Map Quests: Fifty-Four Forty or Fight

Roman Mars:
This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars.

Roman Mars:
The United States and Canada share the longest international border in the world. And ever since Canada got the keys to the place in 1867, we have been pretty peaceful and genial neighbors to each other. The previous landlord… Great Britain… well, the US had a bit more of a spotty relationship with them. We invaded them, they burned down our house. It was a whole thing. But even though the border with Canada is now pretty tame, when two countries touch each other over a stretch of 55 hundred miles, it can result in some surprisingly weird disputes, misunderstandings, geographical quirks and … some really good stories. And we have a few of them for you today. Here to tell us the first one is producer Vivian Le.

——————————————
#1 49TH PARALLEL

Roman Mars:
Hey, Viv.

Vivian Le:
Hey, Roman!

Roman Mars:
So what do you have for us?

Vivian Le:
So the border between the US and Canada is a very special, very weird place, but there was a legal case from the early 2000s that showed this really odd problem with the boundary in the west between Canada and Washington state specifically.

Richard Sanders:
This is the first time I ever heard of this problem.

Vivian Le:
This is Richard Sanders, he was a Washington State Supreme Court justice from 1995-2011. And Justice Sanders has also been practicing law for over fifty years

Richard Sanders:
Old lawyers never die, they just lose their appeal, right?

Vivian Le:
I wanted to talk to him about this case that made it all the way up to the state supreme court in 2001 called State vs. Norman.

Richard Sanders:
When I first read the facts of the case, I thought it was some sort of a joke and I laughed my head off. But of course, it’s a serious matter.

Roman Mars:
Oh, this is exciting. So what are the facts of the case?

Vivian Le:
So in 1996, three people named Helen Norman, Kevin Belen, and Laura Lee Stradwick were apprehended by US Customs officials and then searched at the border crossing between Washington and British Columbia, Canada. They were found to be in the possession of drugs, and one of the three was also found to be in possession of a stolen credit card. All three were arrested, charged, and then tried But their particular defense didn’t deny that they were in possession of drugs or stolen property. What they argued was that at the time of their arrest, they were actually outside of the jurisdiction of Washington state and therefore could not be tried in Washington court.

Roman Mars:
Were they arguing that they were in the jurisdiction of like… British Columbia, Canada?

Vivian Le:
No, they claimed they were neither in Canada nor Washington. Their defense said that they were actually in a strip of land that existed between Washington and Canada.

Roman Mars:
I didn’t know such a strip of land existed. I thought they were right up against each other.

Vivian Le:
You know… whether or not Washington and Canada touch was actually something that was up for debate.

Richard Sanders:
This case raises basically a simple jurisdictional question of what and where. What is the northern border of our state? Where in relation to that border, do these crimes take place?

Vivian Le:
So the three defendants were searched south of the international Canadian border — that is a fact — but this basically comes down to where the Washington state border actually is. So in the early to mid-1800s, the US and Great Britain both jointly occupied the territory north of California and west of the Rocky Mountains — also known as the Pacific Northwest. BUT during this time there was this frankly problematic idea that it was America’s God-given right to take this westward territory. So Roman, you’ve heard of the phrase 54-40 or fight?

Roman Mars:
I have, yeah. It’s catchy.

Vivian Le:
So just as a little recap, President James K. Polk’s big campaign issue in 1844 was to continue the expansion of the United States to include Texas, which was then Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest, so “fifty-four forty or fight!” became sort of his battle cry. The numbers referred to the northern boundary of the Oregon territory — at the latitude line of 54 degrees, 40 minutes.

Roman Mars:
Right. And so up to that point, we will “fight” for whatever it is — up to 54 degrees and 40 minutes.

Vivian Le:
Yes, although the Polk administration actually did not end up getting 54. So the Oregon Treaty of 1846 was signed between the US and Great Britain and it established that the boundary between the two territories would be set at the 49th Parallel west of the Rocky Mountains — so they settled for 49-40 or fight. So the boundary was established, surveyed, and marked…. And then four decades later in 1889, Washington was formally incorporated into the union as a state… and the drafters of the state constitution just adopted that international border and decided to use that same language found in the Oregon Treaty, that the northern boundary of Washington was “west along the 49th parallel.”

Roman Mars:
Okay, all this makes sense so far…

Vivian Le:
Okay, so here’s the rub — they marked the f****** 49th parallel wrong!

Roman Mars:
[laughs] How did they manage to do that?

