London to Montreal was roughly a six and half hour flight, but we never took off. The airline, Air Transat, made a last minute change and took everyone off the plane shortly before departure to put us on a flight to Toronto. In Toronto we were expected to catch a connection to Montreal. From there I was planning catch a bus to my first stop in Canada; a small organic homestead in the South of Quebec. The new flight was seven hours long, not including the delay and the flight to Montreal which was likely another hour. I don’t know how long it took; I didn’t get on the Montreal flight that day. I made it to Toronto airport in the early afternoon (thanks to the time zone difference), but that’s where I made a stupid mistake.

The first line of border control was a screen that asked questions. For each question (any health issues, are you pregnant, are you a terrorist etc) the new arrival selected ‘yes’ or ‘no’. One of the questions was “do you intend to work on farms?”. I pondered this for a bit, conscious that answering yes could lead to some tricky questions, but no wasn’t strictly true either – largely because the definition of ‘farm’ is blurry. If you stay with someone who grows vegetables but doesn’t sell them, is it a farm? Not according to the Canada Revenue Agency, but if your veggie production has economic value and you pass some assessments, then the answer becomes yes. It’s a question of tax designation, but as a traveller looking primarily for cultural exchange in various different places, I should have answered ‘no’. In a fit of conscience, I clicked ‘yes’ and retrieved the receipt that poked out from below the screen.

The second line of border control was a bloke in a booth. I was diverted into a line of people with receipts (it seemed not everyone had received one) and queued patiently, expecting to be able to smooth things out comfortably with the border control guard. A traveller ahead of me was being quizzed at one of the booths.

“Where are you staying during your time in Canada, sir?”.

The man was staying in a hotel, and provided some papers to prove it. The guard looked unconvinced.

“This will cost you $10,000 dollars, sir. How much money do you have for your time here?”

His finances were clearly insufficient so the guard, shaking her head incredulously, squiggled something on his receipt and sent him on to the next stage.

It was my turn next, so I stepped up to the neighbouring booth and presented my passport and receipt.

“So you plan to work on farms eh?” asked the bloke, providing me with my first Canadian “eh”.

At this point I realised that I had no idea what I was supposed to say, and ended up with something along the lines of ‘sort of’. This didn’t go down very well, and I became painfully conscious of how the previous man must have felt. Besides being inconvenient and expensive, deportation would be an embarrassing start to the Canada trip. After a couple more fumbled answers, the guard made an unimpressed expression and squiggled a big red X on my receipt, handed it back and sent me through.

A big red X is unambiguously a bad thing, and I wasn’t surprised to find myself diverted by an attendant to level three of border control. Level three was an enormous snaking queue in front of a row of desks with a selection of very serious looking officials, who all looked like cage fighters dressed in police uniforms. I spent almost three hours in this queue, thus missing the connecting flight to Montreal. Babies cried, students fumbled travel papers nervously and criminal record holders scowled angrily. The slow, unpleasant wait had one advantage, I had plenty of time to clarify my story; just a traveller staying with hosts in Canada for cultural exchange, no farms.

When I finally reached the desks I was grilled on why I was in Canada, what I did for work, how much money I had and, critically, “would you have any problem buying a return ticket today?”

“Well yeah – but I could if I had too”, was a sufficiently convincing response, and I was sent on my way after barely two minutes.

This wasn’t a great first impression, and I wasn’t feeling much goodwill towards Canadian border control as I headed up to the airport lobby. I spent a further hour on the phone to Air Transat demanding that they replace my connecting flight and sort out accommodation for me in Toronto. They obliged, given that I had been delayed in customs, and a rep from the airline bought me dinner (a sandwich from subway) before guiding me into a taxi bound for the hotel.

The next day went more smoothly, and after a complimentary breakfast at the hotel and a quick flight to Montreal, I set out to my first stop; a small farm near Sutton just north of the border.