Blue Highways: Sarnia, Ontario

Unfolding the Map

Oh Canada, once we get over the border with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM), will you show us your secrets?  Well, not really.  LHM is just taking a shortcut to New York.  But, in our brief, and first ever on Littourati, sojourn into another country I'll reflect a little on how easy it used to be to get into Canada as a US citizen, and how difficult it's gotten since 9/11.  A driver's license just doesn't go as far as it used to.  Immigrate over to the map if you want to see where Sarnia, Ontario is located.

Book Quote

"I crossed the St. Clair River into Sarnia, Ontario, and stopped at Canadian customs to assure officials I carried none of this or that, had enough money for my stay, was unarmed, had no live animals, and would be in the country only a few hours."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 1

Downtown Sarnia, Ontario in winter. Photo by Rob at Rob's Arena Tour website. Click on photo to go to host page.

Sarnia, Ontario

It used to be so easy to cross into Canada.  Then 9/11 changed it all.

The first time I went into Canada, I was fifteen and had never been outside of the state of California.  My family decided to take a real family trip, a type of trip that we were to never repeat.  Somehow, my parents had found a cheap cruise for us out of Vancouver, British Columbia.  It was cheap because the ship was a Soviet cruise ship with a big hammer and sickle on the smokestack.  The Soviets were trying to make inroads into U.S. and Canadian tourism, so we headed up to Vancouver, an overnight drive from my hometown, to board for what I think might have been their maiden voyage.  Unfortunately for us the timing was bad.  The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the US took economic countermeasures and, in the middle of our cruise up to Alaska, shut off most US ports and scenic attractions to us.  Our cruise mostly became one of going in and out of Canadian fjords.

What little I remember of our border crossing at the time was a friendly Canadian border guard asking what we were going to be doing in Canada.  I remember my father handing over his and my mother's identification in the form of their drivers' licenses.  Because us kids were all younger than sixteen, we didn't have I.D.'s and so I guess my parents had to vouch for us.

I remember just how cool it felt to be in Canada.  It was my first foreign country and even though today I see how similar the two countries are, through my fifteen-year-old eyes everyone and everything had this strange foreign hue to it.  The money was different, the shops had different names for the most part.  People spoke with a slightly different accent.  The names in the countryside were a little English and charming.  I met a couple of kids on the ship who were from a place called Surrey, which I learned was east of Vancouver, and it sounded so exotic to me.

I was a few years older the next time I went into Canada, and it was for the same reason that LHM went into Canada though in reverse.  I had made a trip out to the East Coast and happened to be in western New York.  I also had a person from Detroit with me.  Rather than going the long way around Lake Erie, we decided to cross over into Canada at Niagara Falls and make for Detroit.  Again, all it took was a driver's license.

I learned that air travel was different when my girlfriend and a friend went to Vancouver by air and while changing planes she learned that she would need a passport to get into Canada once she landed.  She didn't have hers with her and flew to Vancouver full of dread that they'd send her back.  After telling her that ordinarily she'd need a passport, Canadian authorities let her in and she got to enjoy her trip.  Ahhh...the days before Al Qaida ruined it for all of us...

Now, in this time of heightened border security, it seems that we have to bring our passports almost everywhere we go to prove that we are who we say we are and that we have a right to be where we are.  However, this border security is selective.  While goods and services are able to cross many borders without any problems, people cannot.  For example, after the U.S., Canada and Mexico signed and ratified the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), barriers to trade and services were lowered and eliminated between those countries.  Goods traveled freely back and forth between those countries.  But barriers were kept up to inhibit the flow of people.  Even if NAFTA created jobs, most people from Mexico who might want those newly created and lucrative jobs in the US were discouraged from getting them.

