Why You Don’t Want To Live On the US-Canada Border
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- Опубликовано: 5 сен 2022
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What's even crazier is that Point Roberts only has an elementary school. So for children grades 4 and up they would have to take a bus though British Columbia and into the mainland Washington State. But that also means during the pandemic this couldn't happen.
it's really stupid, the USA should make exceptions for entries that have no international connection at all, or give Canada stewardship over the land. USA technically owns it, but Canada gets the tax revenue and the relatively tiny amount of remaining residents get residency, benefits but not federal voting rights unless they apply for citizenship.
Otherwise in a decade it will be a rotting ghost town.
a car ferry between point Roberts and it's nearby us town would solve the issue entirely
@@anasevi9456 Germany has such a case with Switzerland.
Büsingen is a legally german town, that is fully enclosed by Switzerland and has adopted many swiss laws. They even use the swiss currency, in contrast to the euro used in Germany.
it goes even more crazy between "Baarle-Nassau, NL" and "Baarle-Hertog, BE", where the border is all over the place. The state to whom you have to pay taxes is even determined by the position of your front door, because so many houses stand on the border.
the good thing is, that Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium are all part of the Schengen area, where only rarely border controls happen. And if they happen they only pick single random cars/busses/trucks out of the border traffic
@@person-gg6gx Would require Federal subsidies, and so far Uncle Sam has not offered any. The temporary ferry during the pandemic border closure was paid for with emergency Federal money, which has gone away.
@@anasevi9456 The problem is... your comment makes too much sense.
We ALL know the US senate doesn't make logical sense
As a resident of Point Roberts I would like to remind you that we don't HAVE to drive to get to mainland USA. We can take boats across the bay and do quite frequently. Many of us keep a car on both sides for this exact purpose.
because lots of people have two cars and a boat money
Ok , that makes sense ! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@averagejoey2000 just because you are broke doesn’t mean everyone is
@@orderstudios4088 I only have a boat and one car. only have enough money to live on the boat
@@averagejoey2000 Each person/family budgets for what they need based on where they live. What sounds weird or extravagant for some people may be basic necessities for others.
Point Roberts has more shipment receivers than you can shake a stick at. Canadians (myself included) regularly ship packages there and pick them up in person, as it's far cheaper than shipping them cross border. Even though the packages cross the border twice to get there, they are not "imported" technically.
That's actually really smart lol
point Roberts is also the place to go for migrants renewing their visa / permit because it saves you the trouble of doing it at an airport or at the real border
The road is pretty much designed so you can just go around the border post and go back immediately to Canada.
True... but I find package fees in Blaine are cheaper. Of course if you live close to PR it does not matter. Also cheap USA gas ⛽️. I bet 90% of gas there is sold to Canadians.
I live close to Stanstead/Derby Line and people do the same thing here
Yup. My uncle was just telling me about how easily you could set up a mailing address there and that you could basically pick up your packages anytime 24/7 from secure dropboxes
When I was a kid, pre-9/11, you didn't need a passport to travel by car between Canada and the US. And not just at border towns, but... anywhere. It's really hard to explain to people who didn't grow up with it how EXTREMELY open the Canada / US border used to be.
Yes! When I was a kid, we went on a road trip to Niagara Falls. My parents had passports but my brother and I didn't but there was no issue entering Canada.
They didn’t make you use a passport until 2008 actually when crossing by land
As a further step of making the boarder more difficult I’ve faced US customs while leaving the US back into Canada. I thought about asking if I was leaving east Germany, but I thought better of it.
One week I crossed the truck border 9 times, once with an eightfoot by four foot crate in the back I was going to use for livestock feed storage. "Anything to declare"? NO. Proceed. I could have had an ENTIRE North Korean soccer team in that crate. Today? Not so much.
By “extremely open” you mean like “Schengen open” where there was no border checks when crossing the border or just you didn’t need a passport to cross the border?
I live in the border region (currently on the Canadian side but used to live on the US side). It's not as good as the pre-9/11 days but it is not nearly so bad as it was during the height of the pandemic. No COVID tests required if you are fully vaccinated. It was annoying in the extreme not to be able to visit friends that were only a short drive away. Sometimes I forget that for most people, international travel is a big deal and not just a casual day trip.
It still sucks like the pre 9-11 good days are kind of over, now we get nsa,tsa, patriot act and a strengthened border with 'known terrorist hub' Canada
As a central Euopean, I don't get borders at all :D
Board line they are useless
Being only 28, I rarely remember a life without secure borders. I grew up in Fort Erie, and moved back as an adult. The town is nothing what it used to be compared to pre 9/11.
why doesn't the US cede these areas to Canada? I doesn't make any sense to hold unreachable no man's lands. As for the people living there, you folks are true masochists. I cant imagine getting out my passport for a grocery trip. Lol.
In the mid-90's a rabid animal was found in Point Roberts. This created a big problem...the US-approved rabies vaccine was not approved in Canada, so it couldn't be brought through, and people couldn't bring their animals through the two borders to get them vaccinated on the mainland US. Eventually, the US Coast Guard did a 'training mission' from their base here in Seattle to Point Roberts to bring the vaccine (and a veterinarian to administer it) via the water route. Neat little town, only about 900 residents. As mentioned below, from 5th grade on up the kids all get on a bus and take a 1-hour trip through two international borders to get to school in Blaine, then do it again at the end of the school day.
My understanding of how the school bus stuff works, the contents of the bus don't legally enter Canada as they just drive through, so they could have just sent the vaccine over on the school bus.
Yes. The rabies vaccine wasn't approved in Canada - because it wasn't labelled in French.
I used to live in a border town between New Brunswick and Maine and my favourite memories to share with people is how I would cross the border on my bike with my passport and I essentially had 25 hours to my day as once I crossed the border I was in a different time zone. I'd leave one job at 5pm, ride my bike for a half hour across an international border, and start at my 2nd job at 5pm. Which was 6pm on the other side of the border.
