Note to American peace activists: don't expect the welcome mat to be out when you show up at the Canadian border.

Ann Wright found that out the hard way when she arrived at the Ottawa Airport to speak at a conference on Parliament Hill. Wright is a former soldier who's now active with Code Pink, a group opposed to the war in Iraq. She'd been invited to speak by the N-D-P.

When Wright got off the plane in Ottawa, border guards told her she couldn't enter the country because of her criminal record. She's been arrested at various anti-war rallies, though she says she's only faced fines and never jail time.

Wright says she's been banned from entering Canada for a year. Reached by cellphone as she was waiting for a flight back to Washington, Wright said she was disappointed.

"Peace activists are not criminals," she says. "We have committed misdemeanours. And for us to be excluded from Canada and now me banned for a year from Canada seems a little harsh."

Wright isn't getting much sypathy from Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day. To him, the border guards are just doing their job.

"The border officer doesn't make a distinction between what were the extenuating circumstances that arose to a certain conviction," Day says, "And so border officers are required in fact to restrict certain people from coming in."

Wright says she'll try to come back to Canada when her one year ban is up.

"I'm not writing Canada off," she says