Traveling to Canada 19th birthday...

And taking your OP with you?

Why wait until you’re 19? There are some provinces where you can drink at 18. I assume that’s what this is about, right?

Perhaps he/she’s asking if people who live on the border of Canada actually do this.

Yes, quite often. I didn’t, but many people do.

Yeah, I was asking about that. I’m about a three hour’s drive away from the border.

If I travel across the border, wouldn’t they ask me why I’m traveling there? What should I say… “A night of drinking?”

Cuban cigars are legal over there, too right?

That’s what Windsor’s for, man. The downtown core is based on 19-21 year old Detroiters out for a night of revelry. You can say “I’m going to insert club name here” and I’m sure they won’t hassle you.

Obviously, bring a DD.

You’re a tourist. Tell them that. Of course, it will help if you come up with something that a person might actually want to see, so a little research might be in order if you’re nervous: Vancouver - you’ve heard its beautiful; Montreal - you want some jazz; Toronto - you want to see a play (know what’s on!); Ottawa - you want to watch them roll up the sidewalk at night … whatever.

Yep. I’m told that the biggest outlet of the biggest cigar-store chain in Canada is in Windsor. Can’t think why.

Okay, I’m curious about something now. Say you’re under the age of 21 and drive across the border and get yourself a brew or few. Now you drive back across the border back into the US. I was under the impression that any amount of alcohol for anyone under 21 was considered DUI. What’s the “real deal.”

I was thinking of staying overnight, so the alcohol would have gotten out of my system by the time I drove back the next day.

Monty: This site lists BAC limits by state. The only states where it’s illegal for minors to have any amount of blood alcohol (limit of 0.00) are Alaska, Arizona, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, and Utah, most of which don’t border Canada.

The rest are 0.01 or 0.02, which are still much lower than the adult limits of 0.08 or 0.10. This calculator says that for a 150-lb male, half a beer is 0.01 BAC.

Cuban cigars, and Cuban goods generally, are legal in Canada. It’s the Americans who have all the wierd laws.

As for getting loaded, the laws vary to some degree by province. “Canada” is a pretty big place, with a pleasant but not monolithic population. Saying you’re going to Canada is like saying you’re going to Western Europe. If you want advice, you should specify what state you’re coming from and what province you’re going to.

I live in Niagara Falls, ON about a 10 min drive from the NY border. We had a lot of cross-border drinking traffic. Because, although drinking age in Ontario is 19 and New York’s is 21, closing time in NY was 3:00am as opposed to the 1:00am closing time in Ontario. As a result, over 21 Canadians would hightail it to the US ~1:00am at the same time drunk 19 & 20 yr old Americans were returning home. I imagine weekends were bloody hell for customs agents who probably didn’t see a single sober individual from midnight 'til dawn.

Nowadays, most of the traffic is one way from the US since Ontario has extended its hours to 2:00am. This effectively killed off several US bars who catered almost exclusively to Canadian customers. Every border town in Ontario has at least a couple of bars that cater almost exclusively to US 19 & 20 yr olds. Here in the Falls we have the Daily Planet and the Cell Block (name may have changed recently).

My advice is to go and get hammered but get a hotel room ahead of time and make sure you know where you are at all times. Keep in mind that, on average, Canadian beer has higher alcoholic content than American beer. Every weekend a few Americans are picked up for drunk & disorderly or public urination.

As for Cubans, you can get them at any cigar store in Canada. However, prices for Cubans are absurdly high in the tourist areas to take advantage of American ignorance. Take the time to drive out of those areas and look for the places that locals patronize.

Canada: I love you.

This verse was circulating in the 20s, after prohibition ended in Canada:

Glad to see that things haven’t changed much.

Canada had a Prohibition period too?

We had a mixture of laws on it, but there was never a national prohibition, and certainly no constitutional amendment.

One reason that it never got to a national level is that the province of Quebec, true to its French heritage, found the whole thing silly, typical of the Anglos who didn’t appreciate the finer things in life, and refused to consider prohibition. The feds held a national referendum on prohibition in the first decade of the 20th century, which showed that there were very strong regional variations in the attitude to prohibition. Given that, the feds decined to enact a uniform prohibition law. They instead had a local option law, which allowed counties/municipalities to vote to go dry.

Some provinces (I think mainly Ontario and the western provinces) passed comprehensive prohibition laws, as part of the WWI war effort. The provinces that passed prohibition laws during the WWI period repealed them at various times in the 20s.

My hometown paper once printed an article looking back at the WWI prohibition. Apparently you could get a prescription for alcohol for “medicinal purposes.” On November 11, 1918, something like 1000 prescriptions for medicinal alcohol were written and filled in the town, which had a population of about 1500. Must have been the inclement autumn weather.

Just in case you have never been to Canada, make sure you bring a birth certificate. Your valid driver’s license isn’t always enough to get you into the country. A certified copy of your birth certificate is easy to get and is acceptable.