American exclaves inside Canada are bits of American territory surrounded by Canada. Once an American realizes this is a real situation and not something made up it’s not long before the cry of “You mean I’m surrounded by Canada!” is heard. This shocking state of affairs is a legacy from a time when ineptitude and disinterest combined into mistakes that stayed mistakes, times now known as the ‘Good Old Days.’
We are going to look at two of these territorial cock ups in more detail, first Point Roberts, followed by the North West Angle - Manitoba, Ontario, Lake of the Woods. Both of these troubling territories appear in Canada in the same way Lake Wobegon doesn’t appear in Minnesota.
We won’t go into the history of the 49th Parallel, though we can hum the introductory music to the film of the same name by Ralph Vaughan Williams if we want, which we don’t. So, let’s just dive into the present, and immediately wishing we hadn’t, look at how everyone is out of their depth.
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Canada, initially put up a simple link fence to stop senior citizens wandering across the border with Point Roberts but this has now been replaced by dragons teeth, in depth minefields, as well as hidden sniper tanks against the threat of invasion, or is that delusion? or is that deluded invasion? from the south.
In Point Roberts Americans know who they are by wearing baseball hats with U.S.A. written on the front of them in the form of a target, so long as it isn’t a baseball hat worn the wrong way round when the target is at the back.
Only a handful of the twelve hundred residents of ‘The Point’ have argued rationally through demonstrable facts that it would be better if they became
‘Canidiots’ and wear T-shirts with a big maple leaf design and ‘Canada’ in bold letters so that they know where they are once the switch over happens.
Though for the time being it’s all quiet on the Point Roberts front, in the new spirit of enmity Canadian customs has been renamed ‘Douane’ and the Canadian Border Services, or L’Agence des Serveis Frontaliiers du Canada, only speak French in what has turned into a largely successful attempt to ridicule any monoglot American trying to escape their open prison.
“Bienvenue de Canada. Je vous souhait un agéable voyage,” says the Canadian Customs Operative, once their paperwork in order the American has been stamped on the forehead ‘Transit Approved.’
“Whaat?” says the American.
“Welcome to Canada. I wish you a pleasant journey.”
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Further East in the North West Angle there is a different vibe. With only 119 people in 123 square miles, so long as everyone gives each other plenty of written warning there is no need to meet another human being, and a lot of Americans live in the North West Angle for that very reason.
Though this not meeting anyone drastically reduces the chances of social side-effects, a tendency has developed in the population to say “aboot” instead of “about”, as well as believe the last letter in the alphabet is Zed not Zee. On a more serious note, one resident did turn into a Moose, but apart from that single traumatic episode any changes suffered by Americans surrounded by Canada, have been as slow and gradual as getting on for two hundred years can make them.
And so, in the long tradition of living in an irrational world, everyone mentally balancing on the borderline carries on as insanely as they always have.
