It appears that Quebec is really in the tattoo spotlight this week. This time it’s all about Sylvie Ménard of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, who had a rather unpleasant experience while returning from a vacation in Mexico this past April. Why this story is just hitting the news now, is beyond me.
At any rate, Ménard was stopped by airport authorities upon her attempted re-entry into Canada. Her name and birthdate matched that of a wanted criminal (what a crappy coincidence) and so, despite her numerous forms of ID, Ménard was handcuffed and escorted into one of those holding cells that can be found somewhere deep in the bowels of every international airport. A female border official then asked a fully disturbed and frightened Ménard to strip naked, so that her ass could be inspected.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t said in quite those same words, but the border official really did want to see Ménard’s buttocks. The purpose? The criminal they were looking for had a pink tattoo on her buttocks and the airport officials wanted to see if Ménard also had it. Well, Ménard complied and of course there was no tattoo. But that wasn’t good enough for Canada’s crack force border guards. Some time later it occured to them that perhaps the criminal they were looking for had the tattoo lasered off, and so they asked Ménard to disrobe again, in order for them to check and see if there was evidence of scar tissue. Was it there? Nope. Ménard was later released and told by airport authorities that she should consider changing her name in order to avoid this type of confusion again in the future.
Aiport border officers in Canada are typically bad – Vancouver International Airport being the worst – but come on! Surely it can’t be that hard to keep things straight. Okay, so maybe this one time there was a mix up and they had to hold her for a little while. But how hard is it to put some note or something on her file that reads “This woman is not the one with the ass tattoo. Leave her alone.”? I just did that and it took me less than ten seconds. Can I have a job as a border guard now?