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Hitchhiking Image in Canada

In Canada I got rides from quite some people saying they have a certain image about hitchhikers, that hitchhikers are generally dangerous. So they say, they normally don't stop for hitchhikers but since I am a girl, and since it is rainy, or since it is bloody cold, sometimes women do stop for me.

This is beneficial for me, but is also pretty sexist. I think they should be just as compassionate to a male as they are to me. Or, why don't they think I have the same potential as a man? That I can be as dangerous as a guy because also I could have a gun or knife and be as 'powerful'?

They don't see us hitchhikers as just ordinary people who have office jobs for example, or whatever, and who just have go from place A top B like they have to themselves.

I am not so pessimistic about hitchhiking in Canada though, because I do get a lot of good lifts, and other people tell me that they like picking up hitchhikers, that for example they themselves used to also hitchhike.

In the 50s and 60s it was much more common to hitchhike. But these days, in different ways, people are taught to be afraid. The media image and the government give us hitchhikers and the concept of sharing a bad image. Also in general terms, people are taught to be afraid of others. That's a big shame.

---Sarah Jane from Canada

Hitchhikers Control Card

The Hitchhikers Control Card was a small booklet for each city with places where to stand, with the telephone numbers of police and the date issued. It would be valid for a year. The other side of this card had space for drivers to put their personal stamps that were provided by the government.

Even on television there were advertisements for people to hitchhike, also saying it would be perfectly safe for children to hitchhike without their parents.

But many hitchhikers also had fears of why the government was controlling even hitchhiking. Using the card was risky because the government could use the data you provided, whether you were communist or not. It was also just another way to control society, with the police abusing hitchhiking to have deeper surveillance.

The hitchhikers' card died somewhere in the 70s. Someone actually got killed and people stopped using these cards. Generally Polish people don't like control over themselves by the authorities, so hitchhiking was something you would do without letting the police know about it. People just wouldn't give out their names anymore merely because they wanted to travel safer.

It actually worked in a way, my uncle experienced. It can become handy, but the people that stopped for him would have stopped anyway. He felt safer though because once when he got robbed, the thief was stupid enough to give a stamp when my uncle entered the car, and so the police could track him quickly.

--- by Noemi.