Seen from Europe... I live in Eastern Belgium, a 20-minute drive away to the borders with both Luxembourg and Germany, and the French border is an-hour drive away. As we have no more border or customs checks within the EU a/o Schengen Zone (and same currency), for me crossing into any of these countries, for leisure or for shopping, is so "normal life" that I sometimes don't really pay attention to which country I'm in. Having to go thru border checks each time I change country would be both annoying and weird.
The main difference is that most Americans don't live within 15 hours of a border so it really isn't an issue to most people
Seen from Europe (Denmark) the covid vaccinations are paid by our free helthcare. It might be tax based, but we do get a lot back. Basic social security, health insurance, education, libraries, etc.
Yeah, but the entire EU (including the UK) is literally less than half the size of America. And there's just over half as many countries as we have states.
And while we don't have many different languages to deal with, the culture across this entire country is quite varied.
@@lastboyscout6437
It's tax based, and it's a LOT cheaper than what we pay, mostly thanks to the republicans.
Before Covid, the EU paid $2,500 per capita for health insurance. America paid $10,000 per capita.
And for that extra $7,500, we have more stillbirths, more SIDS, and both men and women have a shorter average lifespan than the EU.
@@lastboyscout6437 Quick note on that, and it might just be a translation issue...
We do not get free health "insurance" in Denmark. You still have to pay for that yourself.
We do have free health "care/services".
Coutts and Sweetgrass exist specifically because the border exists. Coutts is the port of exit for all the beef, canola oil, crude petroleum, modified milk ingredients, and grains (especially barley for beer) imported into the US from Alberta, and Sweetgrass is the port of exit for all the fruit and winter vegetables imported into Alberta from the US.
I would say "imported into Montana", except that there are fewer people in all of Montana than in Calgary alone.
Hahaha especially eastern Montana. I've never known anyone who lives there.
@@EvilSnips bruh Montana has 1M people, Calgary has 1.5M people.
Taking a subset of a smaller set, you get a set that's necessarily ≤ than the original, which is < than the bigger one.
No information nor fun has been had with this comment.
And sweetgrass hosts a few businesses that receive packages from for Canadians buying from US companies that only ship within the continental 48.
The Coutts Alberta Volunteer Fire Department also serves as Sweetgrass' fire department.
As a kid living in Lethbridge, the joke about Sweet Grass was that it had 9 buildings, 10 of them being bars
USA should have agreed to this: “The British Foreign Office instructed Captain James Prevost, the British Boundary Commissioner, to inform his U.S. counterpart of the situation and request Point Roberts be left to Britain, because of the great inconvenience it would be to the United States. If the American Boundary Commission was reluctant, Prevost was instructed to offer ”some equivalent compensation by a slight alteration of the Line of Boundary on the Mainland“. It is not known how the U.S. commissioner responded, but Point Roberts remained part of the United States.” - Wikipedia.
Shockingly I saw the bot bully peter, which I then reported. I don't usually see these bots here.
The problem was that Canada demanded all of Vancouver Island. If you look at the opening map, Vancouver Island is the mass of land to the left of Point Roberts (it does not touch mainland Canada as portrayed in the graphic). A portion of the island passes below the 49th parallel. So per the original agreement it should have been split between the U.S. and Canada (which incidentally would've avoided much of the wrangling between the two countries over salmon fishing rights in the 20th and 21st century). But Canada insisted on getting the entire island, which led to the U.S. insisting on keeping little bits of land like Point Roberts as compensation.
@@solandri69 Except that if you read the entire quote I posted, the British side was willing to make adjustments elsewhere on the mainland (probably by moving a length of the border north a bit from the 49th parallel) to compensate for the land lost by ceding Point Roberts to the British.
The US/Canada should just agree to let us secede. Honestly the only thing that worries me about that would be the fault line (which ironically shares the same name as the secession movement), but I've heard the quake could set off the SA fault line so California would get most of the help even if we were part of the US.
@@davidbarts6144 Interestingly there is a somewhat analogous piece of Canada in British Columbia isolated by a waterway - the Pend Oreille River flows north from Washington, crosses the border then takes a sharp westward turn until it empties into the Columbia just north (a few hundred metres) of the border, just southeast of Trail. Why I say this is interesting is because that part of Canada has no permanent settlements nor are there any bridges to access it (other than the one at the Pend Oreille's mouth following the Columbia, which is the highway to the US border, but even this doesn't allow access to most of the territory due to another arm of the river that crosses into the US) and nothing but logging roads within it, though there are two hydroelectric dams. The area is quite a bit larger than Point Roberts (a good 50 km2) and I sometimes wonder if this was an area that Capt Prevost might have traded and that perhaps Canada and British Columbia have quietly set aside should a land swap ever come to pass.
CGP Grey called the treeless Canada-US border the "No Touching Zone". Still one of my favorite videos to this day.
Another interesting place is Angle Inlet, MN, which was also affected by COVID pretty badly. Even when the borders partially reopened, you needed a negative COVID test to cross but Angle Inlet is so small, it doesn't even have a hospital, let alone a lab to run tests.
BTW, add "Sault Ste. Marie" to your mispronounced bucket. It's silly, but most people (including almost all locals) pronounce the town like "Soo Saint Marie," as read in English. So "Sault" sounds like "Sue" and "Sioux." And "Ste," which is the French abbreviation for "sainte," is pronounced like the English word "saint." But "Marie" is pronounced as you would expect, not like the English name "Mary." Just to keep you on your toes.
EDIT: Also, "Sumas, WA" is pronounced like "SOO-mas," not like "SUM-as." You can go there to get some as, but you don't pronounce the city that way.
EDIT2: I think "Derby Line" is also pronounced like "Darby Line."
Also "Sumas" is pronounced "Soo-mass".
@@michaelgodwin6158 You must have gotten here before my edit. You beat me to it.
And Sumas is pronounced “soo-mass.”
The French language will get you every time.
