The porous, 5,500 mile U.S.-Canadian border, as seen in Estcourt Maine in 2006, is increasingly a relic of the past. (Photo by Mathieu Belanger/Reuters.) 

SAINT STEPHEN New Brunswick – At Ferry Point, one could throw a stone across the Saint Croix River and hit Calais, Maine. And until September 11th, 2001, the narrow river was pretty much the only thing separating Calais from Saint Stephen, its Canadian twin.

People were born in each other’s hospitals. Their children married one another. They shared their bowling leagues, fire departments, water supplies, community centers, and swimming pools. During the War of 1812, when they were supposed to be enemies, they even shared gunpowder so that Calais’ Fourth of July fireworks display wasn’t cancelled.

“Down here on the border,” explains Saint Stephen’s Mayor Jed Purcell, “it’s all one community as far as we’re concerned.”

Much like the more famous Rio Grande Valley on the Texas-Mexico border, the communities on either side of the Maine-New Brunswick border have more in common with one another – culture, customs, history, and genealogy — than with the distant capitals of their respective countries.

But over the last eight years, the imaginary line separating Americans and Canadians has turned very real, complicating cross-border trips, disrupting time-honored routines, and in some cases cutting communities off from one another. Border security has become more stringent, waiting times at crossing have grown and, since July, passports have become mandatory for adults crossing into the U.S. at land borders.

“Nine-eleven changed our lives on the border significantly,” says Lee Sochasky, executive director of the St. Croix International Waterway Commission. “We’re still trying to adjust.

Adjusting hasn’t been easy in Forest City, a remote cross-border hamlet of two dozen people 50 miles north of Saint Stephen. The local church and cemetery are on the Canadian side, while the post office and fishing lodges are in the U.S. Surrounded by woods and wilderness lakes, residents traditionally paid little attention to the frontier, until the U.S. began tightening border control in the late 1980s as part of the “War on Drugs.”

Now the thirty-foot long bridge connecting the two sides of the village is blocked off at 4 each afternoon when the U.S. border post closes. On Sundays it doesn’t open at all, forcing U.S. residents to travel 50 miles via another crossing to attend church or visit relatives a few hundred yards away. Pedestrian access to the local swimming hole across the top of a nearby dam has been blocked off by fences.

“The whole homeland security thing has made life miserable for everyone here,” says Dale Wheaton, who operates Wheaton’s Lodge, the hunting and fishing camp founded by his father in 1952. “We’re under constant scrutiny: they send helicopters and planes up and down the lake and there’s a constant parade of border patrol vehicles that come in and out of Forest City looking over everybody.”

Mr. Wheaton recalls sneaking up on some ducks with a client and a hunting dog in the woods recently, only to have a Border Patrol helicopter begin hovering overhead. “It’s like living in a police state here,” he says.

More stringent regulations and enforcement have also made it impossible for fishing guides and youth canoe groups to criss-cross between remote campsites on the St. Croix and Chiputneticook Lakes, forcing the cancellation of what had been annual rituals. “There’s currently no legal means to enter Canada at remote sites,” explains Ms. Sochasky. “Even though they’re in the middle of nowhere, you can’t legally use them.”

Residents of New Brunswick’s Campobello Island have suffered the greatest disruptions: for most of the year, they can’t reach the rest of Canada — or buy gasoline, visit a bank, or reach a hospital — without a passport. In July and August, the island’s 1000 residents can take a small ferry to nearby Deer Island and then to mainland New Brunswick by a second ferry. But the rest of the year, the only way in or out is a bridge to Lubec, Maine, an hour’s drive south of Saint Stephen, the nearest mainland border crossing.

“We’re the only Canadians in Canada that have to have a passport to travel in their own country,” says island resident Bob Hooper, who bristled when U.S. customs began searching incoming mail and packages, which must transit Maine. “People will adjust to the passport thing, so long as [U.S. border officials] don’t treat everyone like they’re a common criminal.”

The thickening of the border has affected life all along the 5500-mile US-Canada frontier, once touted as the world’s longest undefended border. Business leaders in both countries report that tie-ups at border crossings have cost billions, while U.S. tourism to Canada last year sunk to the lowest levels since record keeping began.

But on the Maine-New Brunswick border, the disruptions are as much cultural and economic. Inhabited for millennia by Passamaquoddy Indians, Eastern Maine and Southwestern New Brunswick were colonized by the same wave of Massachusetts settlers in the decade preceding the American Revolution. To the north, both banks of the Saint John River were settled by French Canadians. In both areas, the exact location of the border remained in dispute for decades following the American Revolution, furthering blurring regional allegiances.

Until the late 20th century, the border was almost entirely porous. Roads, structures, and families straddled the frontier. Many Eastern Mainers born during and after World War II were delivered at Saint Stephen’s hospital, a fact that’s now causing them headaches as they apply for passports and social security cards.

In Four Falls, New Brunswick, 120 miles north of Saint Stephen, the Aroostook Valley Country Club straddles the line: the parking lot and pro-shop stand in Fort Fairfield, Me., the clubhouse in Canada, a vestige of its Prohibition-era foundation. Senator Susan Collins (R-Me), a native of nearby Caribou, intervened last year to help ensure the facility could continue to operate.

Mr. Wheaton says border authorities in both countries should be more sensitive to the local concerns and quality of life issues. “We understand they have a job to do, but they’ve gone way beyond what’s reasonable to do things that are unpleasant and unnecessary,” he says. “I’d like to see them be more responsive to traditional uses and needs of these little communities.”

David Astle, spokesperson for the regional Customs and Border Protection headquarters in Houlton, Me., says the agency is cognizant of local concerns, but is responding to genuine problems. An access road on Fort Fairfield’s golf course was being used by people with interests other than playing golf, he says, and a major 1995 drug bust involved hashish smuggled over the top of the Forest City dam.

“We’re not trying to change the way of life around the border communities and we’re using a common sense approach as far as law enforcement,” Mr. Astle says. “But we’re here to enforce the law, not to compromise.”
 

http://www.globalpost.com/passport/foreign-desk/091023/securing-america%E2%80%99s-northern-front