Canada tells Martha:

Tell them to shove it Girl


BY DAVE GOLDINER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

No, Canada! Martha Stewart's plans to go to the Great White North have gone south, thanks to a Canadian ban on the potpourri princess.
Stewart had hoped to attend a pumpkin festival and parade on Canada's Thanksgiving Day this weekend in the province of Nova Scotia.

But she abruptly scrapped the trip, which would have been taped for her "Martha" show, after running afoul of Canadian immigration rules that bar ex-cons from entering the country.

"I was really looking forward to it," Stewart said on her TV show yesterday. "I was all set."

The maple leaf mixup quickly sparked an unlikely political squabble in Canada, with a top opposition leader blasting the Stewart ban as "ridiculous."

"I have no fear of her burying us with her prison poncho throwing a homemade pie," said Stockwell Day, foreign affairs chief for the opposition Conservative Party. "She's no threat to Canada. They should let her in."

Day said insiders told him that immigration officials had turned down Stewart's request for an exemption to the no-criminals rule, exemptions he said are routinely granted.

"The whole thing is crazy," Day said. "She's paid a price and she's bounced back."

A spokesman for Canadian immigration authorities refused to comment on the case.

Because Stewart is still on probation following her recent prison stint, she would also need to ask for permission to leave the U.S. Probation officials do not comment on those requests.

Stewart badly wanted to go to the annual gourd gala in Windsor, a town of 4,000 near Halifax, to visit an amateur pumpkin farmer who once appeared on her show. She was even supposed to squeeze into an oversized, hollowed-out gourd and paddle across a lake in the annual Pumpkin Regatta.

Stewart's scheduled cameo drew rock star-style publicity to the small town, and she's still hoping a last-minute deal will allow her to cross the border.

"I'm just sorry that things like this do happen," Stewart said.

Link Here