I visited Alberta in 1999 but a week or so I went back to Colorado. However I am in Edmonton, Ab now since summer of 2001.
I never imported/registered my VX since I don't want to give Canadian taxman any money and I will go back to Colorado soon I hope. Now the plates are expired and truck sits in a garage.
Anyway I am familiar with the import procedure because when I was visiting relatives in Christmas of 1996 I was driving my Trooper that I used to have. The Canadian border guy was of the opinion that I have to import the old truck (3weeks stay limit). Before entering Canada I had to pay a ransom of few hundred dollars later the vehicle had to pass about 3 inspections. Modifications I did were about five pieces of masking tape with felt pen written numbers for the metric speedo read-out, French side of a cereal box taped to the sun visor to override English text on it. For the daytime running lights I put in a jumper from the ignition switch to headlights. I don’t need to mention that I removed all that crap as soon as I crossed the border two weeks later. The truck never came back to Canada.
You can probably do the same temporary fix, after all most of the people have enough brains to be able when to turn their headlights on without the government telling them.
I have a full set of factory manuals and I can help you identify the wires you need to jump.
What I found amusing that during my first visit I was listening to one of the Edmonton radio stations and one of the radio guys was talking about the truck for a bit, I gather that he had seen me somewhere in that town.