Vivian Le:
I’m going to have to kinda ‘yada yada’ this part because you do not want me explaining astronomic methods of land surveying to you…

Roman Mars:
Fair enough.

Vivian Le:
But the first thing that went wrong was that the instrument that they used to survey the land was offset by the local gravitational pull of the earth in that specific area… and the second thing that went wrong was that when the surveyors marked the 49th parallel, they basically marked two latitude points and then traced a straight line between them and said, “bam, there’s the 49th parallel”… Well, the earth is famously round…

Roman Mars:
Known for its roundness.

Vivian Le:
Yes, exactly. So this straight line indicating the 49th parallel was actually off by several hundred feet in some places because it should have been curved to account for the curvature of the earth.

Roman Mars:
So in certain areas, the boundary between Washington and Canada is in the wrong place, but I kind of don’t understand why that matters. Like wouldn’t the border between Canada and the United States be shifted a little bit. So why does it really matter?

Vivian Le:
Yeah, so in 1908, there was another treaty between the United States and Great Britain that actually addressed how messed up the border between the US and Canada was. Basically, the two countries agreed to gussy up the US-Canada boundary with more modern surveying techniques and moved some stuff over and decided that the international border is where it is landmarked. So that precise language of “49th parallel” was actually dropped from the international border.

Roman Mars:
Okay.

Vivian Le:
But the state of Washington did not update its constitution with this language so the Washington state border was actually, in some places, several hundred feet below the international border… which is where we come back to that 2001 Supreme Court case State vs. Norman where Justice Sanders was on the court.

Richard Sanders:
Their defense was that the state of Washington had no jurisdiction because they were outside the state when the crime was committed.

Vivian Le:
So the three defendants in this case were clearly within the boundary that was demarcated as Washington state, but after their arrest, their defense used GPS to locate the customs facility where they were searched and technically it took place north of Washington state jurisdiction.

Richard Sanders:
Yeah, it’s a technicality, but it’s… the law is made of technicalities and our jurisdiction of our state courts is circumscribed by the borders of the state. So if you’re on the high seas or if you’re in Idaho or Oregon or in Canada, you cannot be prosecuted under the laws of the state of Washington. So it is a technicality, but it’s a pretty fundamental technicality.

Vivian Le:
But what I find fascinating is that if the three defendants were able to get the State Supreme Court to side with their case, it would essentially acknowledge that the Washington state border is not where it says it is… and then that would formally establish a strip of land, hundreds of feet wide that’s in between Washington and Canada… but still part of the US.

Roman Mars:
So what did the court decide in this case?

Vivian Le:
Unsurprisingly, the State Supreme Court determined that no, there is not this nebulous strip of territory that doesn’t belong to Washington or Canada and is just like free of state jurisdiction.

Roman Mars:
That makes sense. I mean, these come up a fair amount in court cases. And really what it comes down to is the judge just goes, no, clearly that wasn’t what was meant. And if common sense dictates that people are subjected to laws, then they will be subject to those laws.

Vivian Le:
Yes, that is true. What I did find interesting about this case is that the justices ended up siding 8-1 that the Washington state border is where it has always been because of common sense but there was one dissenting judge and I will give you two guesses as to who that lone, dissenting Supreme Court Justice was.

Roman Mars:
Wait, so is this our guy, Justice Sanders who you’ve been talking to?

Vivian Le:
It was indeed.

Richard Sanders:
I thought it deserved at least one vote on the Supreme Court and that’s what they got.

Roman Mars:
So it was like a statement of the fact that ambiguity requires a nonunanimous decision.

Vivian Le:
Yeah, he was like, well played, well played, you get one vote. Even though this decision could have created this jurisdictional limbo, Justice Sanders ended up writing this scathing dissent that I think is probably one of the most entertaining Supreme Court opinions. Like he says that the state constitution is unambiguous and if Hipparchus of Nicaea could figure out astronomical measurements of latitude in the 2nd century BC, then these surveyors two thousand years later probably had the means to locate the 49th parallel.

Roman Mars:
I mean, I get that he wants to honor the constitution but maybe the limitations of 19th Century surveying should be taken into account. You can’t just redraw things

Vivian Le:
Yeah. I actually don’t know if I could locate the 49th Parallel if I looked at a map so I can’t really blame them.

Roman Mars:
It’s a pretty creative defense, regardless.

Vivian Le:
Oh, totally. Yeah.

Roman Mars:
Well, it’s nice to know that people are actually reading the state constitutions, even if it’s just trying to get out of a drug offense.

