Is this an international border?
Almost all of the photos contained in this post were taken by me (or fellow travelling companions) and either include both US and Canada in the frame, or were taken from one country and have the other country in the background.
Immigrants
I am an immigrant. I grew up in the US, but I always liked hockey, loved the wilderness and hated warm weather. It was only natural that I moved to Canada at some point.
Canada is an amazing country of seemingly endless de facto wilderness
Borders are merely a construct
Though Canadians loathe to admit it, Canada, it turns out, shares a lot culture and history with the US. The two countries share a lot of geography as well. Hell, large swaths of Canada were disputed territory for decades or centuries. Does anyone remember Fifty-four Forty or Fight! Where the US claimed much of what is now British Columbia as the “Oregon Territory”?
During the Klondike Gold Rush, the border between Alaska and the Yukon was disputed and wasn’t established until after the Mounties showed up and just started enforcing the border where they thought it should be (Chilkoot Pass).
Washington’s San Juan Islands were claimed by the British for Canada until a military standoff known as “The Pig War” in the late nineteenth century. Ultimately Canada lost the territory through an arbitration commission.
There actually are still a number of ongoing disputes where Canada and the US both claim ocean territory as their own.
The point here is that national borders are entirely a social construction. They are extremely fluid; sometimes they only exist in concept and have no physical basis in reality. Borders (an by extension nationality) are only given meaning by the means in which they are enforced, and are only legitimized through compliance.
Few straight lines exist in the wilderness
The US-Canada border has always felt particularly capricious to me. The first few dozen times that I crossed into Canada, it was while guiding canoe trips in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. With such an apt name, it is a million and a half acre Wilderness area that happens to be bordered by a two million acre provincial park in Ontario. The US-Canada border snakes its way through this epic, serpentine maze of lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands. It is incredibly beautiful and unique area and paddling along the border, you’d almost barely know that it was there (without having better-than-average map and compass skills).
Both sides of the lake or river have the same granite outcroppings, pine forests and moose. In fact, the border was defined by splitting down the middle, the most common paddling route through the area. Neither nation wanted to give up its convenient route to the prime beaver trapping territory.
Because of how the national boundary was defined, it’s extremely common for wilderness paddling routes to follow the border for days on end. And I can guarantee you that when we were paddling, we did not check in with customs when we wanted to take a bathroom break on the north shore, nor when we paddled 100 feet south to camp way back in the US. The border was completely arbitrary, irrelevant and almost contemptible.
Walking to Canada
My next experience with the US-Canada border felt a bit more serious, but only due to the historical weight attached to the area. I was backpacking the Chilkoot Trail, a route that Klondike gold rushers used to get from tide water in Alaska up to the Yukon gold fields. The apex of the multi-day backpacking trail is a high alpine pass, Chilkoot Pass, at the top of the “Golden Staircase”.
Is this an international border?
Chilkoot Pass is followed immediately by the US-Canada border where a very polite border patrol officer greeted me in her little 10 foot square log cabin. It felt bizarre to present my passport out in the middle of the wilderness. I had just walked in to Canada.
Immigration
Eventually, I met and started dating this cute nautical chart maker from British Columbia and as she and I started spending more time together, I started officially crossing the border several times every month. Without freedom of travel, our relationship never could have made it.
I took a job in Victoria, immigrated for real, got my permanent residency (the US Green Card equivalent) and started the process of trying to establish a life in Canada. But even though the border is social construction, it’s a really effective one! For seven years I lived in places where I could literally see the US on a daily basis. But still, this arbitrary, invisible line continued to stand between me and everything that was important from my past.
All of my family and many, many of my friends and loved ones are still “back” in the US. The music I love is still in the US. The best employers in my career field are still in the US. While there’s so much that I love about Canada and I’m happy, grateful and fortunate to be here, there is no getting past the fact that I will always be from the US.
Closed borders are dehumanizing
I realize that current US immigration policy changes are not (at present) targeting Canada. But in the spirit of empathy, I cannot imagine what it would be like to suddenly be told that I cannot travel freely between the two countries that I consider to be my home. Even if you don’t split your home between more than one country, try to imagine what it would be like to not be able to go visit your parents, to not see your kids on holidays, to be permanently exiled from your friends and family. And why? Because some xenophobic, tiny-handed man-baby wants to go on yet another power trip and has some point to prove?
I know very few people from the seven countries affected by the US travel ban. But I do know some and know that this incredibly broad, blanket policy change is absolutely ridiculous and borders on dehumanization. We live in a globalized world, where all humans are citizens of the world. Trying to turn back the clock on the progress of global human contact is bound to be an epic failure and I sincerely hope that citizens of the US and the world will stand up against the person trying to implement this terribly misguided and antiquated policy.
All of my border photos for this post, plus a few bonus ones, are available here.
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