CBCNews.ca has been spattered with e-mails from readers talking about the spread between the U.S. and Canadian dollars and their stories about crossing the border to get a better deal from the Americans, who are often unco-operative.

I wade into the story with regret. The fact that shopping is, as humourist John Hodgman would put it, one of my Areas of Expertise is pretty embarrassing. On the other hand, there's isn't much call for columns on my other areas, which are Virginia Woolf, the postwar British Labour government, Watergate and the photography of Martin Parr. God, it was nice to e-mail my editor with "Breaking news on Doris Lessing! Can I do it?" but that's a rarity.

My verdict on this dollar frenzy (disastrous for an exporting nation) after a shopping life well-wasted is this: Now is not the time.

I understand why Canadians travel to the U.S. to get a better deal on a car. Cars are real, not notional, and their worth is easy to measure. But I also sympathize with American car dealerships that won't break company rules and sell to Canadians.

It's ironic that doctrinaire free-market Canadians are the ones who most resent market forces when they actually are let loose. The existence of borders, the practice of booking customer orders ahead of time — even in an era of supposedly just-in-time distribution — well, those factors are market forces and sometimes, capitalists lose the game when it's played fairly.

A smart consumer should be trading in and buying a Toyota Yaris, the tiny immaculately made car that can fit a family of five plus groceries and offers great planet-helping fuel economy. (I have never owned anything but Toyotas, so I'm biased.) The basic Yaris costs $15,000, the dressiest $20,000. You will be well-placed as oil prices soar to unheard-of levels in the next few years. Anyone who drove to the U.S. for a deal on an SUV is going to be hauling the thing by hand. Watch that BBC video of the Georgian who dragged an eight-ton helicopter for 26 metres with his ear. That'll be you in 2015.

Border patrols

It isn't pleasant crossing the U.S. border now, not that I'm foolish enough to try it, what with Google and the things I've written about Republicans. Is it worth $1,000 or $2,000 and several blank, dead days visiting Ohio auto dealerships — plus the cavity search and I don't mean dental — to buy something that's available around the corner?

And, you're missing the pleasure of shopping. Men like owning things; women like pursuing them. Shopping soothes my soul. Casting a fishing line or walking into Canadian-owned Holt Renfrew, both give me a feeling of ease and competence. This I know how to do. Trust me, there is no comparable heart's ease in Dress Barn Woman at the Birch Run Prime Outlets mall outside Frankenmuth, "Michigan's Little Bavaria."

The place, which looks like Buckingham Palace but torqued into one storey, boasts of its pet-friendliness and complimentary wheelchairs, which makes you wonder about the type of person who brings their dog for an eight-hour shopping day with only Baconators for food. And if you need a wheelchair, wouldn't you already be in the one you brought with you? And is the Outlets' special "Deer Widows Weekend" what I think it is? Because what I'm thinking isn't nice. What do they sell at Reader's Digest Outlet?

Designer goods versus good goods

It's better to buy good-quality goods, and fewer of them, than loads of tat. But this doesn't mean designer labels, which have poisoned our world. Men's Lacoste shirts say on the label, pathetically: "Made in China. Designed in France." The clothes, all dreary muddy things, are overpriced, but they're overpriced in New York too.

Glamour labels should stick to simple designs beautifully made. But the labels craze has changed this and handbags made on the cheap in the Far East are buckled, chain-mailed, pastel patent leather explosions of oddity.

Things fall apart, even costly things. I only noticed that the metal bit had fallen off a pair of expensive boots when the alarm didn't go off at airport security. Then Gucci stored them for six months and said they couldn't repair them because Italy hadn't called them back.

I can't complain because people who buy designer goods are asking for it. The idea is that the expensive boots don't scream Gucci, they say Gucci in a quiet, cultured voice. But I complained in very soft tones that my boots now had pointed screws sticking out, ripping my coat lining, so they removed them and now my boots have two weird holes.

I know. I deserved it.

There's a scarf I want. It's Balenciaga, a sort of draped scarlet chequered thing with a solid band of colour at the neck, fringes and coin things clanking around… not as ludicrous as it sounds. But it costs $5,600. I'm informed that I can make my own version by buying an underpriced shawl on www.ukrainian-n-things.com, and tying some 25-peseta coins to it from the bowl where the leftover foreign currency sits.

To love the original designer item, I've conveniently overcome my objection to scarves that resemble the krama adopted by the Khmer Rouge, which this one sort of does. To love the home-built approximation requires that I rip off nice Ukrainian-Canadians for something that puts me in mind of pillaging Cossacks. And the whisper will go round the restaurant, "What's that clinking noise? Is she wearing a tablecloth?"

Outer limits

The real problem is that Nicolas Ghesquière of Balenciaga is exploiting not only seamstresses but also customers who are foolish enough to buy a scarf for a quarter the price of a Yaris.

There are limits.

That's the problem with cross-border shopping. There are no limits to the plodding that people endure to get stuff cheap, which rather detracts from the point of foreign travel.

I have a suggestion for unhappy Canadian shoppers, and it's a novel one for me. Don't buy that thing! We are headed for hard economic times. Best to hunker down sans Range Rover and La Perla corsetry. This Christmas, why don't you buy Lesley Stowe's Raincoast Crisps, delicious, Canadian-made and at $6.99 a box, suited to the seasonal pocketbook.

That's all I have to offer you in the approaching recession: toil, tears, crackers and sweat.

This Week

I am entranced once again by the great CBC drama Intelligence. Having pouted all summer thinking it hadn't been renewed for a second season, I now watch agog on Monday nights. I prayed at the end of last season that Ian Tracey, playing drug dealer Jimmy Reardon, wouldn't die when he came out of the Seattle barroom toilet (same deal as the last scene of The Sopranos) and he didn't. He has yet to wash his hair though and Matt Frewer is still a great dirty bastard. Funny how a drama about the Vancouver underworld makes me want to move to Vancouver.

A propos of the shopping advice above, Tracey is as wonderful on a curved screen as on a flat one. Don't waste your dollars on poncey technology.

Letters

Heather Mallick states that she understands why Canadians would travel to the U.S. to get a car, but then goes on to query if it would be worth $1,000 to $2,000 and several days in Ohio to do so.

I'm currently looking at purchasing a used vehicle in the US for approximately $30,000 CDN all inclusive of duty, PST, and GST. The same vehicle in Ontario (model, year, options, mileage) would cost approximately $46,000 CDN in Ontario. The price differential for many used vehicles is far more that the $1,000 to $2,000 Ms. Mallick suggests.

So is it worth spending three days in Cleveland to save $16,000? Ummm - yes.

– Charles Manners | Orillia, Ontario

Heather Mallick has a decidedly jaundiced view of cross-border shopping, but she misses the single most important point, which is the price differential between Canadian and American items on even the most prosaic of items. It is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that Canadian retailers charge whatever they think the market will bear, so as to mainatain a higher profit margin to which they have become accustomed.

I would ask Miss Mallick to explain the following : I recently purchased a replacment seal for my Presto pressure cooker at a local hardware store in Ottawa. It set me back $12.00 + 14% taxes. That identical ring in the US sells for $6.00.

Similarly, during a recent visit to Toronto I purchased a package of Irish oatmeal (McCann's) at a Dominion supermarket on Eglington for $4.80. My sister in Manhattan purchased the identical package for $2.40.

I say again : Canadians are getting hosed by retailers. I do not believe for a nano second the tired and worn arguments about how the cost of doing business in Canada is much greater than the US. Best recourse is to purchase from US until change occurs and Canadian retailers are brought into the realities of the world where the Internet allows fast international price comparisons.

– Sandy Robertson | Ottawa