FRANKLIN CENTRE, Que. — Michael Leahy of Leahy Orchards trucks between 50 and 75 loads of apples from New York to his Quebec-based plant each week.

He is one of the biggest employers in this part of the province. He had about 230 employees processing about 175 million lbs of fruit every year.

If the Canadian Border Security Agency (CBSA) gets its way, the border crossing through which he imports apples will be closed April 1, 2011.

To Leahy, that’s not a very funny April Fool’s prank.

Re-routing the apples could cost him upwards of $100,000 a year in extra fuel and wages, and his trips will take at least an hour longer.

The crossing, on Route 209 between Quebec and New York State, is one of three on the CBSA’s chopping list.

The other two are a Montana-to-Canada crossing near the village of Big Beaver in south-central Saskatchewan and a Quebec crossing near Huntingdon on Jamieson’s Line.

If you click here and type names of the towns in the search bar, you’ll see satellite images of the crossings.

They’re all rural and on secondary, albeit paved, highways.

According to the CBSA statistics, the Big Beaver crossing sees an average of five travelers per day, with no commercial traffic.
 

An overhead shot of the Franklin,
PQ-Churubusco, N.Y border crossing

The Huntingdon crossing (on Jamieson’s Line) sees an average of a dozen travelers daily. Again, with no commercial traffic, according to CBSA.

The Franklin-Centre-to-New-York crossing is the busiest of the three, with 56 travelers daily according to the CBSA. But the agency’s stats also include three commercial vehicles a day. (That is very low, compared to Leahy’s estimation.)

At the affected crossings, the Americans will maintain their operations. That means that you will be able to leave Canada but not re-enter.

Nobody quite knows what that will actually mean. Will there be a fence across the northbound lane, with open country on either side? (These are very rural areas. It sounds like the ridiculous toll gate in the middle of the Texas desert, from the classic spoof western Blazing Saddles.

Leahy says he doesn’t understand why the CBSA thinks the Route 209 crossing isn’t worth keeping. "It seems to me that the border people wanted to do some cost cutting so they threw a dart at the map and made their decision that way," he told todaystrucking.com.

"I know of at least three crossings not far from here that don’t have as much traffic as Franklin."

"For the amount of federal tax we pay per year and the services we receive," he says, "they could keep the border open and come out ahead."

GPS also likes the Route 209 crossing. If you Google a trip from, say, Plattsburgh to St. Louis De Gonzague, Que. the Google map will take you up 209.

The mayor of the nearby town of Franklin Centre, Suzanne Blair, is helping Leahy and others fight the closure.

Blair also happens to be in trucking.

When she talked to todaystrucking.com she was speaking from her desk at C.K. Blair Transportation Inc. Leahy is one of their biggest customers.

Blair has launched a petition that will be presented to the Canadian Parliament in October by the local MP, Claude DeBellefeuille (Beauharnois-Salaberry, Bloc Quebecois.)

DeBellefeuille is on record as opposing the closings.

"I don’t know how they decided but it’s going to have a big effect," Blair said. "I remain hopeful that they will change their mind."

Also, she says, "there’s lots of people who have relatives on both sides of the border. You go to the border and the guard says ‘where’re you going?’ and I’ll say ‘I’m going to my uncle Gaston’s and the guard’ll say ‘oh yeah, I heard about he was sick, give him my condolences.’"

Leahy says one of the ironic aspects of the project is that the Americans had recently announced a $15-million upgrade to their offices near the Franklin-Centre facility.

"The Americans," he said, "are really ticked at us."

According to the Montreal Gazette, the president of the Plattsburgh-North Country Chamber of Commerce says the decision to close the stations violates the 2002 U.S.-Canada Smart Border Accord.

The Gazette also says the CBP has suspended renovations at the Franklin Centre/Churubasco crossing because of CBSA’s proposed port closures.

The agency is also reducing the hours on four other crossings. Come April, the crossings at the Quebec towns of Morses Line, East Pinnacle and Glen Sutton will operate from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m, and the Kenora, Ont., crossing will also have its hours reduced but CBSA has not stated what the cutback there would be, specifically.

If you want to lend your voice to the cause, you can send an email to franklin@qc.aira.com.