Published on July 6, 2011

We’ve been thinking all week about Kim Prangley of Stanstead, Quebec, who when she tried to walk across the border to go dancing in Derby Line was told to line up with the cars on the street and wait her turn.

Besides being unsafe and unhealthy, standing behind the exhaust pipe of one impatiently idling car and in front of the bumper of another would just feel weird.

Sort of like those dreams in which you show up at work with no clothes on.  You’re standing there in line, look around you and say “Oh darn, I forgot my car.”

The people who control our border with Canada clearly believe that, even at a crossing between two small villages, walking across the line is a weird thing to do.  So they pretend pedestrians are cars.

In this they are years behind the times.  Aren’t we constantly being exhorted to leave the car at home and walk whenever and wherever we can?  It’s good for us, good for Mother Earth, good for the price of gas.

Couldn’t people who choose to stroll across the border be rewarded, just a little, by being processed as they arrive?

Our border officials worry that this would irritate the people in cars.  Forget about it.  They’re already irritated.

Anyway, the officials disputed Village Trustee Keith Beadle’s estimate that a dozen people a day might walk across the line.  They said it was only half that many.  How badly can six pedestrians in 24 hours gum up the finely honed machine that is our Customs and Border protection?

It stands to reason that the handful of people who choose to walk across the line are locals, people who are already mourning the loss of the spirit of relaxed international friendship that used to bind their villages together.

Would it hurt so much to give these local pilgrims, whether they are walking north or south, a prompt and polite greeting?

There are grim and serious matters that, over the past decade, have dictated a host of annoying restrictions on our freedom of travel.

But Kim Prangley has nothing to do with all of that.  This is about self-important officials, acting silly. — C.B.