Was looking for this one ☝🏻
FYI, it's pronounced Soo St. Marie, hence why the boat locks are named the Soo Locks.
He didn't do much research, obviously. Kids these days aren't learning much in the publik edumucashun systom 🤣
His pronunciation of Tsawwassen is also iffy, and Sumas is not "sum-mas". It's "soo-mas".
Came to say the same thing, love Half as Interesting (and Wendover) but yes, Soo, Soo Saint Marie
Thank you! I came here to correct also.
I litetally LOL'd when he pronounced the city I have always called 'the soo'.
This was more of a Mini-Wendover than a Half As Interesting. I, a Brit, went to Point Roberts in the summer of 2019. It was easy enough to get in back then, just pay seven dollars for the visa waiver and off you went. I found it a rather weird place which is good as I like visiting weird places. Whilst the border crossing was a busy place, there didn’t appear to be anything stopping the locals from walking along the beach to reach Canadian or American territory. Indeed, some houses on the Canadian side appeared to have gardens that abutted the border with nothing to stop their owners from stepping in to US land. I have a picture of me leaning against a wall which meant my arm was in Canada, the rest of me in the USA.
Walking across the boarder is usually a pretty easy endeavor. Driving a car is when it requires checkpoints and visa certification.
So you're one of these guys then? 2:00
There's a low wooden fence along one neighborhood at the northern edge of Point Roberts. It's the only barrier between the U.S. and Canada there. Look up 4 66a St, Delta, British Columbia and do a Google street view. You can easily hop over or squeeze past the fence if you wanted. I always through it was comical because a hundred feet away, it reverted to the regular prison-style chain link fence surrounded by a no-man's land on either side, with huge metal posts with cameras on top.
@@solandri69 have a look at 10 English Bush Rd in Street View. That doesn’t even have a fence.
Nothing stops people from crossing, but doing so would violate the law and could lead to severe consequences.
As a Pacific Northwest resident, while point roberts is in a odd position, it's important to point out that, culturally, the entire PNW is far more connected to BC Canada than it is with the rest of the US. The same applies to BC, it's more connected to Washington and Oregon than it is the rest of Canada. As it turns out, the PNW is extremely secluded and far away from the rest of NA.
👍
This is true, I'm from Vancouver, and people are far more likely to do a weekend trip to Seattle than to another part of Canada (except perhaps Vancouver Island or the Okanagan Valley)
@@aidanw9378 Portland resident here, it's not considered traveling for us until we live the I-5 Portland/Seattle/Vancouver corridor.
*raised Doug flag*
It makes sense. You have some steep mountains in the way, and because I am such a nerd I once did a count and found that there are more roads leading from Delaware County, Pennsylvania to the State of Delaware than there are roads leading from British Columbia to anywhere else. The whole PNW is just really isolated.
As a former Sault Ste Marie resident (the Canada side) I HAVE to inform you that it's actually pronounced like "Sue Ste Marie". Look forward to seeing this corrected in the yearly mistakes video ❤️
I doubt he'll fess up to the mistake. He skipped the Northwest Angle/Oak Island area entirely. Obviously research is not his forte.
He also pronounced Tsawwassen with a silent "T". Here in the Vancouver area we pronounce the name with a silent "S"
Thank you. Absolutely cringed when he said it.
TIL, thank you
C’mon Canuck, you SHOULD know that it’s Soo, NOT Sue!
2:25 okay who challenged Sam to mispronounce as many city names as possible in one video
First mispronunciation was mere seconds into the video!
Impressively managed to not use the local OR the traditional First Nation pronunciation of Tsawwassen
A solid 3 place names butchered lol
Actually he said Tsawwassen properly 🤷♂️
edit: I stand corrected, Tsawwassen is apparently really tricky
I'm a big fan of "bolth".
Abbotsford is also mispronounced lol
For your future correction video: Sault is pronounced as "Soo/Sue/Sioux" for the respective cities on the locks
As is the "u" in Sumas.
He butchered a couple places. Sumas, is like SSM, its a Soo sound at the start.
Since it's a french name the french pronunciation "so" is correct as well
It sure looks like salt to me!
Add to your list Hyder, Alaska (pop 87), and Stewart, British Columbia (pop about 500). Stewart is incredibly remote, making Hyder even moreso, though there is apparently a floatplane delivering mail twice a week.
Yeah, but you can still get Hyderized
Children in Hyder go to school in Stewart so covid seriously affected their education and their social lives.
Several times throughout the video your border in Washington is wrong, you've got the San Juan Islands (and Whidbey Island at a couple points) on the wrong side of the line. The border doesn't trace Puget Sound since that's all defined as Internal Waters, and even then it's less than 12 NM wide and would be contained entirely within the Territorial Sea. The border goes around the San Juan Islands (which are in Washington) before cutting south of Vancouver Island (Canada) and down the Straight of Juan de Fuca.
We literally fought a "war" over this (The Pig War in 1859). Granted the only casualties were some potatoes and a pig, but it did ultimately lead to the establishment of that section of the border.
So your saying it was far more successful than the emu war but not quite as good as a cod war?
@@KelsaRavenlock Pretty much.
OverSimplifed?
@@KelsaRavenlock Don't mention the war.
I came to the comments to say this. That border is hilariously wrong…
Sault is pronounced “soo” because anglophones find French to be an enigma.
Given the string of mispronounced city names right then, I'm guessing he did this on purpose lol
Well fine then, I'll pronounce it just like salt to make it even
I'm a Michigan native and I came here specifically to say that if it wasn't already said! 🤣😂
But it is pronounced Soo, both English and French
Oui.