Vivian Le:
Totally.

Roman Mars:
Thanks for this story, Vivian.

Vivian Le:
Thank you.

——————————————

#2 PEACE ARCH PARK

Roman Mars:
So I’m here with Kurt Kohlstedt, the digital director and co-author of “The 99% Invisible City.” Hey, Kurt!

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Hey, Roman.

Roman Mars:
And you have a Canadian border story for us?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Oh, I do.

Roman Mars:
Okay, hit me.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
It’s about this pair of adjacent parks along the US-Canadian border in Blaine, Washington, and Surrey, British Columbia.

Roman Mars:
Okay, so we’re still in the west part of the continent.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yes, and in these parks, right where they meet along the border, there’s this big Peace Arch monument with the inscription: “May These Gates Never Be Closed.”

Roman Mars:
Wow, well that’s quite the bold statement for a border, which just seems antithetical to what borders are usually about. So what’s the story there?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
The arch and parks date back to the early 1900s, but the “never closed” sentiment is actually a nod to the War of 1812 between the US and the UK. At the end of the conflict, both sides signed a treaty to leave the border between the US and Canada undefended as a sign of friendship.

Roman Mars:
And so now there’s this arch with this sentiment written on it but can you truly walk through whenever you want?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
For most of the past century, you absolutely could. When the park space is open for visitors, people can just freely cross into it from either side and then hang out without actually waiting to get through some tedious border checkpoint. It ends up being this kind of no-man’s-land. Then, when they leave, visitors just have to exit back to their country of origin.

Roman Mars:
Okay, so the arch doesn’t really operate as a checkpoint but it sounds as if the entrance to each park might operate as a checkpoint a little bit.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Well, sort of. It’s like you can freely walk into the park and there’s people patrolling the park but the real key is you should have identification with you because when you try to exit the park, they want to make sure that you’re coming back into the country you’re supposed to be coming back into.

Roman Mars:
That makes sense. But it’s a little less rigorous than what we think of as a normal international border checkpoint.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Oh, absolutely. But it’s started to change a little bit in this past year, as you can imagine because of the pandemic.

Roman Mars:
Right.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, so each country maintains and controls the park on their side. And early in the pandemic, both sides kept everything open. But even after Canada decided to close its side down, Canadians have still been able to meet up with Americans by crossing into the US park along this one side.

Roman Mars:
Huh. Well, I can imagine a lot of people are taking advantage of that since everything else was pretty closed.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Oh yeah. Absolutely. Like a lot of friends and families split by the border have continued to gather here. There have also been a ton of bi-national weddings in the park.

Roman Mars:
Well, that makes sense. It’s a convenient way to get together and people like to get together in parks. I don’t know what you do after the ceremony. Do you just split apart again?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, you go your separate ways. That’s the crazy thing, right? You still have to go to your country of origin.

Roman Mars:
It’s still a pretty convenient place for people to get together and celebrate.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
It’s partly that direct ease of access, but also, people fully crossing over in conventional ways have faced up to a two-week quarantine and COVID testing. They can get around all that by meeting up in this spot instead. As you might imagine, divided families who can’t afford to take all that time off of work to self-isolate after a trip, this border zone loophole has been a real boon for them.

Roman Mars:
I’m pretty careful about all the COVID stuff and I think that these quarantines are really, really effective and I’m kind of surprised that both countries haven’t shut this down entirely.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, that’s kind of the craziest part — because legally, no matter what either country wants to do, neither side can fully close the border because that would be an international treaty violation.

Roman Mars:
So this is the treaty that you mentioned dating back to the War of 1812. That thing really has teeth! They have to keep the border open in some place?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yup, that’s the idea! And so you still have authorities policing the parks, and regulating who is allowed in and where they exit, but they’re not really able to just stop people from meeting up entirely.

Roman Mars:
That’s kind of amazing. So for the sake of argument, what would happen if one side actually did decide to put up a wall and shut the border down? I mean, Canada was pretty proactive when it came to COVID protocols and shutting the border down. What would happen if they put their wall up?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Well, that’s the thing. I was looking into this and I found this immigration lawyer who was interviewed by the CBC and he says that a full closure could have some pretty wild side effects, and it would depend upon which side violates the agreement. He claims that if Canada broke the treaty, in theory, the US could lay claim to parts of Ontario and Quebec. And if America broke it, Canada could get parts of Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Basically, North American geography as we know it is contingent on this early 1800s treaty remaining in effect.

