Yep. Four Algerian men hide out in a bus being shipped to Go Transit in Toronto while the bus is on a ship crossing the Atlantic, then escape the Port of Halifax and are picked up in Truro, NS.
I wonder whether the bus had a washroom.
…
I am never taking Go Transit again. :eek:
Those are interesting buses though. I had no idea GO was moving towards double-decker buses–anybody know what routes they’ll be on? (When I’ve been in Toronto the last few times, I’ve found myself heading for Stouffville on GO Transit. Put them on the Stouffville route, and I can have a ride on one next time I’m there!)
Haha! I always find myself rooting for these kinds of illegal immigrants. My friends and I think they ought to get a ‘freebie’…check’em out to make sure they’re not murderers or something, but then let them in even if they don’t otherwise qualify. Like those Cubans who, as I recall, turned first a Buick, then an old GM truck into rafts to get to Florida. We should have some immigration official whose role is to say that’s ingenious or that made me laugh or I admire your spirit…you’re in!
Problem is, that while this is ingenious, it’s the kind of thing that will get Canadians’ backs up. We’re a pretty welcoming people, but we do have rules we like to have followed, and some years back, there seemed to be a raft (pun intended) of illegal immigrants arriving in Nova Scotia by various means–IIRC, a common method was to hitch a ride on a ship that would be passing by Canada, destroy one’s papers, be put to sea in a rubber raft from the ship in Canadian waters, then wash up on the shore of Nova Scotia claiming to be a refugee. Without papers, it was impossible to prove whether one really was fleeing strife in the old country, and to many Canadians, it seemed that these people were just trying to jump the queue of wannabe-immigrants who had followed proper procedure and were awaiting their turn to come to Canada legally.
Of course, one of the other problems was the ignorance these “refugees” displayed about the country they wanted to come to. At least one group of them hailed a taxi in Halifax and tried to get the driver to take them to Toronto. :rolleyes: Check the scale on your maps, folks; that’s a two-day drive, at least.
Hee hee! You’re right, without a doubt. (Of course, my hypothetical immigration dude would rule out all those copycat refugees. First time, it’s ingenious…next time, not so much.) But, we always realized it was just wishful thinking that you could somehow safely let in creative strangers from who-knows-where.
For the guys in the bus, you’d have to wonder if they even knew they’d end up in Canada. It’s quite possible that ‘ship across the Atlantic=America’ was what they expected.
Stouffville has double-decker trains. What more do you want? 
They tested one on Yonge Street a couple of years ago but I never got to ride it. Actually, I think that they’re going on the Highway 407 routes that meet at York University.
I read that the buses are 4.3 metres high. Standard clearance on Ontario highways is 4.5 metres (anything lower has to be marked), but there are a lot of old bridges in the central city that are lower than 4.3 metres.
Well, they did get to America. The United States of America, no.
Well, the “GO” in GO Transit stands for “Government of Ontario,” and IIRC, GO vehicles are marked with various decals (smaller than you can see in the linked photo) indicating this. Since Ontario a Canadian province and is not a US state, it’s likely they knew where they were coming. Montreal certainly attracts a number of immigrants from former French colonies where French is still spoken; it’s possible these Algerians were looking to go there. Especially since the only passenger train in scheduled service out of Halifax runs between that city and Montreal, and they wanted to take that train.
Hey, given my druthers, I’d prefer to take the GO train from Union to Stouffville, and back again. But remembering my Stouffville train schedules, there’s southbound service only in the mornings, and northbound service only in the afternoons. Since I tend to want to go to Stouffville in the mornings and back to the city in the afternoons, I tend to have to take the bus instead of the train. 
I wonder if they snuck up the the ship bow at night and pretended they were flying.
Good point.
There’s plenty of similar issues in Britain, but bus routes with such obstacles are simply designated to only be operated with single-deck vehicles. Naturally there’s the occassional cock-up. mind.
And whaddaya know: the official unveiling!
They cut a hole in the floor, just like home.
Interesting ad in the Halifax link (bus-sized sink or tub).
What was the bus number?