I used to live in Delta while a teen. Delta is a large city that borders Point Roberts and is also not far from Blaine, the two closest American towns. It was about half an hour to get to either place by car on the highway, maybe a little longer. Back at the time when my friends and I were starting to drive, it was a LOT cheaper to buy gas in the USA, so every other weekend my friend and I would go down to one of those places. It was fun. We could go for a drive, cross the border, get cheap gas, pick up some American chocolate, then return home. We knew both places fairly well after visiting constantly. Point Roberts is really a weird one, and I think in most cases of creating boundaries, that would've been considered Canada, as the 49th parallel meets the ocean to the east of there in Blaine. Especially when you consider how much of Canada drops below the 49th west of that anyway. Anyway, it makes for an interesting place. So many people used to cross the border for gas in the 80s, and I guess that dropped in the 90s gradually. Basically you entered Point Roberts at the border, there was one main north-south street, and it was lined with gas stations, all packed with Canadian vehicles. Fun times!
You missed one! (And maybe your sources did too?) Akwesasne NY/ON is a really interesting one, it actually has a fairly long stretch of land between the checkpoints for the 2 borders, and in one sense belongs to the Mohawk nation rather than to either of the 2 countries. It also has a Canadian exclave on a peninsula for the same reason - straight border lines don't leave much room for natural shapes.
The border enforcement there has been very strict in recent years, it really sucks for the people in the community. I just drive through on my way to see my family though.
Also nice to see Fort Blunder mentioned, that's right near where I grew up!
I do wonder, in case the residents of those towns are so frustrated that they want to switch nationality, whether they can legally hold a referendum, then act on its results if it returns a favourable vote.
Northwest Angle, MN almost did pass a referendum to join Canada.
USA has made it clear it will never tolerate such self determination referendums unless it is geopolitically advantageous. They will likely let it just become a forested ghost town and call the issue sorted.
@@mikefung9145
I cannot find anything saying that they had a referendum. The only notes I'm seeing show that there was a proposal for a referendum in the 90s that went nowhere. The more recent incident was a petition submitted to Whitehouse.gov to hand it over but there is not really any evidence that this was pushed forward by people within the Northwest Angle. I have seen no polls regarding the matter one way or another. I have seen no articles written suggesting that the residents support secession.
A country’s borders are under the purview of its federal government. Residents could hold referenda if they wanted, and these might carry some political influence, but they would have no legal bearing on where the country’s border lies.
It’s a difficult question to answer. On the face of it? No. It’s either be an act of secession or conquest - bloodless though it might be - and unlike territorial claims over rocky islands, this HAS a permanent population of US citizens. The Federal Government can’t overlook that, lest it become a precedent for other, less sane calls for secession.
But on the other hand… It’s the War of the Pig all over again. For example, the US could hand over Port Roberts without even blinking, and negotiations could probably be wrapped up in a day, as long as the residents were granted Canadian citizenship. The other cross-border towns would be a harder pill to swallow, but neither government is interested in even posing the question, and even with a referendum, I doubt it would get past a State/Provincial level “No.”
George Washington wouldn't have signed his name to the Treaty of Paris in 1783 because he was still the Commanding General of the Continental Army headquartered outside British-controlled New York City. The US signers were Benjamin Franklin, John Adam, John Jay, and Henry Laurens. Also, I can't believe you didn't mention the Northwest Angle in the video.
True, and the fact that Canada once proposed trading the NW angle for PR but the US staunchly refused.
@@WhiteCavendish nw angle and point Robert's are both parts of the US, how would a trade work?
@@bobby_greene the NW angle is a part of Canada that you can't get to without going through the US
@@WhiteCavendish it's part of Minnesota that you can't get to by land without going through Canada
@@bobby_greene Maybe Im mixing it up with another spot. There's apparently a place as I described that they wanted to trade.
As a resident near Derby Line, here's a nifty fact: If you're Canadian, you're allowed to enter through the American side of the Haskell Library--the only entrance--without checking in through customs, as long as you stay on the sidewalk. Also, we have Canusa Ave, a road half in the US, half in Canada.
My grandparents live in Tsawassen and back when I was a kid my grandpa would launch his boat in Point Roberts as it was the closest public launch to their house (plus the bonus of cheaper gas). Back then when we crossed the border the guards cared more about the boat and the fish we caught than us.
You can also fly into the grass airstrip at Pt. Roberts has as well. That's something that i used to do working for San Juan Airlines.
Point Roberts has always been a handy place for residents of Greater Vancouver to get cheaper gas and receive parcels in their P.O. boxes. Hopefully the border becomes less encumbered soon. Crossing used to be much simpler before 9/11.
The Haskell Free Library (Derby Line, VT and Stanstead QC) is a great place to visit if you ever get the chance. One of the few places you can personally straddle the border, and the formal crossings within town are some of the least built-up you will ever see.
As a Canadian born and raised in Metro Vancouver I can honestly state Point Roberts is the weirdest place ever. I usually go to Tsawwassen to wave at Americans and have some conversations (obviously on our side of the border). Also funny how the most expensive place in Canada the metro Vancouver lower mainland is right across the cheapest housing market in the Northwest USA. Just a little under 1 Million starting price for a single bed condo in Downtown Vancouver yet down there it’s 200,000. Want a home? It’s over a million at least. Absolutely insane.
Oh dear lord….a mill for a studio is mind boggling
@@KA-ys5ps Well not really 1 million anymore they rose sharply and dropped insanely cause British Columbia is full of money laundering. The B.C Libéral government were in on it too and it was a big scandal involving the B.C Lottery and Casino’s, real estate agents and wealthy Chinese families. Now under the New Democrats prices are going back to $100,000- 300,000 for studio condo’s 700,000 for a 3+ bed condo and just under a million for a single family home. People were literally buying them just for the sake of owning more homes. It became an investment and not something you’d live in.
As a Michigander, I almost had a heart attack when I heard you pronounce SSM incorrectly lol
Ah yes, Washingtonians too collapse at his presumptions, Soo-Mass not Sum-ass 😮💨
@@dengxiaoping325 I had a brief moment of "wait have I been pronouncing it wrong this whole time?" when he said that lmao.