Then 9/11 happened, and security went way up.  The US is now in the process of building a border fence to keep poor Mexicans from coming across the borders in search of better work.  The last time I went to Canada, I crossed at the same border crossing where LHM will recross back into New York.  I had to show a passport.  The Canadian border guards were less friendly than I remembered, and more efficient and businesslike.  When I came back through the border at Niagara Falls, bored US border guards barely said a word.  When I walked across for a look at the Falls from the Canadian side, I found to my amusement, and a little shame, that it was free to walk into Canada but 50 cents to walk back into the US.  I watched people fumbling, trying to find 50 cents to get their kids and themselves into the US, and I could only shrug as I realized that even the border had become a money-making opportunity - reducing our deficit 50 cents at a time.  Welcome to the US, now pay up.

Perhaps we had a wakeup call as to how the world really is dangerous when the terrorists slammed jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  But what I really hate about Al Qaida, and our response to it, is that I almost feel like the U.S. has become the loner barricaded in the house, constantly suspicious of everyone and everything.  And I hate that our response has created a similar response in our friendly neighbor, the neighbor with whom we share the longest unmilitarized border in the world.  I miss the good old days when a license and a smile were all I needed to be thrilled that I could cross into a country so like my own, and yet different enough to feel a little exotic and thrilling.

Musical Interlude

Immigration Man, by Graham Nash and David Crosby and released in 1972, stems from Graham Nash's unfortunate experience with a U.S. Immigration official as he was coming back into the US.  It's a great song.

Here's a wonderful live version by Crosby and Nash in 2010:

Or if you prefer the 1972 studio album version:

If you want to know more about Sarnia

City of Sarnia
Sarnia Bayfest
Sarnia Observer (newspaper)
Sarnia Ontario Heritage Blog (nothing published since 2010, but good information)
Tourism Sarnia-Lambton
Wikipedia: Sarnia

Next up: London and Brantford, Ontario

Blue Highways: A Radar Station in Western North Dakota

Unfolding the Map

I'm making another educated guess for this post as to where William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) found the radar tower in North Dakota.  How?  I examined Google Earth, found a likely "small flourish of hills" with a "fine, clear lake" beneath them.  I didn't see evidence of a radar tower, so either it was dismantled or because of national security Google airbrushed it out of the satellite photo.  I am going to look at the idea of early warning defense (on multiple levels) by first writing about Martello towers, which LHM mentions in his quote below.  If you want an early warning about where we are located, use your inner radar to locate the map.

Book Quote

"In a small flourish of hills, the last I was to see for hundreds of miles, on an upthrusted lump sat a cube of concrete with an Air Force radar antenna sweeping the long horizon for untoward blips.  A Martello tower of the twentieth century.  Below the installation, in the Ice Age land, lay a fine, clear lake.  Fingerlings whisked the marsh weed, coots twittered on the surface, and at bankside a muskrat munched greens.  It seemed as if I were standing between two worlds.  But they were one: a few permutations of life going on about themselves, each thing trying to continue its way."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 7

This is just a stock photo of a radar system. Photo at Al Arabiya. Click on photo to go to host site.

And this is an image of a Martello tower in Ireland. Photo at Wikipedia. Click on photo to go to host site.

A Radar Station in Western North Dakota

Martello towers.  In entering North Dakota, LHM stops after seeing a radar antenna and calls it a Martello tower of the twentieth century.  Of course, he is writing in the late 1970s or early 1980s as the
Cold War is still raging, and there is still an off chance that Soviet ballistic missiles could appear as blips on the radar screen in a surprise attack.  You might or might not know that North Dakota, along with Wyoming and Montana, houses a number of active-duty missile silos which puts those states on the front lines if nuclear war were to ever occur.   But what really interested me was the term for the radar station as a Martello tower.  I didn't understand the reference, and one of the things I find really exciting about reading is running across a term that I don't know and then trying to discover what it means.

So here's the story about the Martello towers.  They were invented in the mid-1500s at Mortella Point in Corsica.  A small, round tower with very thick walls, they were built to serve as a lookout for North African pirates.  The towers initially served a lookout purpose.  They were garrisoned with a watchman who lit a fire at the top of the tower to signal when pirates were spotted.  This original purpose of the Mortella-type tower (it's name was later misspelled and changed to the Martello tower) is what LHM is referencing when he compares the radar station to the towers.  When I think of this use of the towers, my inner geek is reminded of The Lord of the Rings, when the signal towers are lit to call the Rohirrim to the aid and defense of Gondor.

