My Discovery of America

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

This is a quick and enjoyable read. Actually, because of its brevity and timeliness, it should have been issued as a quickie paperback at ten bucks less. On April 23, 1985, Mowat left Ontario for the United States on a book tour to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. He was refused entry at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, without any explanation, by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. I don’t want to give the plot away, but this book is about his struggles between April 23 and May 4 to crash the world’s longest undefended border. Naturally, he was indignant about the whole matter; indeed, “livid with rage” is a better description. The book becomes a good account of government bureaucracy, with screw-ups at various levels. A sobering thought: if Mowat (who, because of his renown, has the magic problem-solver called “leverage”) had such a horrendous experience, what would happen to the rest of us poor schnooks?