[LINK] "'Passport please': new fences for a border town"

[rfmcdonald]

This AFP article on how new border controls on the US-Canadian frontier have divided the Québec community of Stanstead from its Vermont sister community of Derby Line reminds me, for all of the differences, of an article last year on the impact of the European Union's Schengen frontier on cross-border relations between Belarus and Lithuania.

Canadians in Stanstead and Americans across the border in Derby Line, Vermont once lived in harmony as one community, mostly ignoring the imaginary line that separates them.

But all that changed six months ago when authorities started enforcing rules for travel between Canada and the United States: all must now pass through customs offices and show a valid passport.

And now, barricades also separate the two towns.

The change is most evident on Canusa Street. Homes on the north side are in Canada. On the south side is America. And it is no longer acceptable to go over to a neighbor across the street to ask to borrow their lawn mower.

"You have to register with US Customs and Border Protection at the end of the street, and stop in at the Canadian customs office when we return," says Raymond Fluet.

[. . .]

"It used to be practical to do some shopping in Quebec," Hanna Cornelius-Bouchard, who lives in Vermont with her husband and their two children, told AFP.

"But I'd rather spend my money on other things than four passports for the family ... so we haven't crossed the border in several months."

The lone structure spared in the divisive exercise is a library-opera house built on the border itself. The Victorian structure's front door is on the American side while its stage is on Canadian soil. A diagonal line on the floor indicates the border.

"The Canadians have one dispensation: they don't have to pass through customs if they park on their side of the border and do not stray from the sidewalk leading up to the building," said its director, American Nancy Rumery.