the States at Detroit past a nasty, suspicious customs official and reentered Canada at Asaenia as we were counselled by TADP to do. (TADP, nicknamed TADPole, stands for Toronto Anti-Draft Programme. ) The Nice Man passed us right on through with lots of rubber stamping and telling us how we'd like Canada. We've been here almost a year and a half now, and he was right!
What one applies for is "Landed Immigrant Status. "  The fastest way of handling this is by applying at the border.   One may apply from the U. S. or Canada, but this takes several months and it is illegal to work in Canada without this status. (For info on draft dodging, write TADP, 2347 Yonge Street, Suite 14, Toronto 315, Ontario, Canada. The Draft Dodgers Manual can be obtained from TADP; its price is between one and two dollars, including cost of mailing. )
A few months ago there was a furor over immigration procedures regarding deserters, immigration guidelines allowed consideration of an American's draft status. Draft dodgers were rarely turned down if otherwise qualified, but deserters were.    This meant the best course of action for a deserter was t.o come into Canada and apply for Landed Immigrant Status from within, facing all the disadvantages mentioned above*.
For an impoverished deserter this was a tremendous handicap. I was part of a letter-writing campaign aimed at changing immigration policy.   Here is an excerpt from one of a few letters I received from Members of Parliament regarding this:
"After a great deal of consideration, I finally came to the conclusion that in the rather special cimcum-stances winch exist today, Canada should not refuse to accept military deserters if otherwise well qualified for Canadian Citizenship, and accordingly, with a number of other Liberal Members I urged the Minister to apply the same practice to deserters as were being applied to those who were merely evading military service.   As indicated in the enclosed statement of the Minister, this principle has been accepted. "
Two of the three leading Toronto dailies also supported the admission of deserters and that policy was soon adopted --much to the relief of us all.
I am pretty much in exile from the exiles as there is a good deal of squabbling and political in-fighting going on. However, I have worked a good bit with the Union of American Exiles --an organization which provides emergency aid, such as housing, for dodgers and deserters.   J am familiar
V e Toronto scene only, but it is one of the large centers of anti.-draft
immigration and appears to be typical. This much is clear:  there is no stereotype of either the draft dodger or deserter.   Draft dodgers vary from clean-cut computer.programmers to long-haired revolutionaries, "nonviolent" and otherwise --though most have had at least some college and many have degrees.   Deserters are of course neatly cropped, at least on arrival, and tend to be younger and to have less--or no -college. Too, there are many--neither dodger or deserter --who are in a sort of self-imposed exile, motivated in
varying degrees by the War in Vietnam.
As appearances and backgrounds vary; so do life styles.   Many are filtering into the Canadian way of life and would not return to the U.S. in the event of a declaration of amnesty. These people will take out Canadian citizenship after five years residence. Others--and perhaps these are the ones who most stick together as a group--are biding their time:, sonic: happily and some net, until they can return.   Much of the squabbiihg and in-fighting I mentioned earlier is due: to these different attitudes. Semantical debates--"exile" vs. expatriate- -are persistent.
In any case, large demenslrations, such as the recent Moraterium activities here, still manage to attract. most Americans.   AJ1 of us know the war still ge;es on and on. , .
WHERE I'M AT
to haul the; profits--you know, the real money,   not just the leavings --of their depredations off tcj Chicago, where the:ir avaricious country cousins will never lay hands on a penny of it.    Pre)bably it's too much to expect of these small-town greed-heads and progress fre:aks that they realize that the wejrking people ef Russell County aren't likely U) be: any happier about getting screwerl by the Bosses than working peejple anywhere have ever been, and that therefore the only realistic and sensible way te keep unions out of the county is to keep industry out of it too.   That kind of insight requires more selflessness than most folks can muster.   But wouldn't you suppose that at least they'd have learned by now, what with all the talk in the papers and on tv about our ravaged environment, that if industry does come to Russell County it will almost instantly begin to destroy the very things that make life here about as good as life can get nowadays, I mean the ecological and social balance, the tranquility, the sense and spirit of true community?
Not bloody likely.   Yet if Jamestown wants an object lesson (as of course it patently does not) in the horrors that industrialization will inevitably loose upon it, it has only to look ninety miles to the north, at Lexington, a beautiful little city until about twenty years ago, when it fell victim to its own greed and began to peddle its flesh and heritage to the highest bidder.   Now, gorged and bloated with a population that has nearly doubled in fifteen years, its weary old innards swollen almost to blue-tail fly
bursting with an unbelievabley turgid flow of automobiles and the flatulence of their noxiems fumes,  its' once-lovely face: painted garishly with neon which fails utterly to mask the festering pocket-slums that scar it everywhere, it puts me in mind of nothing so much as one of these worn-out old bawds who alftrays inhabit Tennessee Williams plays, the ones who used to be beautiful, high-born southern belles until they fell on evil days and were obliged to spend twenty years on their backs in some New Orleans whorehouse. Williams, of course, always makes it quite clear that these faded flowers are actually insatiable nymphomaniacs who revel shamelessly in their own corruption--which perfectly completes the analogy.   Lexington is a living example of my friend J. D. Smith's dictum, which holds that "you can shit in your nest for just so long, and then you are nesting in your shit. "
But as I said, Jamestown isn't the least bit interested in illustrative examples; it's far too busy warming up for the race to its own destruction to bother with the fretful whining of wind-kissing outsiders the likes of me.
Well, what the hell, it hasn't happened yet, and I don't reckon it's likely to begin between now and Christmas, which is as long as I'll be here. Mean-
while, I'll sit tight and do (ugh! hate-ful phrase) my thing, writing a lot and reading a -little (Tolkien at last!) and swimming nekkid in the lake every afternoon as long as the weather and local Christian vigilance permits, digging the first real autumn I've had a chance to look at in almost fifteen years, learning to do for myself the things I've been letting others do fer me for lo these many years, having myself a little drinkypoo before supper every evening (same old Cap'n) and watching the sunset and missing all the good groovey California people a whole lot more than you might ever imagine.
And that, goodbuddies all, is where I'm at.   Considering all the awful shi that's coming down these days, Jamestown, Kentucky, may well net be the sort of place an honorable man ought to be hanging out in.   But right now, at this precise, particular instant, with the good sun hot on my back and the orchard fairly abound with merrymaking grasshoppers and
the lake, cool and green and placid, awaiting me just beyond the forest's rim, I can't think of any way in the ajj world to avoid admitting I'm god damn glad to be here.
So, as Wendell Berry would say, let it happen, Cap'n.
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