POLICING THE BORDER: AUTHORITIES WORK TO ENSURE THAT SASK. ISN'T THE WEAK LINK

Rounding a corner on a remote, Prairie, dirt trail with his
$1-million stash of pot, Paul Allan Noyce spotted a vehicle waiting
for him and knew immediately the game was up.

The debt-ridden, 21-year-old university student hoping to turn a
quick buck was making his first solo trip using a hand-drawn map of
the "North Star," a route used by drug dealers bringing high-grade
"B.C. bud" into the land of Budweiser. He stopped the blue Dodge
Caravan and steeled his nerves.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Kurt Nelson pulled his sport-utility vehicle
sideways across the road -- more cow path really -- and on foot
cautiously approached the rental van with the B.C. licence plate. The
agent, on watch this early evening in June, believed the trail carved
through farmers' fields on the 49th parallel in southeast
Saskatchewan was a "clandestine crossing."

The soft-spoken Noyce tried his lame cover story about becoming lost
while delivering camping gear to his grandfather in Lake Alma, about
20 kilometres to the north. But Nelson, with two decades of
experience on his country's borders with Canada and Mexico, knew of
no tent that gave off this kind of earthy, herb-like odour.

He slid back the van door on 391 pounds of high-grade bud snugly
packed in nine, black hockey bags.

The lone officer, the handcuffed suspect and the weed waited almost a
half hour as back-up from the closest U.S. Border Patrol agents and
RCMP officers converged on the world's most open border and began
sorting out jurisdiction.

"I didn't know if I was in Canada or the United States," Noyce would
later tell a Regina courtroom. Even Nelson wasn't sure.

Finally, an RCMP officer settled the thorny issue with a GPS device.
Noyce was on Canadian soil by a mere three metres. He was the Mounties' catch.

Until this day, nearly two tons of Canadian-grown pot worth $9
million had successfully moved through the North Star for
destinations in Montana, Washington and California. Operators of the
B.C.-based smuggling enterprise, with links to organized crime,
deliberately risked hauling their illegal wares 1,600 kilometres east
down the Trans-Canada Highway from Lotusland to the land of Prairie
locusts before turning south.

It wasn't the shortest route -- but the smugglers thought it the easiest.

"There are so many trails and roads across the border into the U.S
.. Saskatchewan is relatively porous with our small population and
the number of roads," reflected Regina lawyer Al McIntyre after he
successfully prosecuted Daren Wayne Smith, 40, on drug smuggling and
organized crime charges. Smith, sentenced this spring to six years in
prison, was the B.C. businessman who hired Noyce and other drug
couriers, provided a map of North Star and rented vehicles for about
a dozen trips until it all ended on June 20, 2002, when Noyce was caught.

A decade earlier, McIntyre had prosecuted equally industrious men who
brought cheap American liquor by the truckload across an illegal
crossing in this same remote area.

The Saskatchewan-U.S. border is an expansive 632-kilometre stretch
dotted by ditches, pastures, clumps of trees, the odd barbed-wire
fence (to stop cattle not people), and dirt trails like North Star.
It's serene, wide-open Prairie -- although not nearly as open or
sleepy anymore because even out here in a place that seems so far
removed from the terrorist threat, there is talk about the potential.
The neighbouring countries that always took pride in having the
longest undefended border are now wrangling over barriers like
passports and even -- as some American politicians have suggested --
a fence. But the people paid to be paranoid on both sides of this
49th parallel are equal in wanting to stop those who would exploit
its weakness.

NEAR NORTH PORTAL -- Mountie Larry Shier stands on a dusty, gravel
road on this warm spring evening as a family of white-tailed deer --
Canadian as they stand at this moment -- cautiously keep him in their sights.

"We're in Canada, and that's the U.S.," he says, pointing to the
other side of a grassy ditch that on a map would be a dotted dividing
line. "Some borders you just see the shade of green (in the fields)
change," he adds.

The sergeant in charge of the Prairie Integrated Border Enforcement
Team doesn't quibble with those who call the border porous.

"It's my job to try and plug it," he says firmly. Created in May
2003, the Estevan-based operation is one of 15 IBET regions in
Canada. They partner with immigration, law enforcement and drug
agencies from both Canada and United States to gather intelligence
and investigate illegal cross-border activity between the official
ports of entry. The bi-national agency actually pre-dates the events
of Sept. 11, 2001, by five years, but it was expanded in the aftermath.

With Prairie IBET's creation, RCMP wanted to ensure this province
didn't become the weakest link. "When criminal activities are clamped
down on in one area, they begin to look for another area with the
least restraints ... We want to make sure Saskatchewan is not the
weak link in the chain," RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Brian Jones said at the time.

