“She’s home,” Steve Barkey declared in an email.
Home for a cross-border couple living in an RV is a moving target.
Home, what he ultimately meant, is where the heart is.
“This is the best thing that could have happened. She’s back home,” said Barkey, a Canadian, during an interview on the phone while lazing Thursday morning in bed with Cathy Kolsch, an American.
“My hero,” she chimed in.
The two were separated just over two weeks ago when they were crossing the North Dakota border into Saskatchewan. They weren’t able to satisfy border security that they were a common-law couple and she was denied entry into Canada.
When he tried to turn the RV around, he was denied re-entry into the United States.
Thus began an arduous journey the constant travelers didn’t anticipate. Their plan was to travel through the Prairies, visit friends and ultimately make their way to Barrie where they spend the summers, much of it on their boat docked at the Barrie Marina.
But they confused border security trying to impose temporary pandemic rules with their travelling lifestyle.
So Barkey continued northward with much of Kolsch's life rolling away in the RV and he headed to a friend’s farm in Grenfell, Saskatchewan farm - alone.
She was left on the south side of the border, on foot, equipped with a phone.
After some tense hours, awkward conversations and several phone calls, Kolsch was able to finally arrange for a 100-mile, $150 taxi ride to the closest town, Minot, N.D. where she waited with apprehension for three days in a hotel room until she was able to catch a flight to California - her home before Barkey came into her life.
During the two weeks they were apart, both began trying to collect whatever evidence they could to prove that they were indeed a couple, including consulting an immigration lawyer, so that she would be permitted to cross the border to join her partner.
On Wednesday, she flew into Vancouver where their efforts were tested, albeit by nice customs officers. “Canadians are all nice,” she mused.
She explained her unique life on wheels with no permanent address, no mortgage and no utility bills proving she has a Canadian mate. Instead she presented a lawyer’s letter, photos of their two years together and any kind of paperwork she and Barkey could gather illustrating their life together, including boatslip rental receipts.
“I was getting very scared,” she said.
Finally another customs agent took her documents, disappeared in a back room, and returned.
“He goes: ‘This isn’t exactly what we want in this situation,’ and my heart fell.”
He then read the lawyer’s letter and news coverage of the couple’s plight.
“He said 'We’re going to let you through,' and I started crying. I told him: ‘I thought you were going to tell me No.’”
Kolsch then made a B-line to the gift shop, bought a Canada baseball cap and happily spent the next six hours waiting for her connecting flight to Regina.
“But by then I was breathing, so it didn’t matter,” she said.
When she finally arrived in Regina she discovered the flight had come in early. So she went outside into the rain to wait for her home to arrive.
The couple will spend the next two weeks in isolation on their Saskatchewan friend’s farm, stretching what was to be a three-day visit into a month-long sojourn.
And then they’ll make their way eastward, making the occasional stop to visit more friends, with an eye to getting to Barrie during the August long weekend.
“It’s like that Christmas present that you wanted but were expecting not to get,” she said Kolsch Thursday, delighted to finally be in her own bed at home with Barkey.
