When we arrived at the Canadian border for our Montreal and Toronto gigs, we had no idea that we were about to enter a different dimension. The ponytailed, Kevlar-clad Canadian immigration officer seemed nice enough as she took our documents and paperwork and started her online research, but two hours later, as she conferred with one colleague after another without ever looking our way, things weren’t looking so smooth. Finally, she came to us with the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ news. We could play Montreal, but we had to be out of Canada by midnight. Yep, midnight. She wouldn’t discuss it or answer questions, that was the way it was. Why? Because apparently the Canadian government has decided that it’s not fair for Canadian bands to have to compete with American bands for club bookings, and they have an intricate matrix of classifications of clubs and shows that allowed for our Montreal show but balked at our (outwardly identical) Toronto show.

We were pretty dumbfounded, but we soldiered on to Montreal, loaded in through the snowdrifts and slush, and played our show. It was a lot of fun – the people at the club were all really warm and sympathetic and Miss Emily Brown, who opened up (with James, an excellent lap steel player), played her lovely songs and told the crowd that TOC “was risking their American citizenship to be here tonight.” Turns out the exaggeration wasn’t as big as we’d imagined.

After the show at 1:30am we realized that there was no way for us to get back to the border safely and alive that night and the sane thing to do would be to leave the following day and try to work out the paperwork for Toronto. So after a quick breakfast (and enough of glance around to appreciate the scruffy grandeur of Monthreal, home of our namesake) we spent the following day driving and making feverish calls back and forth to David in LA, a very kind lady from the Canadian Musician’s Union, and another agent from our agency in Toronto. Despite the tireless efforts on all sides, we were refused at the border when we tried to get back in, but not without a good old fashioned bureaucratic game of hide the salami. Once the Canadian officials in Ontario decided that they weren’t going to let us in, they made us fill out application forms for entry to Canada and THEN immediately fill out forms to “withdraw our applications or entry.” At this point we were really disappointed about missing our Toronto show – we have some great friends there – but this last Kafkaesque twist was just a little extra vinegar in our milkshake.

So, dear Canada, we still like you. We loved Montreal, we miss Toronto. But you’ve got some serious control issues, and I think we need some time apart.

Je t’aime…Moi non plus.