Roman Mars:
That is just wild. But are people still kind of worried about meetups in this park during the pandemic anyway?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
They do take it really seriously and there are locals on both sides who are concerned about COVID from all these visitors, of course, which makes sense. And so a lot comes down to individual visitors. Some of them play it really safe and just sit on their side of the border in chairs and chat to people on the other side across the border. But whatever we think or the government thinks about it in terms of health and safety, it just kind of is what it is – neither side can actually shut it down entirely…

Roman Mars:
At least not without trading parts of Ontario and Maine in the process.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Right, except for that.

Roman Mars:
Well, I’m so intrigued that this place exists so thank you so much for telling me this story. I had no idea.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, any time.

——————————————

#3 MACHIAS SEAL ISLAND

Roman Mars:
So I’m talking in the studio today with Lasha Madan, who’s one of the producers of this show. Lasha, I hear you have a story about a disputed island?

Lasha Madan:
Well, yes… but Roman, I’m gonna start this story by telling you a little bit of lore.

Roman Mars:
[laughs] Fantastic, I love lore.

Lasha Madan:
Alright! It’s a tale about a guy named Barnabus. But, most people called him Tall Barney… supposedly he was 6 ft 7 1/2 inches tall. Tall Barney was born in Jonesport, Maine in 1835. He was – by almost every written account – a crusty sea captain. There’s a 2001 news article that described him as a “reserved, weathered, sea-salt of a man,” another called him a “walking hurricane…”

Roman Mars:
[Laughs]

Lasha Madan:
Tall Barney was rugged and strong… and he was just a bad temper. Some people claimed that one time, he punched a horse and killed it, just from the punch.

Roman Mars:
That does sound like lore, but I’ll go with it.

Lasha Madan:
And so, the tale goes like this. It’s the spring of 1865. And, in an attempt to avoid the Civil War, Tall Barney went out to sea. He camped out on this little island 10 miles off the coast of Maine called Machias Seal Island. And over time, Tall Barney came to believe that this island belonged to him. He put the island in his will. It was to go to the first male descendant to be named Barnabus, after him.

Roman Mars:
So not just the first male descendant, but the first one named Barnabus?!

Lasha Madan:
Right.

Roman Mars:
That’s specific.

Lasha Madan:
And that took a couple generations, but his great-grandson, Barna Norton, was born in 1915. And Barna, then, for his entire life, claimed the island was his. For the next six decades, Machias Seal Island became the center of Barna Norton’s world. He traveled to the island by boat thousands of times, taking bird lovers from around the world to tour it – turns out, the island is actually one of the world’s best places to see puffins nesting, thousands of them. And for many, many years, Barna would tell the people on his boat a particular story. He would say, “I own the island. It was given to me.”

Roman Mars:
And, so…does he own it?

Lasha Madan:
Well… no.

Roman Mars:
[Laughs] Good.

Lasha Madan:
The thing is, Barna’s story conflicts with the official stances of both Canada and the US. So, the US-Canada border is the longest bilateral border between two countries in the world, right? It’s 5,525 miles long. And this little chunk of 20 acres are the last crumbs of land that both countries claim as theirs. Meaning, the dispute over this island is actually the last land-border dispute between the US and Canada. It’s been going on for centuries, and it shows just how messy borders can be.

Stephen Kelly:
It’s a great example of how random and arbitrary borders are. People treat them like they were handed down from God and that they’re immutable. But in fact, they’re very human creations.

Lasha Madan:
So, this is Stephen Kelly. He’s a research scholar at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke. And before that, Stephen used to work in the foreign service, so he’s spent a lot of time thinking about borders. Stephen’s fascinated by Machias Seal Island and what it represents, but he says the island itself, it’s just a tiny hunk of rock, a treeless lump.

Stephen Kelly:
Machias Seal Island is very unimpressive. And as you approach it, it’s completely flat and you can see a little bit of the lighthouse as you get closer and closer. But there are no trees. It’s featureless.

Lasha Madan:
Machias Seal Island is about 10 miles off the coast of Maine, and it sits at the point where the Gulf of Maine meets the Bay of Fundy. Roman, I just sent you a link of what it looks like on a map if you want to take a look.

Roman Mars:
Oh, it’s small! You don’t even see the land. You just see the little arrow pointy thingy until you get real close.

