I live on the Canadian shore of the St. Lawrence River, in the Thousand Islands area. For 60 years I've paddled, rowed and sailed over the river, ignoring the boundary line, and as long as we didn't land in the U.S., there were never any problems. Last summer, on an evening paddle, 8 of us were paddling in U.S. waters about 500-600 metres (550-660 yards)from the U.S. shore (the river is about 2000 metres wide here). I was having some shoulder problems so one other paddler and I had just started heading back toward the Canadian side when a U.S. border patrol boat approached the other paddlers and asked if they were U.S. citizens. In age our group ranged from 50 to the early 80s and did not appear threatening to me, unless you worry about men in neoprene skirts. When my friends explained that they were all Canadians and were just out for a paddle, there were told to get back into Canadian waters then the patrol boat escorted them all the way back, just to make sure that they did. This is a big and recent change in attitude. A few years ago the regulations were tightened in regards to landing in the U.S., but we've never had problems paddling on the U.S. side of the river, well away from shore. By the way, in this area there is nothing on the U.S. shore except a few cottages, a couple of houses, and one park. John skimmer_at_enter.net wrote: > Hi All, > > Many of us for many years have paddled in the Thousand Islands and > other US-Canadian border areas. The party is over folks! > > Check out the following press release! Failure to follow the rules > has not been indicated, but I bet it won't be pretty! *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sat Apr 23 2005 - 05:12:33 PDT
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