We Ontarians also had to do a double take
Well, the bloody word reads like "salt".
michigander? how bout some euro-style: michiganese...? 😂😂
The same thing happens over here on the East Coast. I'm from New Brunswick ( I know most Canadians don't even know where that is despite our country only having 10 provinces to remember). Campobello Island is owned by Canada. FDR had a summer cottage there, so Maine built the FDR bridge on the US side. There are also 3 tiny Seal Islands that are contested and US fishermen use them as an excuse to fish in Canadian waters during the season. We have FN communities that cross the border and some of the largest employers/landowning companies in both NB and Maine. Closing the border caused a bunch of drama for those of us living on this side of both countries too.
Maby we can scede the land out west and we get the land out east. Or ya remove the stupid ass hard border.
There's also a US National (well International) park on the island...
I was fortunate to visit Campobello Island and FDR's summer home back in 2016 or 17 from Maine. It is quite beautiful and quaint in that area of the world. I also took a small boat whale watching tour around Fundy bay there too.
I was literally thinking about this place today. Thank you so much
Angle Inlet is another interesting one. Access through Manitoba by road.
I believe there is no border guard, but a phone at the town which you must use to call the customs station at Warroad.
You forgot Northwest Angle above Minnesota in Canada territory.
There's no equivalent Canadian town. And there's less than 200 people living there.
1:34 where’s the great lakes Sam?? Looking forward too Part 6 of mistakes
Your video brought back some really great memories. I was raised on the US/Canada border of Youngstown, New York, and Niagara-on-the-lake, Ontario, with only the slim line of the Lower Niagara River in between the two. For young boaters with their own dingys or row boats the border was no problem. We left the NY side and 15 minutes later tied up on the Canadian one. Customs was almost non-existent. After 9/11, when I came back to visit my hometown, I could not enter Canada without a passport. I completely sympathize with the much greater problems faced by my west coast cousins! Still, what "border" memories I have of those simpler times!
My family and I have a boat and every summer we cruise up and down on the Niagara River in Youngstown. We don’t attempt to dock our boat on the Canadian Side but it’s very common for boats to move up and down the river very near the shores on both sides. You rarely see Border Patrol but understand that if you attempted to go a shore on the Canadian side that they would show up promptly and that you would be subject to a long list of questions.
In the past it wasn’t uncommon to cross the bridge to Canada for dinner,shopping or just for an evening stroll. You simply answered a few questions at the bridge and off you went.
We accidentally went to Point Roberts on vacation once when we just figured that any border crossing would get us back to the US.
It's also apparently a hotbed for people in the witness protection program.
It has a very low crime rate as well...
I mean, you were *technically* back in the US
@@Rapidashisaunicorn It was a bit interesting explaining to Canadian customs that our purpose of visiting Canada was to get back to the US, although it probably happens a lot since it's the closest border crossing if you're following the coastline south.
Australian state borders has similar issues during pandemic, the towns and communities in regional areas that are close together shares resources like supermarkets, hospitals and fire departments and there are also few roads for detours. So communities and towns that used to depend on another town just 20km away and vice versa (one town would have the hospital, the other has the fire department and the supermarket) suddenly find a hard locked border between them. and often that is also the only road out of their town unless they want to go off road through 500km of bushland and desert to the next nearest town in their own state.
Isn't it the case that Wodongas hospital is actually in Albury, and is funded via the Victorian government? Or so I read. Not sure really since being a West Aussie we really don't do border towns and all that jazz.
@@randomdavid not sure, I'm western too. just remembering during the lock downs of eastern states seeing a whole bunch of news about towns and communities basically fenced in and they can't get out or go to the doctor or hospital because the only road goes into another state, which is also where their "local" hospital and other stuff is.
there was a story in recent years about families of people who aren't allowed to enter the US visit a library in one such town where the building's back door opens in Canada and families can briefly unite inside. And of course the story ended with the US working to stop these meetings.
You are probably refering to the Haskell Free Library between Stanstead, QC and Derby Line, VT
Look into haines and skagway alaska too, the border issues leave the ferry service as the only way out sometimes. The tourism economy is severely injured right now due to an active rockslide endangering docks in skagway, which is attempting to recover after the pandemic
Huh, an HAI video that's more informative than funny. I thought I'd never see the day.
A good video! Lots of things to think about. Borders can be very fascinating.
I'm still convinced that Vancouver BC is named after Vancouver WA... because they missed us when the border got drawn 😅
Both are named after George Vancouver. Vancouver, WA is actually older one (and was founded by the British, the Oregon Country was shared between the Britain and the USA until they extended the border to the West Coast).
ruclips.net/video/69s6MrUiwLc/видео.html Here's a video from the old mayor of Vancouver (BC)
There's a good Kumtuks video on this called Two Vancouvers on the West Coast
Tell me, is Hudson's Bay named after the Hudson River? Are they connected?
@@stvdagger8074 both are named after the same guy Henry Hudson. So I guess similar to the west coast having so many Vancouvers.
Every Anglophone country when drawing a border
Straight Line?
Straight Line.
Oversimplified 👍
Hey I lived there for a while when I was a kid! It is wild to see you do a video on somewhere I lived.
Also good to see your research is accurate ;)
One of my clients live on Point Roberts and I live in bellingham, so I have to make trips out that way all the time. So chill out there.
I don't understand why Point Roberts can't use a ferry, it seems like it would solve all its problems
A ferry would not nearly cover the amount of traffic as a land border does. It is pretty impractical overall and would only be able to cover certain times.
no one's ever gotten around to building it
Because a car ferry would cost over $100 million to set up, take longer than driving overland, and have to be paid for entirely by the state since it wouldn’t cross an international border.
My understanding is that it just wouldn’t be very competitive. Ferries are slow and usually work in Washington when connecting to areas that literally have no other form of transportation or the land connection is unbelievably inconvenient
Point Roberts though even with the annoying border crossings still has a good enough land connection that a ferry just wouldn’t make sense compared to just crossing the border
@@jarjarbinks6018 Hk used ferries all the time and is way more populated. I know an island where car ferries arrive every 6 mins. Supplemented by people ferries. Its just a mental block not to use them.
