Forgivingly Porous Borders

That's one big problem, for the United States living alongside Canada. Two friendly nations side by side, sharing a common language, values, social attributes and culture - all more or less, sometimes less; usually more in common that we have than sets us apart. But Canada's big neighbour to the south is nervous about the prospect of Canada's leaky borders seeping potential terrorists and villains of one kind or another over into America's territory.

Caution must be exercised at all times when one is a world power and has, in the prosecution of exercising that power, brought untoward attention to itself. All the more so of late when furiously irate and often religiously inflamed jihadists celebrate a pact to destroy whatever they can of the country and its people they feel is humiliating theirs in a clear and vicious demonstration that they too are capable of sowing chaos.

Seen in that context one cannot really blame high-level administrators for embracing that most egregiously persistent of irritating (to Canada) urban legends - that terrorists invariably will seek to enter the United States through easy-going Canadian borders. That they have not, but for a few anomalous incidents is beside the point, since dearly-held convictions do not readily surrender to fact.

And maybe they're on to something, after all, something that appears to have eluded the attention of Canadian border agents; that this is a two-way border, and Canada is susceptible to receiving individuals whose behaviour is no credit to any country where they choose to reside. For it would appear that Canada unwittingly provided a ten-year haven to a child molester who faces up to 30 years in prison in Tennessee.

The man, a university student at the time, and tutor to a young boy, repeatedly assaulted him sexually. After being arrested, Russel Victor McCollum, now 30, was freed on bail of $50,000 posted by his father. Who then quickly turned around and recommended to his son that he hie himself off to Canada and lie low there. His concern for his son obviously trumping the $50,000 which would then be forfeit.

Under an alias, he lived quietly in Canada. Where he met a young woman, they fell in love, and lived together for a few years. And began to plan marriage. Unfortunately for Mr. McCollum, known as Jeremy Thomas (isn't that a nice choice of name?) details of his case were aired on America's Most Wanted, and from that point on, nothing seemed to go right for him.

"We have been on his trail for quite a long time", a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said, since he was listed on its Top 10 Most Wanted roster. "We knew he was out there somewhere and we had a couple of narrow misses. These are very serious charges." They are; he faces four charges of aggravated sexual battery of a child, and fleeing to avoid prosecution.

So here it is: Canada allows terrorists and other scum of the Earth through our mutual border to the U.S. - where, just incidentally, two systems of checks are in place; Canada's and those of the U.S. And the United States filters their own personages of questionable moral and human values through to Canada. Well, there's obviously no contest here.

It's tactless of them to send us their social outcasts and predators, but it's downright evil of us to send through to them murderous terrorists whose ticket to Paradise is clearly creating bloody mayhem on as large a scale as inhumanly possible.

We stand corrected and humiliated.