ATTN: Vancouver B.C. - You go, girl.

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They also shelter war dodgers.

US 'Soldiers of Conscience' Take Sixties Route to Canada
by Marcus Warren

Two American soldiers opposed to the war in Iraq have abandoned their units and fled to Canada in a desertion evoking the exodus of young men north of the border during the Vietnam era.
The two soldiers are seeking asylum as refugees, arguing that they face persecution for their beliefs - and in theory the death penalty - if they return.
Their decision to run may not yet herald a mass migration but no one expects the pair to be the last to abandon their units and slip across the frontier, even at the cost of becoming deserters.
"Just because you sign a contract, that doesn't mean you abdicate the right to be a moral human being," said Jeremy Hinzman, 25, a private at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and the first of the two to reach Canada. "If you know that an order is unjust, it's your duty to disobey it."
Speaking from his new home in Toronto, he shied away from urging other servicemen to copy his example, afraid, he said, of being "seditious". But he had this message for other soldiers with moral qualms about the war in Iraq.
"They need to do what they think is right," he said. "If that means going to Canada, follow your conscience."
Already he has been joined by a second fugitive, Brandon Hughey, 18, a private who abandoned his unit the night before its deployment from Fort Hood, Texas, to the Middle East and is now living with a Quaker couple in the Ontario city of St Catharines.
"This is a war based solely on lies," Pte Hughey said. "If other soldiers feel that they cannot take part, they should talk to their superiors about it. But Canada is an option."
They both call the war in Iraq a violation of international law, a crime that overrides their duty to the army they signed up for.
Pte Hinzman had no qualms about serving in Afghanistan although he did ask his officers for a non-combat role.
They now face a difficult battle in the courts to become the first Americans to be given refugee status in Canada, although the country's ban on deporting anyone at risk of suffering the death penalty may count in their favor.
The war in Iraq has re-established Canada as a place of sanctuary for young Americans opposed to fighting in a conflict that they believe is wrong.
The generation that provided most of the manpower for the United States military in the 1960s and '70s also saw tens of thousands of young men going across the border, the majority to avoid being called up into the armed forces.
One of 60,000 Americans who fled to dodge the draft and service in Vietnam, Jeffrey House, recalls turning up at the border in 1970 and simply announcing that he wanted to live in Canada. The Canadian guards asked whether he had a "military problem" and then ushered him to one side to start a new life.
Now a Canadian citizen and a lawyer, he is overseeing Pte Hinzman's and Pte Hughey's attempts to become refugees.
"They remind me of how I felt," he said. "The idea that the Pentagon would drop me into some village and I would end up killing people was horrible."
Pte Hinzman said the "crystallizing moment" for his decision to abandon the army was hearing a radio report while in Afghanistan about the sharing out of oil revenue in post-war Iraq.
The two men may be a lonely vanguard of young people prepared to leave their comrades-in-arms, families and homeland for uncertainty in a foreign country.
But with more US soldiers dying so far this month than at any time since the toppling of Saddam Hussein and military morale suffering as tours of duty are extended, reinforcements are likely to be soon on the way