side kick.
In the end nothing happened. In the end I gave them a history lesson they knew nothing of. In the end they learned that this has been a major rum running route in the 1930s and that the Meridian Hotel, long burned to the ground, was only too happy to supply booze to alcohol-deprived Americans.
In the end it has been an unexpected adventure. The Mounties were clearly doing their job. The officer in charge actually asked me when the book would come out so he could buy a copy.
In the end I told him that this story would go somewhere in the book and that I’d personally deliver an early copy of the book free of charge.
Sometimes it’s not necessary to run off to Asia to have your own personal travel story.
Sometimes a travel adventure is pretty darn close to home.
