TORONTO -- Like most travellers at Pearson airport yesterday, Peter Hunton's foresight made for a stress-free morning in preparation for his U.S.-bound flight.
Hunton, 70, said he'd imagined the long lines that are now the reality for Canadians scrambling to get passports to comply with new requirements for U.S. travel, rules that kicked in yesterday.
A landed immigrant with a British passport, Hunton said he had applied for the Canadian document as soon as he heard the U.S planned to require Canadians to have passports to cross the border by air.
"I think the government is entitled to ask people to have a passport," Hunton said. "It makes things easier." Known as the Western Travel Initiative, the new American regulations are designed to enhance U.S. security by requiring everyone, including Americans, to show a valid passport in order to enter the country by air.
Canadians travelling by land will have another year or so before they, too, will require passports.
Marilyn Barlow, 59, who had been visiting family in Toronto, has had a passport most of her life, she said. The only difference she noticed on the first day of the new rules was that Terminal 2 seemed to be less busy than usual.
There were no incidents reported at the airport -- not surprising given that Michael Chertoff, the U.S. secretary of homeland security, has said about 96% of Canadians and 94% of Americans were already using passports for air travel.
"Most Canadians have been listening to the news and the media, and understand that they require a passport today," said Air Canada spokesman Janet Culver.
