Flirting With Ontario
A couple of years ago I visited the International Peace Garden, which is open to Americans but part of it is in Manitoba. I blogged about that. Since then I’ve kept wondering, are there other places along the US-Canada border where Americans are permitted inside a hermetically sealed little chunk of Canada?
If you know of any, please let me know. Meanwhile I have now made it a game to noodle along the Canadian border for other special places like that – beginning with Ontario. As I flirt with Ontario I’ll report what I find here.
One thing I want to make clear is that this is just a game. Nobody is trying to sneak across the border. I don’t even want to do that and it would violate the rules of the game – which are that it has to be a bona fide place where any American is allowed to be without a passport. So let’s play the game:
M.C.L. 2019 §§28.721 through 28.736, as
modified by HB 5679 effective 2021
Registration Triggers and Deadlines:
Initial registration
and updates are required “not more than 3 days,” (HB 5679). A “residence” is defined as “that
place at which a person habitually sleeps, keeps his or her personal effects,
and has a regular place of lodging.” §28.722(p). Also, “An individual required to be
registered under this act who is not a resident of this state but has his or
her place of employment in this state shall report” not more than 3 days. §28.725(2).
Visitors: Michigan law does not address registration by visitors.
The requirement to report any place “[t]he individual intends to
temporarily reside at … other than his or her residence for more than 7 days”
applies only to “[a]n individual required to be registered under this act who
is a resident of this state” §28.725(1).
However, visitors should assume at a minimum that this 7 day rule will apply to
you.
Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:
1000 foot residency
and loitering restrictions were repealed
by HB 5679.
Those required to register
after 7-01-2011 must report all email addresses & internet identifiers
(defined in HB 5679).
Duration & updates:
15 years to life. Updates: T1 – annual; T2 – 6 mo; T3 – 3 mo. §28.725.
Soo Locks Boat Tour
Flirt Rating – A
This is a really enjoyable 2 hour boat tour from Sault Ste. Marie, MI that takes you through both the Canadian and American Soo Locks. You can see where I was parked in the screen shot of my gps monitor, and I have marked the tour route. The map also shows the US-Canadian border, so you can see that at least an hour of this trip is inside Canada.
The Canadian Locks, which you go through first, are within Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Park & Historic Site – as you see on the map, all of Whitefish Island is parkland. Once you’re in the lock they close the doors, tie the tour boat up to one side of the lock for safety, and fill the lock to raise the ship. All the while, there you are enjoying your surroundings in a Canadian National Park.
I have decided that to get a Flirt Rating of “A” in this game, just being in a boat in Canadian Waters (like at Niagara Falls) isn’t good enough. You have to be able to touch Canadian land to get an “A.” On this criterion the Soo Locks Boat Tour delivers. While the lock is being filled you can get up and walk around, and even touch side of the lock’s wall where the boat is tied up. It may only be concrete – but you’re touching Canadian soil when you do that.
Also, because this lock is the main attraction in a national park there are a lot of people around watching the show, and yes indeed the Americans on the boat strike up conversations with the Canadians just a few feet away, me included. I was having so much fun I couldn’t stop laughing!
The nice views of Sault St. Marie, Ontario all come before and while you’re in the lock. After that the tour takes you west and near to a huge iron ore and steel processing plant on the Canadian side. It really is impressive in its own stark way. Meanwhile the tour guide explains which piles of ore are what and what some of the machinery does. Pretty interesting.
Then it’s back across to American waters and through the American lock which is much bigger. On our side too, Sault Ste. Marie, MI has a lockfront park that includes viewing stands and people were talking and hailing each other as we were being lowered in the lock.
This tour not only takes you into Ontario for over an hour, but it’s a really great tour on its own merits. I can’t help wondering – there must be other lock tour boats along the Great Lakes US – Ontario border. Surely along the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers in southeast Michigan, a place that until now I have given short shrift. Not anymore – this is just too much fun!
Minnesota – From the 50
state visitor guide :
Minn. Stat. 2019 §243.166
Registration Triggers and Deadlines:
5 days for initial
registration and updates.
Visitors: Presence in state for more than 14 days or
30 days per calendar year triggers obligation to register. §243.166(1b).
Registrants without a primary address register within 24 hours of entering new
jurisdiction, & provide updates in-person weekly.
Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:
None. Only Level 3
offenders are placed on the public website. (per NARSOL Digest, June 2018, p.7)
Duration & updates:
10 yrs – life. Updates annually (weekly for those without permanent residence). §243.166.
Voyageurs National Park
Flirt Rating – B
In 2021 I visited Voyageurs National Park, which is in far northern Minnesota at the Ontario border. Here’s what I wrote at the time:
“My intension was to go as far north as U.S. registry law allows, which means right at the Canadian border. My destination was Voyageurs National Park, which turns out to be mainly a boating and fishing paradise. There are no campgrounds in the park, and apparently people take their boats out to camp at one of the hundreds of islands in Kabetogama Lake. I’m not a boater! **Sigh**”
Now that I’m flirting with Ontario I’ve gone back and looked at this park in a new light. I’m not a boater but maybe you are. Voyageurs encourages you to go island camping not just in Kabetogama Lake but Rainy Lake, Namakan Lake, Sand Point Lake and Crane Lake, all of which border Ontario and have many tiny islands to choose from.