Lasha Madan:
Right, it’s so small no human has ever permanently inhabited the island, just birds. A lot of birds. In fact, only 30 people are allowed per day to visit the island to see these birds during the summer months — 15 people from Canada, and 15 from the US. Stephen’s been lucky enough to visit twice.

Stephen Kelly:
And when you land, you have to walk on these wooden boardwalks that keep you from stepping on and crushing eggs or hatchlings of the puffins and the razor bills and the terns and the other birds that nest on the island. So as you’re walking on these boardwalks, the terns can get very possessive about their nests and they buzz you. They come down and actually hit your head and they encourage you to carry an umbrella or a stick over your head to sort of ward them off or hope that they’ll hit the stick rather than your head.

Roman Mars:
I didn’t realize that there was that much activity going on that the birds had really taken over. Like it isn’t the Barnabus’ of the world who own that island, it’s the birds who own that island.

Lasha Madan:
It’s totally the birds.

Roman Mars:
So how did this dispute over a rather economically useless piece of land come about?

Lasha Madan:
Yeah. So, it’s been a hard dispute for the two countries to settle because both sides are actually basing their arguments in historical documents that do help prove each point. So, a quick history lesson, you ready?

Roman Mars:
Totally, let’s go.

Lasha Madan:
In 1783, the Treaty of Paris officially ended the revolutionary war between Great Britain and the American colonies. And that treaty gave American colonies ownership over all islands within 20 leagues of the American shore. That’s roughly 70 miles. Machias Seal Island is less than 10 miles from the town of Cutler, Maine on the coast and so it satisfies the conditions of this treaty. But-

Roman Mars:
Yeah. There’s always a but.

Lasha Madan:
The Treaty of Paris exempted islands that had been part of the British colony of Nova Scotia, which is now part of Canada. And the Canadians now say Machias Seal Island was included in a 1621 land grant which deeded Nova Scotia and any island within 6 leagues of its coast to its British colonizers — and therefore, Machias Seal Island belongs to Canada. However, both the Canadian and American paperwork fail to specify Machias Seal Island by name.

Roman Mars:
Well, that’s a lesson for you. You have to keep your treaties tight. You have to specify everything.

Lasha Madan:
So, from the late 1700s on, Machias Seal Island was claimed by both countries. Then in 1832, the British took the first step in occupying the territory by building a lighthouse there. When Canada became a country a couple decades later in 1867, they inherited that lighthouse. And, to this day, the Canadian Coast Guard sends lighthouse keepers to live on the island, even though the lighthouse is entirely automated. Two guards operate in rotating four-week shifts, all to supposedly protect Canada’s claims to sovereignty.

Stephen Kelly:
They don’t have anything to do with the lighthouse. They mow the lawn and they help tourists land. They live on the island, there’s two of them but the light functions without their intervention. And when I was out there, one of them told me that, you know, like if the light malfunctions, they don’t even fix it. Somebody else comes in and fixes it.

Roman Mars:
They’re using the — we talked about this in the episode called “Mine!” — the idea of possession. Them being present is really what it’s about, more than anything.

Lasha Madan:
Right. It’s as if their presence earns them something like international squatters’ rights. The lighthouse keepers also put up warning signs and maple leaf flags throughout the island. And, for decades, Canada and the US have been quietly squabbling like this over the island in these subtle ways.

Roman Mars:
It sort of reminds me of siblings trying to share a room, and they’re just grumbling over like, he touched me or like what side it’s on and how to divide it. I’ve been there before.

Lasha Madan:
Yes, exactly. Things never really escalated into dangerous conflict in regards to this island, each country just kind of put up with the other while firmly maintaining their own position. Meanwhile, remember Barna Norton, that great-grandson of Tall Barney? Not only did he bring birders out to the island, but every Fourth of July for his entire adult life, Barna would sail to the island, plant American flags along the path all the way up to the lighthouse, and ask the Canadian lighthouse keepers for rent.

Roman Mars:
[Laughs] He’s a chip off the old block.

Lasha Madan:
Apparently, the government of Canada sent Barna a letter every few years telling him he couldn’t land on the island anymore. But the US State Department actually backed Barna up in 1983. They sent him a letter that said he had “every right to ignore any regulation that Canada might pretend to set for Machias Seal Island.” And Barna carried a copy of this letter with him when he’d visit the island to, you know, figuratively shove it in Canada’s face. Anyway, eventually, Barna died in the early 80s and his claims that the island was his kind of died with him.

Roman Mars:
And did that settle it? Is the island considered Canada’s from that point forward?

