Road Trip Episode 5, Part 1: The Road Not Taken
Road Trip Episode 5, Part 1: The Road Not Taken
In this 2-part essay, I share my recent experience crossing into Canada, something I expected, as a white woman and U.S. citizen of Medicare age, to be a piece of cake (chocolate, please!).
I hadn’t intended to cross the border into Manitoba that day. In keeping with my overall plan to drive no more than four hours a day, I figured I’d travel three hours from Rogers, near Minneapolis, to Fargo. Depending on how I felt and hotel availability, I might decide to go another hour after that to Grand Forks. Either way, that would leave only a few short hours left for an easy arrival in Winnipeg the next day.
It didn’t work out that way.
The road less traveled
When I originally mapped my trip, I planned to avoid expressways as much as possible. The scenic route from Minneapolis to Winnipeg would be much more interesting. It would, for example, take me through St. Cloud, a Minnesota city formed in 1856 by three groups with dramatically different agendas. The white settlers gathered in three separate communities, known as Upper, Middle and Lower towns.
The first group, German Catholic immigrants and migrants from the East, came at the behest of a Catholic priest, Father Francis Xavier Pierz, who was there to proselytize the indigenous population of the region.
The second group, Protestant settlers from northern New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, moved to the area bringing their abolitionist views with them.
The third group arrived at the beckoning of a Kentucky slaveowner, who brought his slaves with him. Even though slavery was theoretically illegal in Minnesota, by determining that slaves could not file freedom suits and finding the Missouri Compromise, which essentially prohibited the expansion of slavery into Northern states, unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott Decision of 1857 made that moot. So, yes, there were slaves in Minnesota in the 1850s. Something I wasn’t aware of. Were you?
In an early attack on freedom of the press, the slaveowner, General Sylvanus Lowry, and his “Committee of Vigilance” smashed and then threw a printing press run by abolitionist and women’s rights advocate, Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm, into the Mississippi River. I guess “Minnesota Nice” was not yet a thing! It didn’t stop her though. She soon raised money for another press and resumed her fervent attacks against him and against slavery.
I would have enjoyed exploring St. Cloud to learn more about Jane Swisshelm and the town’s early history, see firsthand the ravines that separated the three settlements, and visit the spot where the Sauk converges on the nascent Mississippi River before it travels further south to become the Mighty Miss.
After visiting St. Cloud, I would have progressed through the land of white clay, home to the White Earth Nation, the largest of the six bands of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, and then onto Thief Rivers Falls a name translated from “the Ojibwe phrase Gimood-akiwi ziibi, literally, the ‘Stolen-land river’ or ‘Thieving-land river’, which originated when a band of Dakota Indians occupied a secret encampment along the river, hence "stealing" the land, before being discovered and routed by the neighboring Ojibwe.”
If I had taken this route, I would have crossed the border at the Tolstoi Point of Entry at the Ukrainian Canadian hamlet of Tolstoi on Provincial Trunk Hwy 59. Tolstoi is so desolate that all I could find out about it was that a beloved historic hotel was re-opening, and that its’ population of 25 intrepid souls dramatically declined in recent decades as most young people left for jobs in Winnipeg.
Would my border crossing into Canada have been different in Tolstoi? Surely, it would have been because it would have happened at a different time, in a different place, with different people. Would taking “the one less traveled by” have made all the difference? I’ll never know because that’s not the road I took.
The road I chose
Instead, when the time came, I opted for the more expedient and direct route. Or so I thought. That was before I remembered it was a Friday in October. From previous travel experience, I knew Friday nights in October meant one thing: high school football, and that meant that the hotels would be bursting with traveling teams, cheerleaders, bands, and fans. My heart sank. I could feel my short driving day disintegrating before my eyes.
As soon as I could, I pulled into a rest area to check on hotels. I didn’t relish finding out I had been right. Even the low-end hotels in both Fargo and Grand Forks that had availability were priced at $250 or higher a night. I had no interest in spending that much on an uncomfortable bed surrounded by rowdy football fans. As a result, my plans changed again. I called Charlotte in Winnipeg and asked if she objected to her house guest arriving a day early.
“Come on!” she said, her voice exuding welcome and encouragement.
Relieved, but also chagrined by my lack of forethought, I replied with equal enthusiasm, “Great! I’ll be there in a few hours.”
I hopped back onto I94 and then I29, in what now had turned into a seven-hour trip on the longest stretch of interstate I’d taken so far on this trip—still not a long drive, but long enough to know I would be tired at the end of it.
As I drove north at or above the generous speed limit of 75 mph, I passed acres and acres, mile after mile of farmland stretching to the horizon in both directions. I had enough experience with traveling in the Southwest deserts and the Southern Great Plains of Kansas and Nebraska to not call this country desolate, forlorn, or abandoned. The deserts and prairies are as diverse as other landscapes, in some cases, even more so. It just takes more effort to get to know them.
I didn’t have that kind of time or imagination on this day, so I plodded on laughing at and being inspired by Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Wiser than Me podcast interviews with iconic actor Jane Fonda, novelist Isabel Allende, and author/public speaker/humorist Fran Lebowitz. It was good to have such powerful company in this remote country.
I knew the border was fast approaching, and as I drew closer, I could feel myself becoming anxious. It took me a minute to figure out why. Last summer, on a genealogy research trip, I crossed into Canada through the Windsor Tunnel in Detroit without completing the required pre-entry form on the ArriveCAN app. I was subsequently admonished by the border agent for my omission—an unpleasant experience I preferred not to repeat.
I decided I’d better pull off on an exit to complete the form, which among other things, was to document my COVID-19 vaccination history. I fumbled my way around the app for a few minutes only to discover that it was no longer required for people driving into Canada, only those who arrive in airports, so, if I was reading it right, I was in the clear. After all, I reasoned, Canada would have no reason to deny entry to a 68-year-old, Covid-19 vaccinated, white woman and U.S. citizen, traveling alone in a 2012 Subaru Forester. I obviously posed no threat.
I took advantage of the bathroom stop, refilled my drink, and headed north again with a renewed sense of confidence.
At the border
When I pulled into line at the Pembina–Emerson Border Crossing, I took out my passport and extracted my passport card to hand to the border agent. I looked at Google Maps on my phone. In 90 minutes, I’d be in Winnipeg. I could feel my excitement growing as I looked forward to a full week with great company and without highway driving, hotels, or fast food.
Before long, the light turned green, and it was my turn to approach the booth. As I did, I opened my window, and said, “Good afternoon.” I handed my passport card to a stern man with dark hair and a mustache. He didn’t smile or even look my way as he started his interrogation.
“What’s your business in Canada?” the border agent began.
Next Episode
Read “Road Trip Episode 5, Part 2: A Lesson in Privilege”
Footnote
Just as I sat down to write this essay about crossing the border from the US to Canada, I saw the news that fears of a terrorist attack shut down four border crossings in the East US/Canada. According to The Messenger, “Kurt P. Villani and Monica Villani were traveling from their home in western New York reportedly to a KISS concert in Toronto, when their 2022 Bentley slammed into a concrete barrier at a high rate of speed, causing a massive explosion at the Rainbow Bridge.” With nothing left of their $2-300,000 vehicle except the engine, the cause will be tough to determine. Maybe it was mechanical, maybe it was medical, but what officials know is that it was not caused by terrorists. Regardless of the cause, the occupants must have been terrorized in the seconds it took for the vehicle to go airborne before crashing and exploding. My prayers go out to their family and friends.