Whatever Became of Andrew Feldmar?

This is the story of how an article traveled from The Vancouver Observer website around the world.   “Acid Free America?” by Linda Solomon was published on April 22, 2007 on VancouverObserver.com. It started here: 

Andrew Feldmar, a well-known Vancouver psychotherapist, rolled up to the Blaine border crossing last summer as he had hundreds of times in his career. At 66, his gray hair, neat beard, and rimless glasses give him the look of a seasoned intellectual. He handed his passport to the U.S. border guard and relaxed, thinking he would soon be with an old friend in Seattle. The border guard turned to his computer and googled "Andrew Feldmar,”

And on April 23.  the same article went up on The Tyee’s website with this headline: 

LSD as Therapy? Write about It, Get Barred from US

BC psychotherapist denied entry after border guard googled his work.

After the local press read the piece on the Observer and the Tyee, reporters barraged Feldmar with interview requests.  He appeared on local television and radio shows and the story was picked up by over 50 blogs who reprinted sections of it.   

“I trusted my story with the Vancouver Observer,” Mr. Feldmar says, “and once it was out, I was besieged with calls from other media outlets.  I had to decide who I would talk to and who not.” 

The Globe and Mail came out with their version of the story on April 25^th 2007 after interviewing Feldmar.   

A few trips decades ago put an end to this one

Wednesday April 25 2007

By Rod Mickleburgh 

A former LSD user is turned away at border after guards use Internet to dredge up past… 

Shortly after this, The New York Times has a reporter call Feldmar and published their own article on the story: 

Web searches at U.S. border bring scrutiny to new level

May 14 1007

By Adam Liptak 

Andrew Feldmar, a Vancouver psychotherapist, was on his way to pick up a friend at the Seattle airport last summer when he ran into a little trouble at the border. 

A guard typed Feldmar's name into an Internet search engine, which revealed that he had written about using LSD in the 1960s in an interdisciplinary journal. Feldmar was turned back and is no longer welcome in the United States, where he has been active professionally and where both of his children live….. 

Note how closely these stories resemble the original published on The Vancouver Observer and The Tyee.  CBC’s How It Happens, The Guardian, Montreal’s La Presse, WIRED Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, Global National TV, Forbes, NPR Seattle, and the Calgary Herald also reworked and ran the Feldmar story.  Ultimately, the online story as published on The Vancouver Observer and The Tyee came to the attention of the producers of the Colbert Report and they contacted Feldmar. 

On August 20^th producers remixed the story again and it appeared as the first of a series about law enforcement entitled “Nailed ‘Em” and was viewed by 1.3 million people.