US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance

The podcast's transcript suggests that their source for this is https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/peace-arch-u.... The person confidently claiming that any closure of the park would result in catastrophe is an immigration lawyer, not a historian:

"Saunders said the treaty stipulates there could not be any boundaries or physical barriers erected on the northern border of the U.S. — and if either side violated that treaty — the boundaries revert back to pre-treaty."

Since the Treaty of Ghent restored the pre-War of 1812 borders of both the United States and Canada, this doesn't make any sense. Canadian historian C. P. Stacey states that the period after the War of 1812 actually saw more border fortification than the years before (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1840618).

I mentioned that the idea that a 19th century treaty keeps the US-Canada border demilitarized was a good story, but I think the truth is an even better one: that the border is demilitarized because both countries know that they can trust their neighbor. Let's hope it stays that way.

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-107501

Unfortunately the border actually needs to be more sealed.

In the 90s, it was the norm for people in northern maine to cross into canada and vice versa, like weekly, to do certain shopping. We regularly took advantage of the low value of the Canadian dollar back then, and every grocery store in the US had daily Canadian customers.

Crossing the border was pretty much just agreeing that you weren't trafficking any specific produce. That's it.

Fort Kent, Maine is literally across a river from Canada. The bridge and border crossing is basically part of the town, and it was a normal daily thing to drive to the other side of the river and do something in Canada, like eat at the nice Chinese restaurant, "The Maple Leaf".

Every northern maine school had regular field trips across the border.

The two communities were basically one. There was no border. It was just a line on a map and a nod to your local friend who worked in the booth.

The southern border used to be similarly uncontrolled. The "Immigrants" and migrant workers who pick your produce have been a normal thing in US history forever. They wouldn't stay in the US, because the border was so lax they didn't expect any trouble coming back in the next time they need the paycheck.

The reaction to 9/11 was atrocious. All it did was kill already struggling communities in rural areas, hurt hardworking Americans, waste billions of taxpayer dollars on "Super duper important" airport scanners sold by a friend of the Bush admin, which then sat unused in a warehouse and we stopped using them entirely shortly after.

I'm putting this into my overflowing bucket of internet comments that doesn't "get" Canadians. Sorry to be curt but, since Canada-USA relations has been more at the forefront, I've seen too many comments that just "don't get it" and it riles me up each time.

They've had the 2nd amendment since their country was founded. It has no bearing on relations between the two countries, both at a micro and macro level.

We respect that they are their own country and have their own ways of doing things, which isn't even the same across each state. We respect US sovereignty over their own laws. It's the lack of respect for ours by the current US administration that is upsetting.

That's basically all its come down to. Oh, and the tariffs don't help either.

This library worked well for a hundred of year, and then the US government decided they wanted to invade Canada, wage an economic war, and needed to protect their border at all cost in case an invasion of migrants would come from... that library.

Remind me again -- which country is it that demands to see the content of your social media feeds at the border, and then chooses to deport (or worse, detain) you based on what your feed says about their president and his thieving gang of companions?

Or detains and deports academics with green cards based on their stated opinions about what's happening in Gaza?

I could go on.