 Created in 1908, the Canada–U.S. boundary spans 8,891 kilometres of mostly forested terrain.
Photo: ©istockphoto.com/FotografiaBasica
Boundaries hold a certain fascination. Take the boundary between Canada and the United States, one that attracts all manner of human initiative. A few years back, Canadians Dan Jacobson and wife Deng Yingyu decided to travel the length of the line between Lake of the Woods and the Continental Divide to pose next to boundary markers and snap photos. Atlanta multimedia artist Gregor Turk took that one step further, spending a good part of a year travelling the 49th parallel by foot and bicycle, creating artwork and a documentary video. His resulting exhibition was designed to question the “artificial and seemingly arbitrary aspects” of this famous border.
In fact, the Canada–United States boundary is anything but arbitrary. Just ask Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock. In his memoir On the Front of Life, he wrote that to understand relations between Americans and Canadians, you need only “come to Lake Memphremagog in July and go out bass fishing and hook up the International Boundary itself.”
We don’t suggest you do that; the good folks at the International Boundary Commission (IBC) would not be amused. It is their job to ensure the boundary is rigidly defined, faithfully demarcated and self-evidently clear for all to see. A quiet but remarkably effective bilateral body, the IBC has been the keeper of the line for the past 100 years.
And what a line. The Canada–U.S. boundary stretches for 8,891 kilometres, from the St. Croix River on the Atlantic Ocean to the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the Pacific Ocean, and from Dixon Entrance on the Pacific Ocean to the Arctic Ocean. It slices across woodland and prairie, travels up and down mountain ranges, skims rivers and the Great Lakes, and ever so politely tiptoes straight through a public library. The IBC maintains more than 8,000 monuments and reference points and 1,000 survey control sites and keeps a six-metre-wide clear vista along the land boundary line. And how does it keep that boundary clear and quiet? With a shrewd mixture of technology, weed-whackers and skill.
A boundary is not a border. A border is fluid: you enter “Canada,” for example, when you walk into a Canadian embassy in a foreign country or pass through Canadian Customs and Immigration in a foreign airport. By contrast, a boundary is resolutely fixed; it is, in the words of Brian Ballantyne, Advisor to Canada’s IBC Commissioner, an “impossibly thin membrane, phenomenal in length and height but with no width.” For a border, definition is crucial. For a boundary, definition is important but it is the act of demarcation that is all-important. “It’s essential to have a clear and well-marked boundary for law enforcement, customs and immigration, and public notice,” says IBC Canadian Commissioner Peter Sullivan. “People need to know that when they cross that boundary, things are different.”
Unlike international boundaries in Europe, the Canada–U.S. boundary was fixed on paper before it became defined on the ground. When the IBC was created in 1908 by a treaty between Canada and the U.S., the straight-line boundary between the two countries was already surveyed. The IBC was needed to mark the boundary on land and across waterways, maintain precise geographic positions from which the exact location of the boundary could be determined, and to keep that boundary clear to avoid uncertainties that would lead to dispute.
By all accounts, the IBC has done an admirable job as a bilateral body, despite the seemingly convoluted governance structure. It is led by two commissioners appointed by the respective governments. The U.S. commissioner is appointed by the President and reports to the U.S. Secretary of State. The Canadian commissioner is appointed by Order in Council. On policy issues, he reports to the Department of Foreign Affairs but operationally the position sits within Natural Resources Canada. Each commissioner has their own staff, equipment and budget, although work is allocated equally between the two. The Canadian section of the IBC operates on an annual budget of $2.4 million, with a full-time staff of seven and casual seasonal staff of 10.
Aside for regular online meetings, twice a year, the commissioners meet in Ottawa or Washington to discuss work plans and lingering issues. To maintain the required six-metre vista along the entire border, they are guided by a 15-year management plan that prioritizes work on 20 boundary segments according to the rate of growth of vegetation and the level of human activity. Of the almost 9,000 kilometres of boundary, 2,173 kilometres are forested, so there is a lot of work to do. The vista can get gnarly fairly quickly in verdant British Columbia or near waterways, so those areas are cleared from brush and overgrowth every five years. In the prairies and along the 141st meridian separating Alaska and Yukon, vistas can be left alone for longer periods.
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