TRIP SOUTH PROMPTS A WARNING

Ignorance, it has been said, is bliss.

But don't tell that to North Vancouver's Steve Eyre or his family.

As reporter Justin Beddall reports on page 12 of today's paper, the Eyre
family vacation turned into a nightmare when Steve spent 19 days in a U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service detention facility. Far from the
National Lampoon comical take on family holidays gone awry, this situation
bordered on Brothers Grimm, with the North Vancouver father warehoused
alongside murderers and other dangerous and hardened criminals.

The reason for the confinement was a pot conviction and subsequent $300
fine Eyre received when he was 18-years-old. Unbeknownst to him, and
despite the fact he has crossed into the United States by car and airplane
an estimated 100 times or so in the three decades since that sole run-in
with the Canadian justice system, to do so requires a waiver provided by
the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Cost: $250 US. And that's just
for each time you visit the States, not for a one-year, five-year term or
lifetime term.

I don't know about you but I missed the memo on that one. Travelling to
African and East Asian countries one would be wary of the possibility at
such confinement, solved typically by a family member back home wiring
money to the authorities for your release. But in the United States?

This whole episode got me thinking not only about how many other Canadians
with long-ago convictions could find themselves in a similar nightmarish
situation as the Eyre family did due to a lack of information about this
waiver, but also about the paranoia and fervent nationalism that has
gripped our so-called friends to the south since the tragic events of Sept.
11, 2001.

It got me thinking if the California border guard who caused such emotional
grief and uncertainty to the Eyres - not to mention the thousands of U.S.
dollars in debt they incurred to hire an L.A. attorney - was somehow
influenced to do so by the right-wing ranting of U.S. radio shock jocks who
have filled the ears of naive Americans with anti-Canada propaganda since
former Prime Minister Jean Chretien backed the United Nations in declaring
the U.S.-Britain foray into Iraq an illegal war. Or that Canada is a haven
for terrorists, pot growers and Michael Moore fans.

It got me thinking what's to stop a U.S. border guard from throwing in
prison Canadian professional hockey players, musicians, artists, business
people and politicians who have long-ago convictions for something as
trivial as pot possession when they were a teenager? And finally, it got me
thinking that spending my family's hard-earned dollars on a vacation in the
United States this summer maybe isn't the best use of our money.

Steve Eyre will never get back those 19 days and nights spent in a
California border prison, but hopefully his courage of telling his private
tale in public will allow others to avoid the same fate.