Lady Diana

My apologies for title of Canadian Customs, it was a US customs agent that forced the quilt artist/teacher to write SAMPLE in permanent marker on all of her quilts she was bringing over for a quilt show. Her friend brought hers through with no problem, however, this quilter was detained a hour, missed her flight to Minnesota and had to deface her quilts for fear the customs agent thought she might sell them....she had a booth at the show and these were her quilts for display.
Still Outrageous whether the agent was US or Candian. I have had issues with both sets of agents.
Diana

clem55

How terrible for her!!

BellaBoo

I would be in jail! How ignorant of the agent to display his authority this way because he could. I hope the quilter has legal rights to sue. All the aliens sneaking over, drugs being smuggled here and the agents worry about quilts that may be for sale?

Pzazz

OMG!!!!! What WAS that agent thinking!!! Appears to be a huge control issue going on there. I am so sorry she had to destroy her quilts.

Patti

Lori L

I'd being making a stink and a half. Letters to the local papers, TV news, as well as to the Customs Dept itself. This sounds like a person with "little man and control issues". How very, very sad that she had to permanently mark her quilts. It would be a constant reminder to me, everytime I looked at them and I would get angry all over again!

sahm4605

If that quilter had been my grandma she would have threatened his life if he even thought to make her ruin something she made. Which she has done before. This was pre 9-11 however. She was taking an apple pie to Canada and the guy said that he would have to cut into it to make she there wasn't anything "baked" into it. She said that she would cut off any appendages that came near her pie. And she would have done it too. She has keyed cars before when they took her place she was waiting for.
But I do agree that I would be making lots of calls to various places and making a nucence of my self over this.

lazyquilter

I was so stunned when I read this. I could not walk away with this kind of behaviour. I would probaby be in hand cuffs, but there would be no way that I could bring myself to deface a work of art. This is pathetic in my mind. I see advertisments in my local paper looking to hire border police.. realizing of course, it's for down south, but it sounds to me that regardless of what side of the street they were on, they were probably people who had no comunication skills, would never be hired by a legitimate government agency where they could wear a "big boy's" gun and failed every other test for any other job. Sometimes the pay is so low that it's type of mentalility that gets this jobs to throw their weight around. Really, pushing a senior around for something so ridecules just to strut the strut is to much for me to even consider Home Land security. I so hope that she filed charges when she was in her side of the fence and threatened a lawsuit. Of course how do you put a price on something like this. I can not believe how angry I am on the inside about this. This is just so wrong.

Jingle

I'm so sorry this happened to her. Power goes to lots of people's heads.

twistedstitcher

http://daphnegreig.blogspot.com/2010...et-report.html

If anyone wants to read her blog post, here's a link. It was a US Customs agent.

mamaw

That is so sad, doesn't speak well for customs at all.