We are currently camped a short distance from the Canadian border so today we emptied out the weapons from the car (particularly handguns), grabbed our passports and headed north into the land of “eh?” Peggy’s mom spent her youth in a section of Vancouver, B.C., so our intent was to see if we could find her childhood home. Just about two minutes after getting on I-5, we passed by the Peace Arch, which is more like a hollow cube and not very arch-like. The taillights started right about there and we were in 20-minute line to clear immigration into Canada. The border entry facility going into Canada is a fantastic structure with curved windows and many open gates.

Vancouver is a few miles north of the border and is a city built on a series of massive urban islands. The bridges between these islands, at least the bridges we crossed, are magnificent architectural masterpieces and very appealing. All of them were concrete and steel suspension structures, no two alike. Surprisingly, we ended up driving directly into New Westminster, the ‘hood where Peg’s mom grew up. Signage and roads were clearly marked, the roads were relatively uncrowded and folks there paid close attention to lane discipline. No phone-distracted clods in the fast lane and no speeders in the slow lane. The only thing that was challenging for me was rapidly converting metric overhead clearances into archaic standard heights.

Peg’s mom grew up in a neighborhood of architecturally stunning houses and we were able to find not only Peg’s mom’s house but quite a few of other members of the Vasey clan’s houses. Strangely, architectural styles of the apartment buildings we saw were extremely limited and the buildings look like they are transplanted Soviet block housing. Weird. Things are a bit different in Canada – New Westminster did not seem to have ghettos or slums where ugliness could reign. Perhaps the slums are in other neighborhoods. The population here was quite diverse – we spotted many Sikhs although mostly regular old pasty-white Caucasians. We also noted widely spread signs that indicated that panhandling is illegal so there were no roadside disabled diabetic crippled homeless alleged war veterans with little cardboard signs describing their imaginary woes in an attempt to get suckers to fork over their dollars, which are only worth 80 cents, American. As a matter of fact, we only saw one guy stretched out on a bench, sleeping, but he had a very nice backpack so perhaps he was merely a person taking an alfresco lunchtime siesta. After some aimless wandering to check out the ‘hood, we drove into an urban jewel called Queen’s Park, not far from Peg’s mom’s and other relatives’ former residences.

Queen’s Park is unlike any municipal park I have ever seen in the States. The grass was lush and neatly trimmed. There was a petting zoo for the kids. There are sculptures and flower gardens distributed throughout the facility. Game fields and ball courts were being extensively utilized by the locals. There are huge grass meadows with folks picnicing and socializing in the sun and under the well-developed shade trees.They have a water pad with a creek running from it with a big crowd of kids cooling off in the sun. The buildings were scrupulously maintained and painted. There was absolutely no graffiti. It was gorgeous and quite different than well-marked Balboa Park in San Diego or Golden Gate Park in San Fransicko.

After the visit to the park, we headed east on Canada 1 in an attempt to re-enter the U.S. somewhere other than the busy crossing at the Peace Arch back in Blaine. That was not a particularly good idea because when we got to the crossing at Sumas, WA, there was a long line of cars backed up onto the single-lane road running back to Abbotsford in Canada. Seventy minutes and 750 yards later, we finally pulled up to one of the three open lanes crossing through the border back into the U.S. I truly hate going out of the U.S. because the absolutely idiotic goons working for CBP are incapable of seeing that their awkward questioning and slow passport processing stalls traffic for hours, clogs all roads adjacent to the border and pisses everyone off. It is remarkable that, given a similar number of vehicles, the wait going into Canada is brief but the wait coming back into the U.S. is always a short distance, highly frustrating, long duration odyssey. The Department of Homeland Security has collected all the inept $10 an hour bozos that could be found and assigned them to borders. We are not any more secure than we were before the Bush Administration saddled us with this mega-boondoggle but we certainly are more inconvenienced. What could they have that is legal in Canada that is illegal in the U.S., other than poutine?

Got a few pictures from the land of Canucks. Click the link. https://photos.app.goo.gl/Zh9UfiB8sMtxQuNFA