Loren Pechtel

Most Canadian travel is near the border. A diversion could easily put a plane in the USA at which point having a passport would be convenient.

beachmouse

I went to college in Michigan not too far from the Ontario border and in the 80s and 90s, Windsor was this mystical place- show your driver's license at the border, show it again at the bar, and because the Ontario drinking age was 19, you could like legally buy beer there, and it was awesome for everyone on the trip except for the poor soul stuck as the designated driver. No one was exactly sure what a DUI in Canada involved, but it was assumed it would probably be really bad, so people were responsible in that way.

Part of the reason why the passport/passport card requirements for the US/Canadian border were fought so long and hard against were for that kind of casual cross border shopping and entertainment.

Daawgon

Nothing, absolutely nothing, surprises me about my fellow Americans, and it's really so very sad.

ace26

I hope in my lifetime I will get to have my passport info embedded on a chip in my body, or something to this effect. No more triple checking and panicking on the way to the airport that I forgot my passport!

GUWonder

There has been backing off from such practices, largely due or coming due to US Government-led pressure to no longer do those kind of things to the same extent because of the peddled security paranoia about terrorists in the midsts.

GUWonder

US citizens are still granted entry to Canada without a US passport, primarily at land crossings, but sometimes even at airports of entry (which happens, for example, when the passport gets lost after the gate check or check-in in the US or other country). At land border crossings into Mexico, much the same as with Canada: US citizens granted entry without a passport.

GUWonder

Be surprised then. It happens daily for US citizens' entries into Canada and Mexico, legally at land border crossings.

sillypainter

FALSE. Law has changed a couple of years ago.

Only people under the age of 18 are admitted with a birth certificate.

gglave

You forgot to mention the strip clubs full of Michigan college boys

GUWonder

I entered Canada as a US citizen last month with only a regular driving license and US birth certificate. So much for your false reference. And here is another fact: this is done for those well over the age of 18 years too.

The US fortunately doesn't have absolute control over Canada.

http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publicati...sf5119-eng.pdf

Christopher

I'm sure that's right. Although until (I think) the early 1970s it was possible to be admitted to Luxembourg on the basis of an expired Australian passport (don't ask why: I've never known).

Christopher

I think that's right. And if the couple had meekly accepted what was said and looked upset and confused, rather than being bombastic and boorish, I'm sure that we would all have felt desperately sorry for them (if we don't already). I think too that people who travel internationally a lot (or even occasionally) and who mix with other people who do probably forget that there are some people who never travel overseas and who probably don't know anyone much who does either.

In the days when the normal way of purchasing an aeroplane ticket was through a travel agent, typically in person but sometimes over the phone, problems like the one described by the OP would have been less likely to arise, simply because the travel agent would ask about whether the traveller's passport was up to date and so on.

Now that people purchase tickets on-line, it's much easier for details such as this to pass unnoticed: although websites usually have something about, or a link to something about it, it's often written in small print somewhere in the corner of the screen or else buried away with a lot of legalese about various things. As noted above, the thing such such sites often push under your nose, by way of big fonts and flashing signs, are things about booking hotel rooms or renting cars.

emma69

Do group passports exist still? I remember when I went to France with my prep school, we had to give them a passport photo for a group passport (presumably someone thought 9 year old girls might, I dunno, lose their passport (whatever gave them that idea!)

You could (within the last 30 years) also travel internationally without a passport between military bases (and I think, on military flights between civilian airports) with just your military ID card.

GUWonder

Group passports still exist -- many issued in the EU even a couple of years ago at least -- but they have been increasingly phased out and they are no longer being accepted in the way they used to be.

I saw group passports in Scandinavia being used in 2010 which had been issued that same year by a Scandinavian country. The UK has this:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAn...orts/DG_174122

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAn...orts/DG_174361

These things came into use for school groups as a substitute means of getting a passport for children whose parents either were unable or unwilling to afford to get a passport for their child(ren). Kids losing their own individual passports was a concern dealt with separately, by having a passport quartermaster of sort for all the passports.

But group passports were in use long before annual school trips across borders was in the realm of middle class school experiences.

djk7

At the land crossings from the US to Mexico (at least the ones I have crossed), you walk or drive right into Mexico without passing through any immigration or customs controls. Coming back, of course, is not as simple.