Lasha Madan:
No, it did not settle it! And, actually, the dispute over this island has gotten more and more intense over the years. Because it’s bigger than just who gets to own this piece of rock and the birds that live on it. It’s about something called the gray zone, which is the body of water that surrounds this island. Whoever owns the island also lays claim to these waters. And these waters happen to be the richest area for lobster fishing in the world, which means it’s an area that neither country is willing to lose control over.

Roman Mars:
I guess it always comes down to money and in this case, lobsters equal money.

Lasha Madan:
And part of the problem of having two countries trying to claim ownership over Machias Seal Island and the gray zone, is that both countries have different rules for conserving the same resource. The resource in this case is lobsters. Both countries want to make sure we don’t overfish, but they’re using very different means to do that. Here’s Stephen again.

Stephen Kelly:
Canadians, for example, Canadian lobstermen, don’t fish for lobsters during the summer. They allow the lobsters to spawn and reproduce. But for American lobstermen, summer is the big season. Well, Canadian fishermen complained that basically, the Americans were having a free for all in the gray zone while they had to keep their boats laid up.

Lasha Madan:
So, in 2002, lobster fishers from Canada petitioned the government to allow them to fish in the waters in and around the gray zone during the summer, hoping they’d get a better haul that way.

Stephen Kelly:
So in the early 2000s, the Canadian government changed its rules to open up one fishing area in the entire eastern part of Canada to fishing during the summer, and that’s the gray zone. They established an exception so that Canadian lobstermen could fish in the gray zone all year long, just like the Americans do. And that’s when the most recent conflicts began.

Roman Mars:
Huh. So it caused more conflicts. What are we talking about here?

Lasha Madan:
This is when things start getting tense out on the water. Canadian and American lobstermen threatening to cut each other’s lines, stealing gear, death threats… things like that. One time, a 61-year-old American fisherman warned a Canadian patrol boat that he was getting ready to ram right into it. Another time, a Maine lobsterman got his thumb ripped off while he was trying to free his traps from Canadian fishing lines.

Roman Mars:
Woah.

Lasha Madan:
Which brings us to today. More people from both countries are fishing in the gray zone than ever before, and lobster prices are actually at a record high right now. Which means, there’s more potential for conflict than ever before.

Roman Mars:
Wow, it sounds so intense. What are the governments doing about it? Are they just letting them fight it out on the seas?

Lasha Madan:
I mean, sort of….

Roman Mars:
Oh, fantastic.

Lasha Madan:
So, the Canadians are like, there’s nothing to discuss here. Machias Seal Island and the gray zone belong to us. I mean, we’ve had a lighthouse here since 1832! What more is there to discuss?

Stephen Kelly:
But the legal beagles at the State Department’s legal bureau say yes, but it’s been well-established in cases like this that when one country builds an aide to navigation on another piece of land that does not confer sovereignty.

Lasha Madan:
So, in other words, they’re saying that the lighthouse doesn’t mean Canadians have an actual legal claim. Stephen says this kind of thing has happened a lot in land disputes between France and England, for example, where one of the countries built some sort of navigation marker on an island ages ago and then later claimed sovereignty over the island. And in cases like that, the World Court said, no, that’s not a fair justification for ownership.

Stephen Kelly:
You put that navigational aid there for your own purposes and just because the other country didn’t object doesn’t automatically make it yours.

Lasha Madan:
And so the American stance is–

Stephen Kelly:
Our lawyers say the lighthouse does not in and of itself prove that Machias Seal Island is Canadian.

Roman Mars:
So is there any way out of this impasse?

Lasha Madan:
Likely nothing will happen, at least not from the government. You know that emoji where the person is shrugging their shoulders with their hands facing up? That’s kind of the direction we’re in and where we’re headed.

Roman Mars:
That’s the official policy position of both governments — shrug emoji.

Lasha Madan:
Years ago, Stephen wrote an op-ed in which he proposed letting the dispute go to arbitration, meaning: let the International Court of Justice look at all the legal arguments and decide whose historical claim is more valid. Both countries can make their best argument and let the court decide. Because, as long as the island and the surrounding gray zone remain contested, it leaves open a lot of messy questions.

Stephen Kelly:
What happens if somebody got murdered on Machias Seal Island? So the American tour boat operator lands a bunch of Americans. They get in a dispute, one pulls out a gun and kills the other. So, whose law applies?

Lasha Madan:
And meanwhile, there’s yet another looming threat to these lobster fishers, potentially an even scarier threat than this border conflict. The waters are warming.

