I’m in Ottawa, Canada, today to meet author, blogger, and podcaster Shane Parrish.
Shane will be interviewing me for his podcast later this morning.
When I arrived in Canada, I went through customs, but the answers I offered to the customs agent were apparently not good. I explained that the nature of my visit was to meet someone who I’d gotten to know over the internet to discuss possible future collaboration and be interviewed for his podcast.
“So are you working here in Canada?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “At least I don’t think so. I’m not being paid. Just sitting down for a talk and interview”
The customs agent drew a red X in the corner of my form and asked me to proceed. When I reached the final checkpoint, I handed my paperwork to the guard and turned right in the direction that everyone else was headed but was told, “No, you go left.”
Around the corner, I found myself facing a second customs agent in another, smaller room.
Another line of questioning.
An added layer of security
I’d never faced this situation before. This time, I tried to explain the purpose of my visit more clearly, but the agent again looked doubtful. “Hold on,” he said and began typing.
Were they going to deny me access to Canada? Tell me to catch a flight back to the United States? Turn me over to the Canadian Mounties?
After a minute, he said, “Ah ha. Found you.”
“In your system?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “On Wikipedia. You are an American author, storyteller, and teacher.”
My Wikipedia entry was oddly enough to satisfy the agent. He read through my biography, asked me about the kinds of novels I write, and asked about how long I had been teaching, but at that point, he was asking for curiosity’s sake.
My troubles were over.
The customs agent explained that his job was to ensure that I wasn’t taking a job from a Canadian. The fact that I was “an author and storyteller” told him that I was visiting Canada to do what I had described.
Crazy, right? Years ago, someone made a Wikipedia page for me—which needs to be updated, by the way. Little did that person know that it would one day help me clear Canadian customs.
As I exited customs and made my way to the ride-share platform, a couple walking alongside me said, “I heard you tell the customs agent that you’re from Connecticut. What town?”
“Newington,” I said. You, too?” Having flown out of Boston, I didn’t expect to meet someone from Connecticut.
“We just moved to West Hartford,” they said.
I told them that I’d been teaching in West Hartford for 26 years and had lived there for four years before Elysha and I bought our home.
“Small world,” I said.
Smaller than I thought. Their rising kindergartener will be entering my school in the fall.
First, the serendipitous Wikipedia page, then this.
Clearing customers has never been so interesting.
Also, the customs agent was right to doubt my work while in Canada. Later that evening, after spending the day touring Ottawa, I performed half an hour of standup comedy at an open mic in the hotel next door—unplanned, of course—and was paid $25 for agreeing to go longer than the assigned ten minutes.
I worked in Canada after all.
But since I was paid in Canadian money, I gave it to the woman in the audience who laughed the most.
“I don’t want this weird-looking money with some other country’s old dead queen on it,” I said and handed it over to her, which earned me another laugh.
Money well spent.
