We received some rather close questioning coming into Canada on a vacation. We'd spent part of our trip fishing and camping, and were intending to do more after returning to the States. The Canadian customs inspector asked if we were carrying "any weapons". My split-second of hesitation, as I considered whether Canadian customs might consider a hammer and various assorted knives to fall into that category, led to some intense and specific questions regarding whether we own firearms of any type (yes), handguns (yes), and do we have them with us (certainly not - I know better than that). I'm still a bit surprised that they allowed us in *without* a search.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.
In the context of the purpose of the question, a "no" answer to whether you owned firearms would have not only been defensible, but efficient. Since you didn't have any with you (which is what the concern is), the fact that you do or don't have some sitting at home is utterly irrelevant and wouldn't/couldn't be checked, and in any event couldn't be pursued.
A friend and I were driving up from Seattle to meet another friend at the Vancouver B.C. airport (cheaper then to fly in and out of Canada to Europe). We were young (early 20s), driving a hot rod, and clearly didn't know anything. The only info we had from the friend was the time he was coming in. We didn't know the airline or flight number or his address or any other useful stuff. We spent a long time at the border...
Only one problem with Alex's arguement. When you go to the USA, you deal with American Customs. When you return to Canada, you deal with Canadian Customs, and vice versa.
Scale's for vehicle weight, are intended for the trucks and would not be accurate enough to demonstrate a ten or twenty pound, let alone fifty pound change. Scale's are designed for a particular weight load. Primarily used to determine if a vehicle is loaded over it's gross weight.
Besides, most of the Canadian Customs staff have already concluded you have filled up the gas tank, and they would think you were a moron if you didn't. US fuel taxes are a lot lower. CDN's routinely fill up. It's almost $20 CDN per tank difference in price.
When I was crossing into the states, the only thing they recorded was the license plate number and that was to track the frequency of how often you were crossing into the states and for what purpose. The greater the frequency, the greater the number of questions they asked you.
A Vancouver cop once told me they basically ignore people in possession of minor amounts of pot. If you want to get arrested you need to do something really stupid, like trying to put out the joint on their foreheads.
Nah, Robert doesn't make me think any less of Canadians in general. You all seem like pretty nice folks. Looks like everyone needs to grab some more tuna, though.
That was my experience several years ago as well and I didn't hesitate at the first question. She didn't ask if I *owned* any guns (I would have found that quite offensive, irrelevant, out of place and none of her business). However, she must have asked me a dozen different ways whether I had any guns, weapons, ammunition, or rifles, etc. in the car. I came very close (wisdom won out however) to saying, "nope, no weapons -- would you be interested in the box of pine beetles I have in the trunk?" I got the impression that Canadians are very, very scared of guns. That was the year they were starting to register ammunition, saw the PSA's of a smiling husband and wife with the husband happily filling out his registration form, then putting it into the mail.
Responding to him is about being involved in the conversation LRod... that's why. He doesn't seem to be a "retard", merely disgruntled at the prices he and all Canadians must pay, at 30% higher than U.S. people when Veritas tools are made IN Canada. I do not blame him one bit because it isn't fair one bit.
I live in Houston TX, in 1998 my wife, son, and I went into Canada through Buffalo. My wife rode with her aunt in her car ahead of my son and I. We were in the Pick Up from Texas. I was asked 5 times if I had any fire arms and told 2 times the penalties for carrying them in to the country. I guess because it is common knowledge that all Texans driving pickups carry fire arms it was way too hard for the kid to believe that I had left my arsenal at home. Any way, after telling the kid that we had no fire arms for the
5th time he asked me to drive up to the next building where several cars were parked with their contents being emptied. I played dumb and simply drove past. Nothing ever became of it but our Burlington relatives got a good laugh out of it.
Ever stop to think that maybe LV sells 100 times more product in the U.S. than Canada and that earns us a bigger discount???
Consider this: our pharmaceuticals charge us double of what you pay for medications - and I'm sure you purchase medications more frequently than a Veritas plane! You don't hear us bitching, do ya?
I have _zero_ knowledge of Lee Valley's actual operations.
I *do* have considerable experience with large catalog preparation, publishing, and distribution. It is a _big_,*EXPENSIVE*, job.
You can safely assume that anything you see in the catalog was 'cast in stone' at least 60 days before the _first_ mailings. That's the kind of time it takes to do the printing and binding, addressing, and appropriate 'bundling' for least-cost mail delivery.
On top of that, there is another 45 days, minimum, for the typesetting of the changed pages, proofing, doing the color separations, etc. that are required to have the material ready to 'go to press'.
If they're printing from a 'database', then 'applying' the 'decided upon' currency conversion can be done for the entire catalog "shortly before" they start the typesetting stage. If they use 'rounded' conversions -- so the price comes out as 49.99, instead of 50.07, for example, somebody has to review all the roundings, and possibly over-ride a round-up/round-down decision. Pricing for every _new_ item (i.e. 'not previously published') has to be manually reviewed, to ensure that there were no errors in the database entry/extraction/conversion formulas for *that* item. This adds a week or two to the time-line.
If there is any 'body copy' that makes indirect/imprecise reference to pricing, then the pricing has to be set _before_ that body copy is written. This shoves things back another couple of weeks, at least.
Thus, pricing ends up 'frozen' a good *FOUR*MONTHS* before the first catalogs go in the mail.
Now, it is a _fact_ that the value of the Canadian Dollar, vs the American Dollar was _falling_ from the first week in January, 2004, through the first week of June, 2004. And the international futures markets show that the _world_at_large_ expected (as late as Mid-May, 2004) that the Canadian Dollar would remain in the US$0.71-0.75 range, *THROUGH* September of 2005. That's right, the year TWO THOUSAND FIVE.
Starting in _mid-May, 2004_, the _further_out_ (i.e. Sept, 2005) projected value of the CAN$ started to rise. It wasn't until the 1st week of June, however, that the September, 2004 projected value started to rise.
It is an indisputable fact that the world-at-large did *NOT* see the run-up in the value of the CAN$ coming. Early Spring 2004, expectations were that the CAN$ was going to _loose_ another 1-2 cents by Summer/Fall 2005.
I used to work for a catalog giant, Eatons, and have friends who work catalog for Sears Canada. They set sale cat pricing 20 days or LESS before the book hits the streets.
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