Other than the International Boundary Commission's 1.5 metre-tall,
cast iron or stainless steel border markers sticking out of the
ground every 1.6 to 2.4 kilometres (one to two miles apart back in
the days before Canada went metric), there isn't much to that chain.

And the gophers aren't the only ones looking for holes.

"You're limited to what you can smuggle across there by your
imagination," says Shier, looking across that ditch. Invariably, it's
drugs. But Shier also speaks of the smuggling of liquor, livestock,
diamonds, tobacco, weapons, knock-off retail goods, farm chemicals
and cash. Last year, a woman even tried to bring in an American
hiding in the trunk of her car.

There are a lot of holes, and few plugs.

Responsible for an area stretching from the Manitoba border to
Alberta, IBET's Estevan office has five Mounties, including Shier,
who work alongside Canada Border Services Agency and are in daily
contact with their counterparts in North Dakota and Montana. His
officers used to spend a day on the road travelling the six hours to
the western end of the province, so this month a satellite IBET
office began operations in Eastend with two more officers. Mounties
stationed at southern detachments also police the border, although,
unlike IBET or U.S. Border Patrol, it's not their sole focus.

The intelligence-led IBET also relies on the eyes and ears of the
people who live along the 49th parallel. They know which vehicles
don't belong out there or what's normal traffic at 3 a.m.

Daren Smith was no terrorist, but when the good-looking stranger from
Abbotsford, B.C., showed up at a bar in Lake Alma, population 23,
buying rounds of drinks, the locals knew something was up. They were
equally suspicious of another of Smith's couriers who came to the
same bar after crashing a rental vehicle near the border and paid
$600 cash for a tow to Regina. "I've lived here a long time, and
nothing added up," a farmer from near the border later testified.

It was that kind of information that first alerted authorities to the
B.C. smugglers.

Under a program simply dubbed "knock 'n talk," IBET officers speak to
area residents about what to watch for that might point to criminal
activity ranging from drug smuggling to "terrorist-related activities."

"We're not out to get the guy who does the coffee thing," says Shier
of snitching on neighbours who may be taking short-cuts that no one
would have thought twice about five years ago.

IBET officers hand out brochures asking for information about large
land or business purchases made with cash. A list of "indicators of
suspicious activities" includes strange people or vehicles, persons
wearing clothes unsuitable for the weather, low-flying small
aircraft, duffel bags found in ditches or near back roads, cut
fences, vehicle tracks near the border, unusual lights at night,
persons asking about law enforcement activities on the road, persons
behaving as if being followed or watched, and suspicious activity
around storage tanks holding fertilizer (which can be used in making bombs).

Without a doubt, the events of 9-11 heightened "sensitivity" along the border.

PORT OF TURNER -- While the line between Canada and the States is
easily blurred on the Prairie landscape, the pot lights that dot the
ceiling and form the dividing line between two countries in this one
building bring it into focus.

On the American side, the entry door to the office staffed by several
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers is blue. It's also
reinforced by 300 pounds of steel to make it bullet-proof, just like
the windows that line the sides of the blue and white building.

The opposite door, behind which a lone Canada Border Services Agency
officer works, is -- of course -- red. No steel. No bullet-proofing.
(Only one Canadian port has bullet-proof glass.)

Inside, the Americans are to remove their sidearms before crossing
into Canada. But even in this building that so epitomizes the
neighbourliness between the two countries, there's a sort of
practical, working agreement that makes the shared coffee room a
neutral no-man's land, where the sidearms can remain with their
partner as they grab their morning java.

If the Canadian government follows through on promises to arm its
border officers, the point could soon be moot.

Port of Turner below the 49th and Port of Climax above, it's remained
the only one of Saskatchewan's 13 official ports of entry where the
Canucks and Yankees work side by side since opening in 1992. There
are only six joint ports across the country, and most are larger.

In the 1960s, a key was left out for those who might need to cross
after hours, returning from a dance on the other side of the line.

"It's not like that anymore," says Bill Patera, the U.S. port
director who was born and raised in this area and never lost his
folksy Montanan accent despite working in Saudi Arabia and Calgary.
No one gets through here after hours. Those trying to cross the line
after 5 p.m. most of the year and after 9 p.m. in summer will have to
drive almost 400 kilometres in either direction to find a 24-hour port.

The good-natured port director who has worked in this building 14
years jokes about the tourists who mistake the red and white Canadian
side for a KFC outlet and the blue and white American portion for a
gas station. He remembers the elderly couple who used to cross
regularly with their family of raccoons or the farmers who go for
lunch in the bar at nearby Turner, population 56. Patera even recalls
a moose that decided the grass was greener in the U.S.