I actually went to Point Roberts like 4 months ago to pick up a package cause it was cheaper than shipping it up across the border and it is the strangest place I've ever been. I barely saw anyone, most of the houses I saw were currently empty vacation homes it seems, they had 1 grocery store that looked like you'd get murdered in it, 1 restaurant that was closed the day I went in and like 4 different parcel services and 8 gas stations or something like that. At this point the main draw as I see it for point roberts is as a cheaper alternative for Vancouverites and others in the GVA to get expensive packages shipped to them as well as sometimes get cheaper gas, especially if you live in Tsawwassen so the hop over the border is like a run to the store especially if you have nexus. Easily the strangest 4 hours of my life when I just popped in.
Canadian day visits began to decline when adult films became freely available in Canada.
@@Mister_Pedantic and a lot of oversite on the Marina there from the US Feds.
I work for a freight company in the Northwest, and we deal with five "island" carriers in the Puget Sound area -- Vashon (Island) Trucking, Friday Harbor Freight (San Juan Island), Orcas Island Freight, Lopez (Island) Freight, and Point Roberts Auto Freight. Because Point Roberts might as well be an island, even if you can drive there, nobody else is going to do it. ^_^
One of my best friends lives in Blaine, Washington (you mention it in the story). The view out of his front windows is of Canada.
You missed the fact that while Point Roberts does have a Washington state elementary school, it does NOT have a middle or high school.
So, the students from Point Roberts have to cross the US Canada border 4 times a DAY (Morning: US to Canada, then Canada to US, then reverse in the afternoon) Not only does this take well over an hour and a half each way, PLUS driving time, it essentially prevents Point Roberts students from participating in ANY after-school activities-one bus trip each way per day, period. And they can't get detention, as it would take their parents hours to go get them home. So they have to get up tremendously early, and get home late every day.
There is also essentially no medical care in Point Roberts. Pre-pandemic, one RN lived there and helped US citizens. But when they needed a doctor, dentist, etc., they had to make the trip (over an hour) to the rest of Washington state to visit a doctor or hospital.
In the summer, Point Roberts was primarily populated by wealthy and elderly Canadians, as the lower US taxes made it easier for them to purchase a summer home there.
I think the US and Canada need to work out a way to make Point Roberts part of Canada. You would have to compensate the citizens for their holding and inconvenience of either becoming Canadians or of moving back to the mainland.
The other locations are not as bad, as they are not physically separated from the rest of their country.
As someone who lives on the US border literally right in the area you mentioned this video is both incredibly inaccurate and incredibly painful to watch lmao
It is incredibly inaccurate you mean. The video border line shows all of Puget Sound including south of Seattle and the San Juan Islands as being in Canada.
@@ImaginetMedia i think the map you're referring to was just attempting to show a land border, for simplicity.
@@ImaginetMedia also the butchering of local pronunciations
@@ImaginetMedia you're saying that to someone who lives there. It's like trying to tell magnus carlsen that his moves are wrong, and you found a better one in the same amount of time it took him to find the move he played
@@koohikoo thats just a part of the full HAI experience
As someone who lives on the border, I must say life couldn't be better. City is empty, no neighbors, no people coming and going... life is great
Another location that has the border stretching way outside of what are normal boundaries is the south east part of Alaska where it extends way south (where Juneau and Ketchikan are).
my grandma lives in point Roberts, and recently her car broke down and there is no car repair place in point Roberts. For some reason the only legal way to bring it across the border was to drive it or bring it on a flatbed truck. There were no flatbed trucks in point Roberts, and she couldn't get one in from Canada, so she couldn't fix it.
My favourite channel!!
As a former resident of Vancouver and semi-frequent visitor to Point Roberts, a few corrections:
- The T in Tsawwassen isn’t silent (it’s “Tuh-wassen”)
- Sault Ste. Marie, ON is pronounced “Soo Saint Marie”
- Sumas, BC is pronounced “Soo-mass”
- The passenger ferry to Point Roberts wasn’t for tourists. It was primarily for Point Roberts residents who needed to get out of Point Roberts for medical appointments, work, shopping, and other essential purposes. Tourists were actually asked to stay away to make sure there was capacity for locals. There was (and still is) also airline service between Bellingham and a grass airstrip in Point Roberts for those wanting a quicker trip and/or visiting and not wanting to use ferry capacity.
The T is silent for the Tsawwassen First Nation but most locals say the T
The atmosphere at the US-Canada border looks more relaxed and friendly than my home in Texas on the US-Mexico border , I live in Nye , Anna ave street . My house is near the Rio Grande River. Just open the back door and see Nuevo Laredo Mexico.The border here is only a river separating the two borders
more relaxed friendly coming into usa from canada--sucks going to nazi canada
Border Cities often come with Challenges though.
A good example in Europe is Frankfurt an der Oder/Słubice between Germany and Poland.
Because both Cities are at the opposite sides of the River Oder, which doubles as the border.
Today these two are the most important border crossing point between Germany and Poland because: "Go to Frankfurt an der Oder" or "Go to Słubice" is way easier to say, "Go to the Oder maybe you find a bridge if you are lucky.
And for people that think" Frankfurt an der Oder is clunky, yes. But just "Frankfurt" may land people in Frankfurt am Main, which is nowhere near any border.
1:19 You state that the Treaty of Paris established the boundary at the 45th parallel and show a line across the entire continent. That's a bit of an overstatement. The treaty does mention that parallel as part of the border but only between The St Lawrence River (near Cornwall) to Vermont. That is only a small part of the border. You also skip over the 1818 treaty which established the border at the 49th parallel between Lake Of The Woods and The Rocky Mountains. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 extended the border to the Pacific along the 49th.
