Oh, Canada - Part Deux

Our foray across the border into Canada is complete, and I am here, as promised, to report back.

The majority of our long weekend was actually spent in Dearborn, Michigan, where we visited the Henry Ford museum and Greenfield Village. The museum is huge and features not just cars (including the Wienermobile!), but also big sections on planes, American life, etc. It was a pretty cool museum and we were all reasonably entertained, including the two-year-old twins. Greenfield Village is Henry Ford’s collection of historical buildings that he had torn down from various places and rebuilt in Dearborn – things like Thomas Edison’s house and the old Logan County, Illinois courthouse. The highlight for Owen was probably a couple of rides we took in the fleet of old Model T’s being driven around the grounds by retired guys. As if the whole Greenfield Village conglomeration of buildings wasn’t enough, there happened to be a big Civil War reenactment taking place throughout the Village. This meant that encampments were scattered throughout, and the Village was populated by both Union and Rebel soldiers and their girlfriends and wives, hanging out, cooking, playing instruments, cleaning rifles, riding around on horses, etc. Bizarre and fascinating.

Anyway, we set off for Windsor, Ontario after 5 p.m. on a Sunday. Having asked around some, I had learned before hand that Windsor is most famous for its high-end strip clubs. Since I had been the lone vote at the family meeting for a good ole’ fashioned strip club crawl, Sunday night seemed like a good bet. Upon reaching the border, we found that between my wife’s expired passport and our photocopies of the kid’s birth certificates (as opposed to actual certified copies), the Canadians were not anxious to let us in. Having successfully talked our way in, however, we commenced a whirlwind Canadian tour that included a quick stop at the tourism office, a lengthy visit to a Dollar store, where we dropped over $40 on cheesy Canadian souvenirs (nail clippers with the Canadian flag on them!?! I’ll take two please!!), scored a box of Tim-Bits at the local outpost of Tim Horton’s (sort of the Canadian equivalent of Dunkin’ Donuts), played at a great playground along the river teeming with kids of seemingly every nationality, and had dinner at an old-time BBQ place (no broken plates, only three spills, and minimal peeved looks from other patrons – a good meal!) before heading back to the States.

As we approached the US border checkpoint, Owen, whose love of Canada had now reached a fever pitch, was loudly singing a song he had made up called “Bad America.” After our efforts to shout him down with an extra loud version of “My Country Tis of Thee” failed, we resorted to the old “you need to be quiet when we get to the booth so we can hear the man talk” trick, which, thankfully, worked like a charm. The jaded security agent at the booth asked us the standard questions in a bored monotone: “Where are you from”, “How long were you here”, “What did you do while you were here.” Deanna’s perky answers caught his attention and he looked up from her expired passport to skeptically drone “You drove all the way from Illinois to go to a dollar store???” Whether he ultimately believed us or not, Owen remained thankfully quiet in the back and we were eventually able to convince the guard, with some help from the hypnotic power of our rockin’ Canadian Dollar Store disco ball, that we weren’t spiriting Canadian children across the border to sell them to wealthy Americans. As we chugged back towards the Dearborn, Michigan Hampton Inn, Owen happily sighed from the backseat, “You know Mom and Dad, Canada is all about fun.” As I stuffed another Tim Bit in my mouth and watched one of our three Dollar Store Canadian Flag pinwheels lazily spinning in the gentle warm wind coming in through the rolled down car window, I could not have agreed more.