What OS are you running on your old laptop? It appears that National Instruments only supported the GPIB-1284CT with NI-488.2 versions released for Windows 3.1, which could also be run up through Windows 95 / 98 / Me, and the GPIB-1284CT was never supported by NI-488.2 versions released for Windows NT / 2000 / XP.
If you happen to be running Windows 95 / 98 / Me on your old laptop and wanted to try getting a GPIB-1284CT to work, I doubt I would ever get around to using the one I have. It would be reasonably cheap to ship it within the US, but might not be worth the shipping cost to Canada.