Observations
If you get to Washington, please PM me. I'd love to meet you.
A few notes about my experiences in crossing the USA-Canada border.
My father's mother's people were from the area along the Fermanagh-Monaghan border. They got out of Ireland during "Black '47". Because of the substantial anti-Irish (and anti-Catholic) feeling in the United States in the late 1840s and early 1850s, the ship carrying my ancestors ended up in the St. Lawrence River, and they ended up in Kingston, which is halfway between Toronto and Montreal at the northeast corner of Lake Ontario. So, Canada is in my heritage, for better or worse.
Canada and its provinces spend a fair amount of money in tourism advertising here with the goal of getting Americans to visit. One is enticed by the advertising; then, when one gets to the border, he or she is viewed as a potential criminal. I am made to feel this way every darn time I want to go into Canada. Almost 10 years ago, I had my dad in my van; we crossed into Canada in a very interesting spot--we took a ferry from Cape Vincent, NY, at the source of the St. Lawrence River (south channel), where Lake Ontario flows into the Thousand Islands, about one mile on a sort of barge that accomodates 6 vehicles, over to Wolfe Island--about a 7 mile drive later, you reach the village of Maryville, where you go on a bigger ferry for about 20 minutes to downtown Kingston. There was a solitary female immigration/customs officer on the Canada side of the Cape Vincent ferry, and she did not believe that my 80+ year old father and I were in Canada to visit his first cousin, age 84, whom he had never met. Her skepticism not withstanding, she let us through. This is supposed to be the longest "friendly border" in the world. What a joke.
I've taken the train to Montreal when it was an overnight sleeper from Washington Union Station. The Canadians actually stop the train when it reaches the border at Cantic, Quebec, East German style (unlike the former USA INS, whose agents would board the train in Montreal, and then start checking passengers at the USA border without requiring the train to stop, and then detraining at St. Albans, Vermont). The Canuckistan border guards hold the train for up to 90 minutes.
Just as bad is the big border crossing at Blaine, Washington/Surrey, BC across the Interstate 5/Highway 99 corridor between Seattle and Vancouver. I've been in BC twice in the last three years, on the invitation in the media to visit "Super Natural British Columbia". Both times, I have had a man in a turban and the uniform of the Canada border agency stop me and give me the third degree--how did I get there, where did I get my rental car, how much money did I have on me, did I have any firearms, did I have any food, what was I doing in Canada, when was the last time I was in Canada, did I have any business in Canada, etc., etc.
Anyhow, I digress. Two things I like in the "Golden Horseshoe" and "Niagara Frontier" areas: (1) immediately across expressway 427 from YYZ is Woodbine Racecourse, the top horse racing facility in Canada and, next to Vincennes in Paris, the top harness horse race track in the world; and (2) less than 15 miles east of Niagara Falls, one of the most interesting and historic places in the annals of American transportation/commercial history, the Lockport locks, originally opened circa 1825, which was the final natural barrier in connecting the Hudson River with Lake Erie and the great lakes beyond. In season, there are boat tours of the locks. It seems funny to say that something 400 miles from New York City would make it the leading seaport in the world, but the Lockport Locks and the Erie Canal made it exactly that.