There are a lot of things we can see being seized at the border between Canada and the United States: handguns with the serial number filed off, bricks of heroin, briefcases with the radioactivity sign on the side. Hard drives we'd expect to make it through, but unfortunately we'd be wrong. The guy bringing the masters of the songs Chris Walla recorded in Vancouver back down to Seattle had the drive containing them yanked by Homeland Security. more ›

In 2000 or 2001 a number of shipping containers showed up at Harbor Island filled not with stereos and Nikes, but with hopeful new residents. Local author Jonathan Raban was so affected by the human smuggling operation at that time that he wrote it as central to his 2003 novel Waxwings in which an entrepreneurial-minded transplant from "Everett" arrives on our shores the sole surviver of a similar container cruise and sets about making good. If the news pieces from 2001 didn't cement human trafficing via shipping container into our regional mythology, Raban's novel did. more ›