I live in buffalo NY about 15 minutes from Canada. It was hard during the pandemic when we couldn't go there and we couldn't get the Canadian tourists. I didn't see my family in Canada for 3 years. I just saw them for the first time since 2019 in May. My college has Canadian students, and they had to get a student visa to cross the border for class. They mostly stayed remote and zoomed in when we had in person class because of this. I'm glad the border is a bit less strict now and I can go see my family but I still need to use the arrive Can app and say when I'm going there and for how long.
I’m sure the chaos at YYZ was a boon for BUF, no? I still refuse to fly to the US from Pearson and would rather drive to Buffalo and take a domestic flight.
@@sblack53 not really no
Weren't they suppose to get a F1 in the first place? It's illegal to for an
international student to study in America without a visa
@@louish2037 yes the Canadian students get visas, obviously
I lived on the Canadian side of the Point Roberts border in the fall of 2002. We frequently visited Point Roberts to visit people, pick up mail, and buy groceries and gas (which were way cheaper). I'm American, but I don't remember experiencing any real delays trying to cross the border-we always had to stop and show passports, but the passing was pretty forgettable (this was 20 years ago, so I could be forgetting things). Maybe the border was even quicker prior to 9/11 but it didn't seem like the border was causing people problems (but this was a year after 9/11 and I'm American, so the experience may have been different immediately following the attacks or for non-US citizens). Point Roberts was definitely a very quiet town without many people, and maybe that was also different pre-9/11.
Woah, awesome to see my home town getting a HAI feature (Tsawwassen)
You didn't mention two other places.
Roosevelt Island, New Brunswick which is part of Canada that you can only drive to other parts of Canada by crossing into Maine temporarily.
And Hyder, in the extreme southeast of Alaska, that the only road leaving town crosses into Canada.
Sumas is pronounced Sue-Mass. Always love these videos about Point Roberts and other towns that are similar to it!
summice
could've highlighted Angle Inlet at the tip in MN to that list of towns cut off
Point Roberts is a favourite location for the American witness protection program to relocate witnesses to. The only way someone from the US looking for the witness can get there is either by crossing an international border twice, or by taking a boat there, either of which increases their chances of being noticed and stopped (especially if they have a criminal record) and leaves more of a trail of evidence behind than if they were able to just drive there unimpeded.
I have a lot of family history in Point Roberts. There's even still a tiny portion of road there named after my family but all of what is today Boundary Bay Road was once named for them. The house my great great grandparents lived in on Lily Point after coming to this country from Iceland in 1904 still stands to this day.
A lot of distant relatives and even a few direct ancestors in the graveyard there.
An interesting followup video could be about the flooding that happened last fall that caused massive damage to Abbotsford and Sumas "Sue-mas," and the surrounding areas. Just an interesting topic due to the flooding affecting two countries.
The first "S" in "Tsawwassen" is silent.
Canadians, particularly those in Vancouver, LOVE Point Roberts, because we can order domestic shipments like Amazon orders from the USA, and have them shipped there, and cross the border to pick them up and save a bundle on shipping.
I do it all the time :)
Also, get things that are exclusive only to the US :) I was there today
The first nation there change it. Though the English spelling is still the same, their Indigenous name is sc̓əwaθən and pronounced st͡sʼəwaθən. In short, it's S, with silent t.
Can't we all get along come on American and Canada has never fought a War against each other I even get along with the French Canadians they're the best love you Canada
@@tommyfaulkner7374 Umm.... War of 1812, where we burned down White House? Pig War of 1859? Even Alsaka boundary dispute can be seen as UK settle boundary withotu consulting even their own colonists.
We have good relationship now, but not always.
Local here. The T is silent.
I was just in the Haskell library earlier today! It’s really cool!
The second red dot overlapping Point Roberts at 0:46 - are you referring to the northern tip of Ross Lake? with only road access from Hope, British Columbia?
John Tortorella lived in Point Roberts when he coached the Vancouver Canucks because he refused to live in Canada.
How American of him.
We crossed at Point Roberts one night for a beer run and our vehicle got searched. When we got home with the birthday cake we found the 250 lb border guard had frisked it with both hands.
Thanks for the Canadian content, eh! Really appreciate the metric conversions, though in Canada we write "metre" and "kilometre" because... French. ;)
Also check out the Northwest Angle, the bit of Minnesota north of the 49th!
I had to backtrack when you were talking about Sault Ste. Marie because... I had no idea what town "sawlt" ste marie was. It's called the Soo for a reason.
I once read that the US kept point roberts for the sake of exclusive fishing rights. If you look at the maritime borders in the Salish sea, there is a big chunk of water in between point Roberts, the San Juan islands and the mainland that would’ve been split up had point roberts been a part of Canada
Boundary Bay is the second largest producing dungeness crab fishery in the world.
As a Canadian, I'd like to thank you for ceding us all the wonderful San Juan Islands formerly of Washington state, as well as all the bays and estuaries of its coastal mainland.
We would have been more than happy with just Point Roberts.
Oh, and Sumas, like Sault Ste Marie, is also pronounced with a soo (rhymes with zoo). Soo-mass, not some-ass.
You can also tell you have only read some of those names. "Sault" in Sault Ste Marie is pronounced "Soo". It is of French origin, and as with many French words the final consonant(s) are silent.
A similar place is Angle Inlet, an enclave separated from the rest of Minnesota by Manitoba and Lake of the Woods.
You'd think that a place like Point Roberts would've been given over to Canada since it's basically apart of the Vancouver metro area already
I mean with how open the border had been for much of the history, probably just seemed like more hassle than it was worth
The British offered to do this, the Americans did not agree to the offer, even though the Brits were willing to adjust the border elsewhere so that the USA would not lose any land in the deal.
Imagine not being in the Schengen Area and caring about borders
Best thing that happened to Europe, (together with EU).
@@android199ios25 Yes, very convenient.
