Borderline Overreaction

A robust, dark-eyed woman leans into the car window to get a better look.

“Vous avez des armes à feu, du tabac où de l’alcool?” she asks me, intoning her vowels like a true Quebecoise. She eyes the contents of my Volvo station wagon suspiciously, thinking perhaps that I have stashed several kilos of hard drugs or maybe some explosives between my clothes.

“Je n’ai qu’une tronconneuse, madame,” I tell her politely, pointing to the chain saw in the back of the car. She has a large frame and a stern expression, and I feel a little intimidated by her towering figure.

She opens the car door to have a better look at the Swedish-made Husqvarna chain saw that I have wrapped in blue plastic in the back seat. “Have I broken the law?” I wonder. But the guard nods and waves me away. “Allez-y, allez-y, petite Americaine,” she orders, smiling at the irony of a little blonde carrying a 15-pound chain saw across the Vermont border into Canada. She knows that both I and my chain saw are harmless—that we pose no threat to national security. The chain saw isn’t for me, anyway, but for my uncle: during the summer, we’ll need fresh logs to fuel the wood-burning stove at our camp.

While many of my classmates spent their summers living in cities or suburbs—immersed in technology—I packed my old jeans and my dad’s chain saw into the back of my aged stick-shift Volvo wagon and drove up Route 91 to Canada. Though I have been making this trip, alone or with family, ever since I can remember, the drive has never been the same since 9-11, a heart-punch to every American, even those far from urban life.

This is especially clear at the Canadian-U.S. border, where a gaudy monstrosity has replaced the modest Cape-Cod house that used to serve as the checkpoint for travelers headed north into Canada. I pass under the stainless steel bridge and glance into the reflection-coated windows, and wonder if the security guards behind the bulletproof glass will pick me out as a threatening figure and detain me for further questioning. Since 9-11, nothing is as straightforward for travelers. Even in rural Vermont, the very architecture of the patrol station is there to tell Americans that constant vigilance is the only way to prevent another tragedy. Yet the Canadians, by comparison, have not been terrorized by terror.

I think about the ripple effect 9-11 has had on security around the world as I shift my car into second gear and climb the hill to Mansonville. In contrast to most of civilization, this quaint town, about a square mile large, matters only to those who know its people intimately. Here, terrorism is almost a foreign word. Though the townspeople of Mansonville sympathize with 9-11 victims and follow each development in the war on terror with rapt attention, they have other, more immediate concerns. In Mansonville, the summer’s top stories are that hardware store owner’s son, Paul, died in a bike accident and that the butcher, Hamelin, has to have surgery again. Unlike Americans, the citizens of rural Quebec do not feel persecuted by crime and terrorism. They live quiet lives for the most part, and don’t find it necessary to rebuild their border stations with reinforced steel. I turn off the main road and descend even further into the wilderness, relieved to know a little place in the world that terror–and terror alarmists–don’t.