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You’re not supposed to just bop across international boundaries and set up housekeeping without telling someone. Some of us were on long-expired two-week visas, the rest of us had slipped by with no restrictions simply by flashing lots of cash and claiming we were on a shopping spree. Shortly after the roof was finished, we decided it might be wise to become legal immigrants.

There wasn’t much to it. First Kathy and Jack and then Simon, Virginia, and I took a ferry from Powell River to Vancouver Island and drove to Nanaimo, which was the nearest immigration office. There were a few pages of forms to fill out: education, jobs held, occupational plans in Canada, financial stuff. We shuffled money around to make each of us look very wealthy. Although the immigration people seemed less than thrilled with hippie farmers, their “objective” point system didn’t give them much choice but to accept us. We all had maximum education points, fluency in French, which only meant you had to know as much French as the interviewer, which wasn’t much, financial points, points for being in our early twenties, and assorted other points.

It was much like the draft process. We were constantly reminding each other to be sure we switched gears. It was a joke, but we had been so conditioned to be noncooperative and insulting to all forms of officialdom, these reminders weren’t out of place. We all sat through fatherly lectures from our various interviewers about the foolishness of what we were doing, and were granted landed-immigrant status conditional on our passing a standard physical exam. We were given forms to take to whatever doctor we chose any time within the next six months.

THANKSGIVING. The Canadian Thanksgiving had been a few weeks earlier. Up north the harvesting time, which is what the whole thing is supposed to be about, comes earlier. So there we were, immigrants celebrating a holy day of the old country in their new home. We were celebrating the start of new things, new hopes, a new home, just like the Pilgrims.

We invited everyone. Everyone we knew in Powell River, everyone from the other communes around, everyone we knew in Vancouver, friends in California, and anyone else we could think of. We had had visitors before, people from Powell River dropping in on us, old college friends, total strangers, and occasionally there had been enough people spirit and whatever for something like an occasion to take place. But this was the first time we had anything you could call planned.

It was open house, inspection time.

Luckily, most of the inspectors didn’t show up. If everyone we invited had come it probably would have been hell. The logistics of food and bedding would have been hassle enough, but the bigger problem would have been playing to that many different audiences all at once.

We wanted everyone to dig what we were doing. I think even Nixon’s misgivings would have hurt some. Whenever we talked about the farm or showed visitors around, our presentation usually varied considerably, depending on who it was we were showing off for. Too many types of inspectors might have blown a fuse.

The inspectors who actually did show up were important ones, the Berkeley crew made up of friends from Swarthmore and some other folk they had picked up along the way, heavy into radical politics, women’s lib, the revolution and all. It wasn’t like we would have given up and all gone down to trash buildings on Telegraph Avenue if they had not dug the farm, but it would have hurt a lot.

We passed with flying colors. We weren’t copping out. We were on the same team. Brotherhood and sisterhood confirmed, alliances affirmed. Good feelings all around, we sat down to Thanksgiving dinner.

A few grouse done up as much as possible like turkey, lots of things with apples, rounded out with a few cheat items from town. It would be different next time around.

None of the Berkeley people liked Beowulf, which may have been what pushed things to the brink. In any event, the brink came a few days after they left.

It was one of those scenes in which everybody