I loved Canada. True, living there made me aware that 'snow' is a four-letter word and 'cold' is an understatement, but the majority of people I met, while reserved, were capable of the occasional warmth, especially when fuelled by alcohol. Their attitudes, while characterised by indifference, were never openly hostile.

In the years I lived and went to university there, the early and mid-70s, Canada was trying to find its own identity in a world increasingly dominated by American language, values and, most of all, television.

Having come to terms with that elephant, the tragedy is that Canada now seems to fancy itself a thousand-pound gorilla. Its behaviour towards some of us West Indians who want to visit, do business or spend holidays there is consistent with the question, 'Where does a thousand-pound gorilla sleep?' The answer is, 'Anywhere it wants.' When I went for a visitor's visa at the Canadian Immigration Office in Trinidad a few days ago, King Kong made sure I knew I was not wanted.I was warned to be there for about 6:30 in the morning. When I arrived the line was already long and quickly lengthening. Think of hot sun getting hotter. Then imagine a stretch of concrete pavement from which, rising almost perpendicularly, is a grass-covered embankment, with two dwarf palm trees, one on either side, with leaves so skimpy that they provide no shade at all.

great leveller

Men and women of different ages and sizes balanced precariously waiting for the guards to open the gates. The one good thing about the experience is that it was a great leveller. If I ever have any delusions of grandeur, all I need to do is to join the line of applicants and supplicants for the privilege of going to Canada for a holiday. This is what they think of you, I said to myself, praying for rain not to fall.

The gate opened and we filed inside to sit on a long concrete bench while being harangued by a security guard. We then put our documents in plastic bags and stood in line hopefully waiting while five persons were admitted, the door closed for an interval, then five more and so it went for the whole day.

The crowning humiliation awaited those who were allowed inside. We had to present our documents for inspection by a Trinidadian woman behind a glass window who spoke to each applicant on a loudspeaker system making her comments audible to everyone in the waiting room - about 30 people at a time, maybe more.

"This is the wrong document!" "You only have two pages and is three pages. You have to go back and come back again." It is normally a bad idea to give a West Indian a microphone and loud-speaker. We 'gallery'. We play to the crowd. We perform. We 'bring off' on people. The microphonically enhance maestra asked one woman, "You are the lady who give the immigration officer trouble?"

In my case, she looked at my application. "Where is your brother and sister names?" I said quietly, "I don't have any." She riposted, "I see your children names, but where is their surnames?" I said, "The same as mine. I didn't think I had to put them down." "So how I will know what their surname is? Take back your papers, go and put in their surnames and then come back." It would have taken me five seconds to do that.

I was Number 16 in the line. By the time I left her august presence and returned I was Number 52. Then she found another problem. Her voice echoing in the closed confines of the narrow waiting room, she asked, "Do you have the slip that came with the payment form?" Luckily, I did because she continued, "If you didn't I would have to send you back to the bank because you have the receipt but it doesn't say how much." She was enjoying herself and her audience. The colonisers have always hidden behind local enforcers. This was no exception.

It is a huge disappointment that Canadians, having been belittled and abused by America, have now become abusers. Time magazine said, "Canada is one of the planet's most comfortable and caring societies." That Time seems to have been in the very distant past and seems to refer to a very different people.

Tony Deyal was last seen repeating this line by Dale Tallon, "I wouldn't say it's cold, but every year Winnipeg's athlete of the year is an ice fisherman."