Re: Passports? We didn't used to need no steenkin' passports!

My trip to the White Pass in 1976 was by air through Vancouver to White Horse. This was my second time into Canada and just to make all things easier in both directions I had obtained a pass port. Going through Canadian Customers and Immigration in Vancouver, I was asked how long I was planning to be Canada and how much money I had with me (this was before credit cards were common -- prepaid travelers' checks were common). The woman immigration officer said that the funds I had were about right. Canada was wanting to make sure that people entering from the USA were not going to remain and become a burden on on their society.

This was shortly after the end of the Vietnam war and the US draft dodgers were fresh in their memory.

One of my schoolmates (his mother also worked at the same electronic firm that my mom did) went up to Canada after high school graduation. The family was Dutch (maybe through Indonesia) and Canada was their first destination in North America. My classmate was born in Canada and utilized that to legally move to Canada.

On the other side of things, on another trip to Canada (for an Association of Ry Museums meeting in Edmonton) I was on a post-convention two or three day trip to Calgary, One of the evening meals was in a stationary restored dining car and we were seated three Americans with a Canadian. Our man was unique -- a Canadian citizen who had served volunteer with one of the US land services in Vietnam! He spent much of his growing-up years in Miami, Florida, where his father was a consular official. Parents retired in Florida and his siblings also ended up staying in the USA; he returned to Canada and used the GI bill to attend a Canadian college.

Brian Norden