Busy Monday

Yesterday my long time friend Donna came over.  We went to the Cloverdale Library to visit the genealogy center.  Donna is working on her family tree and wanted to get some help on research.  My tree has gone back as far as I can and other than one relative from Ireland, I can't do any more.  Ireland records are non-existent, but I am always hopeful they've magically appeared.

I have a another friend Laurie who asked me to look up her grandmother, born in Scotland she thought and passed away in North Battleford, SK.  Her birth records were easily located and I also found her voyage by ship to Halifax in 1909.  I then found her husband, born in the US who was much older.  When I was doing the research, I found he was married earlier in Nebraska and had five children, who he brought to Canada.  Laurie filled me in on the his history and it was very interesting.  I will get together with Laurie at the Cloverdale Library and help her research more of her interesting family.

After our genealogy search Donna and I went to the Olive Garden for a wonderful lunch.

Laurie invited me to a seminar on Border Security presented by the RCMP on Monday evening.  Two federal RCMP officers gave an interesting seminar on the US/Canada border.  They told us their area was from Point Roberts to Manning Park.  They showed us some of the equipment they use to find border jumpers, explained how asylum seekers are treated and how drugs make it across the border.

One of the interesting topics was how the many agencies of both the US and Canada work together.  Canadian enforcement officers that patrol Point Roberts to Manning Park have eleven full time agents.  The US counterparts have over 500 agents to deal with the same area!  Our RCMP also have the local police detachments to assist them.  One interesting comment was Canadian police dogs are trained to bite and if you've ever seen a dog apprehend a bad guy they are vicious.  US police dogs are only trained to sniff and detect illegal items.  They are not trained to bite.  When a border jumper goes from the US to Canada and they call in the Surrey dog squad, the US Border Agents are really amused when the Canadian police dogs apprehend a suspect.

Peace Arch Park is an area at the US/Canada border. People are known to go into the washrooms, change their clothes and then "walk" across the border.  If you know the park, this would be easy to do.  They have a lot of surveillance in the area.  On July 17th, our Red Hat is hosting an international event at Peace Arch Park.  Last year many came from the US and Canada for a wonderful picnic lunch at the border.  We had a wonderful time.  When I thought about it, 300 ladies wearing red hats would be very difficult to watch!  I don't think any of my Red Hat sisters would "jump the border", but it would be a fun day to do surveillance.

When asked about building a wall in a trouble area on Zero Avenue between Peace Arch Park and 184th, the officers both laughed and said "a wall was a good idea in China centuries ago", but now with the sophisticated surveillance equipment we have it's not money well spent.