Even before Schengen European countries weren't as obsessed with their borders as the US is. The only instance where borders looked like the US/CAN or US/Mex one was the Iron Curtain. But the last time I checked the US and Canada weren't pointing nukes at each other. xD
@@StYxXx For us with Soviet passports, Germany border (already after unification) looked pretty much as our Soviet border :) . French, though, did not
Kenmore Air out of Lake Washington charters seaplane flights all around the Pacific Northwest coast, including between the United States and Canada. Though for some reason, they don’t have Point Roberts as a destination (as far as I know).
Campobello Island in New Brunswick is another example. Only mainland connection is a bridge to Lubec, Maine.
The border at Point Roberts is shown correctly on the map in the video, but the border through the Strait of Georgia is hilariously wrong. On the other hand, against all odds, Sam pronounced "Tsawwassen" correctly, so I guess it evens out.
Pretty sure it is pronounced Tawassen by the locals.
Also he pronounced the first term of "Sault Sainte Marie" as "soul" when all the consonants after the S are completely silent - it's effectively "so".
No, Sam didn't pronounce the place correctly (I don't blame him, usually T is normally silent with "Ts" combo)
@@avrowolf I live nearby. He pronounced it correctly.
@@LOLokBuddy I'm one of those locals. Tawwassen has become more common recently, but until the 1990s, it was only ever pronounced Sawwassen.
It's jokes like "barrel enthusiasts" that make me love this channel
North Michigander here, hey Sam, love your videos 😊 Sault St Marie is pronounced like Soo Saint Marie. We’re sneaky like that 😂
Nice Video!
The difference between the Canadian and US sides of the border can be pretty stark. The relative prosperity of the Abbotsford area obviously no longer filters through to Sumas. Sumas is a very small rural town that's run down, but the minute you get through the border checkpoint, you're in a fair-sized city right on the Trans-Canada Highway.
The whole thing is even more absurd for indigenous tribes living along the border. Louie Gong (the Eighth Generation guy), who's a member of the Nooksack tribe that lives near Sumas, tells a story about the time when he was an illegal immigrant on his tribe's own land. He was born on the Canada side and often visited family in a different part of the territory across the border. Eventually he stayed with family permanently on the US side. It truly didn't matter which country he was in because why would it when he was on tribal land? IIRC, sometime after 9/11 he realized he had been living in the US as a Canadian for years without a visa and just didn't realize it.
He should just continue to do it, who cares?
@@WitchMedusa Sorry, who should continue to do what? Not being snarky, just confused.
Tsawwassen is pronounced tuh-wah-sen stressing the 2nd syllable.
Mu Uncle had a home in Pt Roberts (60-70s). My grandparents, aunt/uncles, & cousins lived in Blaine WA near Peace Arch Park. We crossed the border daily as kids, but not anymore.
Great video.
Listening to your pronunciation of "Sault St. Marie" was brutal. Hoping it makes it into your next correction video
I live in Surrey, very close to the border. There are many things I would go and get in the US on a weekly basis that don’t exist in Canada. I also have a PO box down there because mail is cheaper and my American relatives can fly into there easier as well. During covid, it was a huge deal that we couldn’t cross at all. Then you could but only with a molecular test (the $200 kind) then the rules changed again and again and now we still have to fill out info on an app to come back. We have the right to enter without doing the app, but it’s a $5000 or more fine (is it really a right if taking it is a fine?) plus mandatory quarantine. In some cases, even people who were willing to do it but just forgot were fined. It must have been so nice back before 2001
also live in surrey and having a PO box down there has saved me so much money lmao, plus the bonus of edaleen dairy
@@aryooon1493 I don’t think I’ve ever been in there. I’m visiting the US tomorrow so I’ll check it out
@@brycemw enjoy! their milkshakes are absolutely god tier
@@aryooon1493 It was so good!! Thank you for the recommendation!
@@brycemw on one hand I'm glad you enjoy, on the other hand I'm sorry for your newfound addiction lmaooo
1:49 The border does not go down to Seattle. It goes south around Vancouver Island.
I know the article focuses on Point Roberts, but it also focuses on the border from an almost entirely one-sided, US perspective.
A channel that bills itself as "educational" should at least take the time to research their work.
Take Campobello Island, for example, which is Canadian territory but its only land link is a bridge that crosses into Maine.
They've experienced much the same problems as Point Roberts in reverse.
That's where FDR got polio, you know...
And to take the time to Google how to pronounce unfamiliar place names…
@@casey6556 He got Tsawwassen correct which was surprising.
@@AppleCheese12345678 When I lived in Vancouver I always heard it pronounced “Tuh-wassen” so I’m not even sure about that
Campobello Island is basically leverage to stop screwing over Point Roberts.
Something interesting to add... until 1985, Pt. Roberts was serviced by BC Tel; until 2019 they were served by Delta Cable (a Canadian Company).
The US and Canada made a huge mistake by tightening the borders between their countries, and instead should have worked together to secure access to the continent. It would have been a lot cheaper in the long run, and would have actually been a meaningful change, instead of the placebo that the current restrictions represent.
Very much agreed
"...and instead should have worked together to secure access to the continent."
The Bush administration formally proposed that in 2002, but the Chrétien administration effectively said hell no. The idea has not been revisited since.
@@mg2779 Yet another reason to not have like Jean Cretien
@@teg24601 Jean Cretien had the courage not to take us to Iraq. For that I would forgive him everything else
The Lubec, Maine and Campobello Island, New Brunswick border were left out of this for some reason.
Yes. Living on some piece of barbed wire fence might be a bad idea.
Still better than California
@@dolphinrpg8854 California ain’t that bad if you can afford it. That is *if you can afford it. Or go you’re homeless I guess lol
Still better than New York (overrated)
Still better than any southern state besides Texas and Florida.
@@MagicalBread nobody wanna live in commiefornia
@@MagicalBread idk about the non-new york city areas of new york state, but i would NOT want to live in NYC
Episode idea, why British Columbia high school plays NFL rules and not CFL rules football.
Simon Fraiser University played NFL rules until 2001 and then switched to CFL rules before switching back to NFL rules in 2010.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Fraser_University_football