Roman Mars:
Oh, so how does climate change factor into this?

Lasha Madan:
The waters in the Gulf of Maine have been warming up more each year, which has meant that lobstering farther down the coast, like in Massachusetts, or even in southern Maine, is becoming near impossible because the water’s become too warm for lobsters to even survive. Because the waters around Machias Seal Island are slightly farther North, those waters are still ideal for lobsters. In fact, the waters around Machias Seal Island have now become the epicenter for lobster production in the world.

Roman Mars:
Wow! So everything is just making this more and more of a hotspot.

Lasha Madan:
The gray zone is the place to be if you are a lobster fisherman. Totally. And the number of lobsters caught there have soared in recent years, in part because the fish that used to feed on baby lobsters, especially cod, they’ve been decimated. So the top-level predators are gone and there’s nothing to control the lobsters. So, just as climate change has made the ocean off of Southern New England inhospitably warm for lobsters, it’s warmed the waters off of Maine to a temperature that is actually more favorable to lobsters.

Roman Mars:
Well, I mean, for now. Presumably, it will just get warmer and warmer and just get tough there too.

Lasha Madan:
Right, that’s the fear. I mean, Maine’s lobster catch has become so dependent on the gray zone. And you know, this lobster squabble is ultimately at the heart of why this dispute over who Machias Seal Island belongs to is still unresolved. In fact, ironically, it seems like the one thing lobstermen in both countries seem to agree on is to not reach an agreement about who the waters belong to. There’s just too much at stake here for both countries if one of them loses access to these waters entirely. It seems like they’d rather muddle through, you know, keeping their fingers crossed that things don’t get worse but, you know, maybe, we’ll eventually live in a world in which the lobsters won’t exist in these waters, and then who’s to say what will be decided about the island.

Roman Mars:
Oh my goodness, Lasha! That’s not the way I want it to end at all!

Lasha Madan:
How’s that for an optimistic note to end on?

Roman Mars:
Oh my goodness. I guess I long for a world where we’re fighting over Machias Seal Island because that means that it’s healthy and safe. Oh my God. So let’s keep this feud going.

[MUSIC]

Roman Mars:
Coming up, if a border falls in the woods, how do you know it’s there? That story, after this.

[BREAK]

#4 THE SLASH

Roman Mars:
So I’m back again with Kurt Kohlstedt and you have another story about the Canadian border. You’re from Minnesota so you’ve had some actual experience with the Canadian border. A little more than many of us on the staff, except for the Canadians cause we do have a couple of those. Lasha and Chris are from Canada. But you have a lot of experience with the Canadian border for an American.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
You betcha! As a kid, I used to go canoeing at a YMCA summer camp called Widjiwagan which is way up in Northern Minnesota, really close to Ontario. The main base camp had an old lodge and some cabins along the water, but that was just a staging area — from there, counselors would take out groups of kids in canoes to go camping. Some of these trips were weeks long and involved crossing the border into Canada.

Roman Mars:
So if you’re way out in the wilderness, how do you even know that you’re at a border?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Well, see, I had that same question. Because up in the Boundary Waters, most of the border runs through the middle of lakes. There are no road signs, no border crossing station. My first year out, our camp counselors pulled out a map in the middle of a lake, then had us campers squint into the water. They told us to look for a red-and-white Canadian-colored border chain at the bottom of the lake below.

Roman Mars:
Like a giant metal chain … under the water …

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, painted like the Canadian flag – and, you know, being kids, some of us believed it, at least at first. But of course, they were pulling our chain, so to speak.

Roman Mars:
That would have fooled me. It almost fooled me. If you told me it happened now… I was like, wow, that’s amazing.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
If you think about it, it does seem crazy to try to mark out this whole border at all, right? It’s thousands of miles long — literally the longest international border in the world. And it runs over lakes and forests and mountains. How would anyone mark a boundary like that? But then, more recently, I read about the Slash.

Roman Mars:
What is the Slash? It sounds pretty ominous.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, it does. But it’s this clearcut area that extends 10 feet on either side of the border. And when I first found out about it, it really did sound like another myth that camp counselors tell gullible kids. It’s pretty uncanny. In aerial views, particularly in rural areas with lots of trees, it looks like some god just took an x-acto knife and sliced a straight line through the forest. It’s unnatural.

Roman Mars:
That does sound like another thing camp counselors would make up because it sounds like a surprisingly difficult task.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s this really strange, almost unbelievable, gigantic, epic project. We’re talking about a huge, coast-to-coast border — a lot of it in really remote, hard-to-reach regions.