But today, "our first priority, of course, is watching for terrorists
and terrorist weapons," he says matter-of-factly. It's foremost even
in this area where two hours can easily pass between vehicles heading
to the U.S

The port where they used to have such trust they could leave out a
key now has double the manpower (Patera can't give specific numbers
- -- "that's a security issue") and upped luggage searches and document
checks. They always had the authority to scrutinize everyone "100 per
cent" and now they do it.

"The age of innocence is over," Patera says almost mournfully.

Last year, the U.S. port saw 11,660 people, 4,750 vehicles, and about
350 commercial trucks. The numbers used to be nearly triple. Business
is picking up as the Canadian dollar improves, but the tougher
measures post 9-11 certainly contributed to the drop.

"People are too afraid to cross now too with the requirements," he
says. "They're thinking, 'hey, I've crossed for years and years and
now they're looking in my trunk. They're looking in my suitcases.' If
they have nothing to hide, they should get through quick."

Asked about further changes on the horizon, which will require
Canadians to have a passport or special identity card to enter the
U.S. at land crossings by Jan. 1, 2008, Patera says whatever is
decided, he'll enforce.

"It's just maybe that one per cent of criminals or terrorists that
we're watching for."

He's never even had to pull his gun at the port. But certainly he'd
welcome one more armed officer if the Canadians get the go-ahead. The
closest police back-up is the RCMP detachment in Shaunovan, 75 kilometres away.

"Hey, we're out in the middle of nowhere," says Patera.

HAVRE, MONT. -- More than 600 kilometres west of where Shier stood
looking out across the 49th parallel into the U.S., Chuck Albrecht of
U.S. Border Patrol stares back over a drainage ditch into Canada.

Until two months ago, he spent 12 years "hunting humans" on his
country's border with Mexico near San Diego. There, it's not unusual
to see 100 desperate people rushing the line all at once to play the
odds in hopes of a better life. They won't all get in, but some will.
And due to a catch-and-release policy, even if they don't make it
this time, they might the next.

All U.S. Border Patrol agents cut their teeth on the southern border
- -- where they made the majority of their 1.1 million arrests last
year. Eventually, some of the seasoned agents head north, where
they're more apt to fight boredom than illegal aliens.

Along the Hi-Line, "drug smugglers are what keeps us really alert up
here," says Albrecht.

The ex-military man, who has been all over the world except Canada,
gave up the adrenaline-rush chaos of the southern border and came
north for a promotion, taking a desk job as an assistant chief patrol
agent at U.S. Border Patrol's Havre Sector.

Armed with everything from thermal scopes for night vision to
all-terrain vehicles, the approximately 100 officers are on the front
lines of Montana's border 24 hours a day. They're watching for
anything that goes over, under and around the official ports of entry
on a 728-kilometre stretch from North Dakota to Glacier National Park.

From Albrecht's side of the border, the challenges are the same.
"There's no shortage of mileage and no plethora of agents," he says.

Asked about the potential for someone to exploit the weaknesses,
Albrecht sidesteps the question, but notes that's why there are
experienced agents here.

"All those experiences are necessary to make up for the lack of
agents when you hit this northern border because the northern border
is relatively open compared to the southern border."

So just how open is that open border?

"If you tried to cross around a port of entry, you're probably going
to be discovered rather quickly. In that case, it's not as porous as
people suspect," says Albrecht.

In other areas "which I will not go into," Border Patrol relies on
underground, electronic sensors installed along the border post 9-11.
"(It) gives us a heads up that that's the area that we need to be
checking out real fast to make sure it's just a cow or, in fact, is
an issue that we need to be dealing with with armed intervention."

Soon the agents will have the additional resources of an air wing
stationed at Great Falls, which will be under tactical control of
Havre's chief patrol agent. It will likely be fall before Blackhawk
helicopters and other aircraft are seen on the Saskatchewan-U.S.
border.Sitting in an office displaying photos of a Mountie in his red
serge alongside a U.S. Border Patrol agent in green, Albrecht can't
deny there are few problems here.

"You probably couldn't ask for better neighbours. There's a lot of
pride that the U.S.-Canadian is probably one of the longest
de-militarized borders around."

On a rolling plain near the southern edge of Canada, Albrecht gazes
into the twilight and spies only antelope, white-tailed deer,
gophers, and a single badger who scurries off when the headlights
fall across his path. But he's also looking for the one thing that
could thrust this remote place into the international headlines:
"terrorism always takes the priority," he says.