I once wrote on my website that having lived in both countries, I’d take the U.S. anytime over Canada and its Nordic, morose people. After doing time there (seven lean years), I can with comfort compile a composite of the Canadian Character. My inspiration would be the somnambulant, morbid, long-suffering zombies of Ingmar Bergman’s films.

Then I felt guilty and removed the comment. Perhaps it was a little severe. And, after all, hadn’t Canada opposed the invasion of Iraq? That alone warranted a reevaluation of this already-broad generalization.

Yesterday I was reminded of the mind-numbing pettiness that made Canada such a disgusting place to live in the first place (tax rates aside).

I am planning on purchasing a new mattress this week. The old one is a perfectly good, high-quality mattress, bought originally in Canada. I suggested to my daughter (who still resides in that place) that she take it. She’s sleeping on something from which the springs protrude.

She and a friend hired a van and arrived to collect the thing. I was glad knowing that she’d be sleeping on a decent mattress. After a pleasant evening of Ali G. viewing (which is where the apt appellation “crap country” originates), the “kids” headed back to “Soviet Canuckistan” with the neatly wrapped mattress and base and a few other odds and ends (more furniture, but also the stuff mothers give kids who’ve left the nest: anti-cold meds, vitamins, pullovers, socks, and ready, wild rice from Trader Joe’s, which is kind of like Capers, only dirt cheap).

Sometime later we received a frantic call from the border: customs would not allow a used mattress through—one that had originated in Canada—without proof that it had been fumigated (my daughter is asthmatic and would not have been able to sleep on a mattress that had been fouled in this fashion). What’s more, the cretins tried to shake the kids down for money to dump the thing for them. Thieves.

The Used Mattress Materials Regulations are very vague, but the bastards at the border embellished and said that if they did return to the US and came back the following day, they’d better have certified proof from a fumigator.

The only bed bugs (and other vermin) that ever came close to that mattress set were those customs creeps.

P.S. Please spare me the somber (Canadian) “don’t-generalize” comments. I know a few wonderful Canadians (okay two, maybe three). But had we known it was such a socialist dump —an honorary member of the Third World is how the Wall Street Journal described it—and that we’d be clipping coupons for our first three years there and living in a complex infested with Iranian gangs—we’d have come on straight to the States. Oh, and my husband was in the top 10% of earners in Canada. Yep, that’s as good as it gets for highly-skilled newcomers. Gotta keep the gap between taxpayers and tax consumers as narrow as possible.

Update: I’m rather proud to report that despite the stress endured by the border bullies—and the fury of not being able to keep her property—my daughter and her friend still found the composure to look up a charity in the nearest US town, drive there, and donate the mattress. That’s far better than letting the bureaucratic bandits steal it.