Roman Mars:
It sounds like a lot of work — especially when to really appreciate it, you have to look at a satellite photos. You don’t really do things geared towards satellites.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, most people at the border, they don’t see this, right? It’s not like a tourist attraction. But it is a ton of work, but it’s less work than other approaches would be. For context, the rules around international borders specify that they have to be really clear to have legal weight. And a wall would be a huge pain and would disrupt wildlife, too. So it turns out that nothingness — the intentional absence of a physical barrier — is actually, in this case, a pretty clever and simple design solution.

Roman Mars:
But presumably, to keep it nothing, I mean like, nature takes things over when you cannot pay attention to it, so what keeps trees from coming back in? Are they just constantly working?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Well sort of. They kind of let it grow out a little bit but they have these groups, right? There’s this International Boundary Commission, which is a joint venture between the US and Canada. Each country sends their own crews and equipment to maintain parts of the slash at different times. And both sides coordinate periodically. They meet up and divvy up the work so that none of it gest too tall. There’s always somebody watching the different parts.

Roman Mars:
So there are just roving groups of landscapers, hiking around, cutting down trees, clearing brush.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
That’s it in a nutshell. Some of them in the east can at least stay in motels — others in the west have to camp out in more rural areas. As you might imagine, this gig can be really hard, involving remote places and rough terrain — and a lot of the work is just getting to and from the Slash.

Roman Mars:
I can see why the Slash works. Again, from looking at it from great heights, you can sort of mark the border. But why not just put a plaque in every, I don’t know, every 100 yards, maybe? It seems like that would be easier than clearing a bunch of trees.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Well, they sort of do that too. There are these little monuments along the border, but it’s the Slash that makes the crossing clear. If the border only had markers or signs, they would have to be huge and really tightly spaced to be visible amidst all the trees in a rural area — whereas in clear-cut zones, they can be much smaller. That visibility helps reduce the odds of someone accidentally winding up on the wrong side, like a jogger innocently crossing over without even realizing it.

Roman Mars:
So if you’re jogging through this remote part of the forest or whatever it is. I don’t know how you would probably reach these places but if you were hiking through the forest there and come across this unnaturally linear clearing, it’s a good sign that you hit the border and you should turn back.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Exactly. And when I compare this project to that fictitious border chain we were talking about and how much work that would take to do … I really can’t help to think it sounds even more believable in hindsight. If they could do the Slash, they could do a border chain too, why not?

Roman Mars:
For sure! I think they could do it more easily. Just link some chain across… Oh my goodness. Well, that is really fascinating. There’s some news you can use if you are a remote hiker. Know when you cross the border. We’re here to keep you out of trouble.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
And if you really like nerding out about specifically the border between Minnesota and Canada, you can check out an episode when Roman and I talk about the Northwest Angle which is another really fascinating aspect of a border that you’ve probably never thought about before and may never think about again.

Roman Mars:
Yeah, it’s this little chunk of Minnesota that sort of is separated by the lake and is connected to Canada which is really… that’s a weird place.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
It’s a very weird place. It’s great.

Roman Mars:
Thank you, Kurt.

———

Roman Mars:
99% Invisible was produced this week by Kurt Kohlstedt, Vivian Le, and Lasha Madan. Mix and tech production by Ameeta Ganatra. Music by our director of sound Swan Real. Delaney Hall is the executive producer. The rest of the team includes Christopher Johnson, Emmett FitzGerald, Chris Berube, Joe Rosenberg, Sofia Klatzker, and me, Roman Mars.

We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building — in beautiful uptown Oakland, California.

You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me @romanmars and the show @99piorg. We’re on Instagram and Reddit, too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love as well as every past episode of 99pi at 99pi.org.

 

  1. CHRIS PISARRA

    The article still doesn’t address who owns the property. It could well have belonged to the original Barnabas, then to his heir and now to the further descendents. The issue of what country the island belongs to is separate from the personal ownership issue-one can own property in the US or in Canada.

  2. Peter Varley

    Great show! I was expecting mention of Point Roberts just south of Vancouver to be mentioned but there is so much you can put in one show. Most of all, I was excited that Roman mentions, “we invaded them” when speaking about America’s relationship with British Canada (at 0:20). I think almost all Americans know that the British burned down the White House but very few know how that war started. So 1812 but also 1775.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All Categories

Minimize Maximize

Playlist