Amy Goodman on Her Detention at the Canadian Border: This is Democracy's Loss
By Heather Tuesday Dec 01, 2009 6:00am
Amy Goodman weighed in on Democracy Now about her detention at the Canadian border and what it might mean for assuring that there is still a free press in Canada and that journalists are not intimidated into not covering stories that the government thinks are harmful to corporate interests.
Full segment and transcript available at Democracy Now.
JUAN GONZALEZ: That report from Kathy Tomlinson of CBC. But, Amy—Thanksgiving—tell us more about exactly what happened when you were stopped.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Juan, it was really incredible. It was Wednesday, the evening before Thanksgiving, and we’re headed to the Vancouver Public Library, driving up from Seattle. When we got to the border, I thought it was just going to be routine. We handed in our passports. They stopped for a minute, and they flagged us. They told us to pull over, and it’s pouring rain outside. We pulled the vehicle over. We had to get out and go into the facility.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And you were there with Dennis—
AMY GOODMAN: With Dennis Moynihan and with Chuck Scurich. We’re on our Breaking the Sound Barrier tour. And while folks here were eating turkey, we thought we’d go “talk turkey” in Vancouver and talk about the columns in Breaking the Sound Barrier with Canadian listeners to Democracy Now!. Three community radio stations in Vancouver run Democracy Now!
So, we pulled in, went into the border facility. It’s a large hangar-like space. And they start going through our car, but we’re now inside. And then the border patrol call me up to the counter. And the guard—
JUAN GONZALEZ: And obviously, to cross into Canada, people don’t need visas, they just—
AMY GOODMAN: No, that’s right.
JUAN GONZALEZ:—need to show identification.
AMY GOODMAN: You need your passport. And we were very surprised. It was almost empty, this whole hangar, so we were clearly singled out.
And I go up to the counter, and the guard says, “I want your notes.”
I said, “My notes?”
He said, “The notes for the talk tonight.”
I was completely taken aback. I went out to the car, and I brought in the copy of Breaking the Sound Barrier. And I came in, and I said, “Well, this is my new book, and it’s a book of columns. So I actually read from the columns.”
He said, “I want the notes.”
I said, “Well, these you can think of as my notes.”
And he said, “What are you talking about?”
And I said, “Well, I actually start with the last column, which is a column”—as I was saying in this report to Kathy Tomlinson—“about Tommy Douglas.”
Now, for people in the United States, he’s not as famous a name. But in Canada, he’s considered the greatest Canadian. Tommy Douglas is the Premier—was the Premier of Saskatchewan who brought, who pioneered the Canadian national health care system. And, interestingly, he’s the grandfather of the actor Kiefer Sutherland, right? Kiefer Sutherland’s mother is Shirley Douglas, the actress; his father, Donald Sutherland. But his grandfather was Tommy Douglas.
And, so I said, “I’ll be talking about Tommy Douglas.” Actually we were at the Douglas border crossing.
And he said, “What else?”
I said, “What else? Well, global warming.”
“What else?” he said.
I said, “The global economic meltdown.”
“What else?” he said.
I said, “Well, I’ll also be talking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“What else are you talking about?” he said. And—
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, is it your sense that this was some rogue customs agent or that he had basically been alerted—
AMY GOODMAN: There with another—
JUAN GONZALEZ:—and had gotten instructions to do this kind of questioning?