There is also Kettle Falls Historic District, which includes a waterfall between Namakan Lake and Rainy Lake. Like the more famous Niagara Falls it crosses the US – Canadian border. According to the park information you are encouraged to get in a boat or kayak and go enjoy the falls and river. That has to include noodling with the border. So does island camping on any of these lakes.
Let’s be realistic here. There has to be at least enough waterborne border security on both sides to keep visitors in line. But this place is mighty remote and, unlike a boat tour, you’ll be under control of your own vessel and can take it where you dare. It’s even possible that if you stopped at a little remote island for a picnic nobody would care – but I certainly wouldn’t try staying overnight.
Also, if you are stupid enough to try obviously approaching the Canadian side of anything not only are you an idiot but you’d be violating the rules of the game, which are that it has to be a place where any American can go but it happens to be in Canada and nobody cares. If you start approaching the Canadian side people are gonna care, and that’s against the rules.
From the 50 State Visitor Guide : New York
N.Y. C.L.S. 2019 Corrections §§168
Registration Triggers and Deadlines:
10 calendar days for initial reg., after “establishing residency” (not defined), and for updates. §§168-f, 168-k. In-state workers required to register if present for more than 14 consecutive days or an aggregate period exceeding 30 days in a calendar year. §168-a.
Visitors: Per NY SOR office, 10 consecutive days or 14 per month. NOTE: Partial days count (except just passing through). Procedure available for removal from registry after departure.
Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:
Certain laws may impose a 1,000 ft. residency restriction from schools and child care facilities for registrants on parole or probation.
Duration & updates:
20 years to life. Updates: L3 & “sexual predators” 90 days; all others annually. §168-h.
Akwesasne Nation (St. Regis Mohawk Nation), St. Lawrence Seaway – Most recent visit: May 2025
Flirt Rating – F
The weather totally sucked the whole time I was in the Akwesasne Nation. Their territory lies on both sides of the St. Lawrence Seaway and of the US – Canadian border. In the US it’s called the St. Regis Mohawk Nation. So in that way you can kinda pretend you’re in a separate nation when you enter the reservation, and that separate nation includes lands on the other side of the border and …
The Akwesasne Nation’s chief sources of prosperity are: (a) it sits right at the main St. Lawrence River / US border crossing for the entire region, and (b) the St. Lawrence – FDR Hydroelectric Power Dams are right there too. If they didn’t get a cut of that action they got totally jipped!
But for the same reasons, on any road trip through this region you’d better get used to seeing a lot of dark colored SUV’s – both Akwesasne Nation and US. I don’t think it’s because the Akwesasne people have a special fondness for them either. I stopped near the bridge / border crossing just to have a look and the place was crawling with them.
I also visited Robert Moses State Park which includes the dams which you can see from a distance and the canal locks which you can go to. It’s at the Visitors Center. Yes I saw dark colored SUV’s there too but no so many. The park is on an island in the St. Lawrence River, the island itself is on the Canadian side of the shipping channel, so here again you can kinda pretend …
One thing nobody seemed to mind me doing was driving all over the park including right up to the riverbank where Canada was just a few feet away. This park at the north tip of New York also offers camping and cabins! When I got to the Visitor’s Center there was a cargo boat going through the locks and I got to see that. All in all and pleasant place to pretend you’re in Canada.
Convenience store chain store you should be forewarned about:
Stewarts Shops – What began out as a little chain of ice cream shops is now this region’s main convenience store chain that happens to include an ice cream bar. What they don’t have is a soda fountain. Why don’t the people of New England and Upstate New York like fountain sodas?
Niagara Falls and Gorge – Most recent visit: May 2025
Flirt Rating – C
On my most recent visit the weather continued to totally suck the whole time I was in the Niagara region. I bypassed Niagara Falls itself because I had been to the falls before. I believe it was on a trip I took in the year between when I was arrested and when I was sentenced. I planned on a few hours but couldn’t do everything in that time. I did go on the Maid of the Mist boat ride which visits Horseshoe Falls which is the Canadian Falls and I don’t think they’re enforcing the border that much out in the middle of the river, so there’s that.
I also did Cave of the Winds and a couple of other things but I don’t remember going to Three Sisters Islands which probably get you as close to the border as you can get on land.
In early June 2025 I decided to go to Whirlpool State Park this time instead. The bad news is that to get there you have to drive on the most inappropriately named road ever constructed – Niagara Scenic Parkway. Wow is it ever in bad shape! The good news is the Whirlpool and the gorge are pretty amazing.