Later, the Genoese expanded the use of the tower, turning them into small forts that could not only be used for lookouts, but also for defense.  The towers were tough and armed with cannon.  The British attacked the Mortella tower in 1794 with two warships and were unable to reduce it despite subjecting it to two days of pounding from the heavy guns of their ships (the tower eventually fell to a land-based force attacking from the rear).  The impressed British modified the tower design and built a number of them along the coasts of England, Scotland and Ireland to provide defense against a potential threat from Napoleon in France.  France itself built a number of Martello-style towers and again used them for communication and warning through the Chappe Telegraph system (an optical telegraph).

Eventually, the United States built its own Martello towers which can be seen in places like New Hampshire, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and New York City.  The Martello tower is also part of the insignia of a U.S. army infantry regiment.

In the use of communication, it is easy to see how the early use of the Martello tower can serve as a metaphor for today's long-range missile early-warning radar system.  Perhaps, if the combination of early-warning radar is combined with the instantaneous response of the Minuteman missiles in silos nearby, one can also extend the metaphor to the later use of the Martello towers as defense systems as well.  A lot of thought, bolstered by science and engineering, goes into these defense systems regardless of whether they are constructed of stone, morter and wood or if they are constructed of the highest-tech materials.  The idea is simple, provide early warning and defend the heartland.

I also think, however, of the defenses that are more close to home.  Martello towers can be metaphors for the defenses we put up in our own lives.  Security systems guard our businesses, vehicles and homes, providing warnings and defenses against fire, carbon monoxide, radon, and intruders.  Take a home alarm system.  An intruder breaks in, the alarm goes off, a signal is sent offsite to a center which calls police, and hopefully police arrive in time to apprehend the intruder.

How about even closer to home - our own personal warning systems and defenses?  These might be friends or loved-ones watching out for us, our so-called "wing" men or women who might signal that we should stay away from that good looking but unstable or unsavory character.  It might be our own consciences or inner-selves raising red flags about situations that we find ourselves in.  In response we may shut down, go into avoidance or, in desperate situations, launch countermeasures to protect ourselves.

No matter how far we extend the metaphor, we can find Martello towers that we've erected in all parts of our lives if we look.  And regardless of the level of analysis, they can be more or less effective depending on the situation.  Often our towers will give us plenty of warning.  Sometimes our towers will remain strong, holding off the attack.  We'll occasionally be surprised from behind where our defenses are weak.  Every so often a bombardment from something or someone will cause us some damage but at the end of the day, our tower will still stand.  And sometimes, a new weapon that we aren't expecting will render our defenses obsolete until we can upgrade them, usually through the lessons brought about by attack and sometimes our defeat.

In the end, advances in artillery technology rendered the Martello towers useless.  Able to withstand cannon shot because of their thick walls, they were done in by new rifled ammunition which allowed greater accuracy and destruction.  This too might serve as a metaphor.  Our modern Martello towers, our radar stations, are effective only as long as our radar can pick up incoming threats.  It won't be long before our stealth technology will be copied by other countries, and our current Martello towers, our current radar systems, will also become obsolete, at least until a new generation of Martello tower is conceived and implemented.

Musical Interlude

You can't have a post about a radar station, I don't think, without having Golden Earring's Radar Love as a musical interlude.  And it only fits better since the song references driving and is considered by Bill Lamb to be one of his top-10 driving songs of all time.

If you want to know more about...well...Western North Dakota or our nation's air defense system

Air Defense Radar Tutorial
Driving Tour of Western North Dakota
Modern Air Defense Radars
Online Air Defense Radar Museum
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Wikipedia: Ground-Based Midcourse Defense

Next up: Fortuna, North Dakota