View from the North 40: Pamville News: U.S. tests invasion tactics

With war in the Middle East bleeding the U.S. military budget dry, government officials have had to come up with creative ways to practice war craft, and officials launched their inaugural test run under this initiative Sunday with a small-scale invasion of riverfront property in Canada under the guise of a drunken float trip in the Great Lakes region.

About 1,500 water-floaters taking part in the Port Huron Float Down on St. Clair River were blown by storm winds to the Canadian side of the river and had to be rescued by Canadian emergency services and transported back to the U.S.

A Pentagon source, who was still too water-logged and intoxicated to remember his own name, told Pamville News reporters that many of the 1,500 floaters who landed on Canadian soil were covert ops with the U.S. military. (Editor's note: The source seemed totally legit.)

When not in use as a party destination, the St. Clair River serves as a shipping lane and as the border between the U.S., in Michigan, and Canada, in Ontario.

According to a video on the unofficial float trip’s official website, the Port Huron Float Down is an annual float trip which started in the mid-’70s — scheduled for the third Sunday in August each year. The floaters take to water at Lighthouse Beach in Port Huron, Michigan, at the southern tip of Lake Huron, and float or paddle 7.5 miles south down St. Clair River, toward Lake Erie, to Chrysler Beach in Marysville, Michigan.

What started as a float trip for a large gathering of extended friends and family has grown steadily over the decades from the original few hundred participants to as many as about 6,000, the site says. The original organizers stopped organizing the event some time in the mid-’80s, but revelers, keen on continuing the tradition, have still showed up each year to make it happen.

All manner of water crafts — some makeshift, like a trampoline tied to sealed plastic barrels which serve as floatation devices, and inadequate, like an inflatable air mattress with a slow leak that barely kept its rider’s head out of water — plus antics and alcohol are a large part of the experience for the thousands who participate each year.

It’s a law enforcement and safety nightmare, say emergency service, water transit authorities, U.S. Coast Guard, and U.S. and Canadian customs officials. And a Canadian busline was inconvenienced as well this year, when 10 buses and drivers were recruited to transport the Americans home. Or, rather, to U.S. customs.

“Like Sun-Tzu said, ‘In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity,’ and we seized this opportunity to covertly invade Canada today,” one military official, who asked to remain anonymous in order to keep his job, told Pamville News reporters.

“A recon team for our joint forces had already scoped out the Port Huron Float Down as a possible training run,” he said. “Weather analysts studied the weather data for the day, saw favorable conditions for our operation and gave us the go-ahead. Once we were OK’d, our tactical team stripped to swim trunks and bikinis, pushed their pontoon boats out on the water and cracked a beer or two — to blend in, of course.

“Clearly, official rule No. 4 of the unofficial event says ‘do not land watercraft in Canada,‘ but with Mother Nature in the mix, what were they gonna do about it? That wind and the water currents floated us and a bunch of civilian party-ers, that we used for cover, right up to the beach-front homes of the enemy — or, well, um, rather, Canada,” he said.

“We can’t complain about the hint of coldness in the air, nor the Canadians’ hospitality,” the informant said. “They actually footed the bill to have all 1,500 of us — undercover military and civilians alike — shipped back to the U.S. side.”

Military officials were tight-lipped about this operation and future operations in or taking off from U.S. soil, but some sources have hinted at the possibility of resurrecting a cavalry unit to invade Alberta, Canada, by taking part in this year’s International Show Jumping competition at the Spruce Meadows equine facility in Calgary.

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