Canada - Denied!

Got to Mt. Baker and had a great time snowboarding, no spectacular wipeouts this time. The next day I got up and headed towards Canada with the intention of spending a week in Whistler snowboarding. I got to the border and had a very nice conversation with the woman at the booth explaining how I had been traveling for 8 months and what I was planning on doing in Canada etc. She told me to stop in at immigration and talk to them for a while. So again I explained what I was up to, what kind of job I had had, where I was from, how I was financing the trip, that I didn't have any felonies or outstanding arrest warrants. After I explained it again, the woman looked at me and said "you quit your job?!?!?" with the same sort of look and intonation one might use if asking someone "you cut off your hand?!?!?". She asked me how much money I had on me (about $20), how I would get money in Canada (two ATM cards, 3 credit cards), how much money total I had in the bank. I've seen pictures of Canada on TV and it pretty much looks like the US, and I've met some Canadians and they seem to operate pretty much the same way we do in regards to banking, so I figured I wouldn't have any problems, and didn't need to carry $1000 in travelers cheques to travel there. Well, she took my passport off to check some things out for a while, and came back to tell me that I didn't have a record (Thank god! I was so worried!), and then she went off and talked to her supervisor for a while. At this point I was getting a bad feeling about the whole thing. She came back and told me that they were worried I didn't have enough money, and did I have any bank statements to prove how much money I had. Not having any current bank statements with me, she asked if I had any other way to prove how much money I had. I was beginning to realize that I should have just told them I was on vacation for a few weeks. Unable to prove to their satisfaction that I had did indeed have sufficient financial resources (I mean, $100 is worth like 5000 Canadian dollars, what's the big deal! Besides, their silly money has animals and pictures of the Queen of England on it, I think they should be worried about their money, not mine), she suggested I go back to the US, get $20 out of an ATM and bring them the receipt showing the balance in the account, and then they would give me some sort of entrance visa good for a week. She then gave me a piece of paper to give to US customs on my way back through. So I got in line to get back in the US, and started wondering if I was going to have problems getting back in. I had visions of having to camp in the no man's land DMZ between the two countries while the diplomats worked it all out. The US customs guy looked at the paper she had given me and with sort of a chuckle asked me why they wouldn't let me in. I told him the story and he sent me on my way. Pulling off at the first exit and looking for a bank, it occurred to me that most of my cash reserves were sitting in my brokerage account. Having just paid bills out of my bank account, and not having replenished it yet from my brokerage account, my balance would appear to be considerably lower than the amount of money that I told them I had. With no way to get a statement for all my accounts on a Saturday afternoon, I decided to make some new plans. Simultaneously disappointed and highly amused at being the only person ever stopped at the Canadian border I headed South.