Dear CBSA Officer
December 23, 2025
Dear CBSA Officer:
I’m so sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk more when I came through in your lane last week at the Rainbow Bridge as I returned from my 103rd two-wheeled trek to the Great State of New York. I know you guys normally aren’t up for much chatter, though it’s not as though you had a lot of travelers to screen that day. Your lane was empty and most of the traffic on the bridge is, naturally, headed for the USA. Many of those travelers are Canadians who obviously aren’t buying the lies told to us by our government and the media about how Trump is “mistreating” visitors. In fact, I must say that CBP officers have been quite pleasant in recent times. Always professional, of course, and even though they’ve followed me from time to time, they’re hardly the big, bad ogres we’ve been led to believe by state media.
I was intrigued by your question as to why I go across the bridge all the time and not stay in the country. There’s the obvious answer about flipping the bird to my government. I’ve actually been making an effort to visit the US more just because my government doesn’t want me to. No doubt you noticed that trend when my records came up on your screen.
But I’m not just doing it to spite my government. I just like being in the US. At first, I thought it was a novelty that would soon fade. But it hasn’t. The more I go, the more I want to go back and the harder it becomes to return across Checkpoint Charlie. On my cross-border trips, I feel like an East Berliner getting a day pass to the West. I don’t think you can possibly appreciate the level of depression that hit me on the GO bus as we left Niagara Falls. In many respects, I felt like a junkie needing another fix.
It has reached the point that I’ve been seriously considering joining those who are fleeing Canada permanently. Much as I like visiting there, Western New York wouldn’t be a place I would choose to settle if a future application for legal US residency was approved. Comrade Kathy Hochul, the ruling commissar in New York State, is probably farther left-leaning than Doug Ford here in Ontario. I have, however, looked into a few other potential landing sites.
Don’t get me wrong. The USA has many faults. The deep state is dangerous just like it is here, there are too many taxpayer-funded welfare programs for my liking, and though I would likely have voted for Trump had I been an American, I remain disappointed in many aspects of his presidency, most notably that he hasn’t pulled out of Ukraine. But overall, I’d take it any day over Canada. The constitutional guarantees on individual freedoms are vastly superior to the ever-decreasing privileges this country’s ruling junta grants us. And Americans will, by and large, stand up for those rights. Sure, Canadians did rise up during the war. The Freedom Convoy was one of those few times when I was proud to be a Canadian. But look how far things had to go in order to get Canadians to start fighting back.
I would actually be thrilled if Canada was absorbed into the USA. It would save me moving and immigration hassles. The only thing that upsets me about Trump’s bluster about making Canada the 51st state is not that I don’t want to be an American, rather that I don’t want to be administratively joined to Manitoba again. Let Ontario become its own state and leave Manitoba as some sort of unincorporated territory like Puerto Rico.
So if we should meet again, and we might, please forgive me when I return from another cross-border adventure.
I just can’t help myself.
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