[URBAN NOTE] "Quebec-Vermont towns straddling border chafe under heightened security"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star shares William Marsden's Washington Post article noting how tight border controls are dividing a binational community on the Québec-Vermont border.

For some folks living in a cluster of small towns straddling the U.S.-Canadian border here, life could not feel more comfortably secure.

Six Canadian and U.S. checkpoints service the four-kilometre stretch of frontier that cuts through the villages of Derby Line and Beebe Plain, both in Vermont, and the town of Stanstead, in Quebec. Street cameras, satellite and sensor surveillance, vehicle patrols, and the occasional thumping helicopter overhead ensure that residents can’t budge without someone watching.

It’s no wonder that many don’t bother to lock their doors.

“We really feel safe,” said Laurie Dubois, 56, an American living on the Canadian side. With the cameras and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, she noted, “there’s not a whole lot of bad stuff going on.”

But the heightened security is a sign of the times that doesn’t sit well with all of the residents in these once close-knit cross-border communities tucked into the northern highlands of the Appalachian Mountains.