“The United States is struggling. Increasingly bitter cultural and racial divides hobble the country. The political system is all but rigged with gerrymandering and unlimited special interest money. The health care system is broken, and even modest reforms risk repeal. A good education can mean a lifetime of debt. With no hope of any gun control on the horizon, there is now on average one mass shooting a day. Climate change is already wreaking havoc, but decision makers pretend it doesn’t exist. And, overseas, America’s international reputation has never been worse, even among traditional allies.
Canada has its problems too. Our falling birth rates and insufficient immigration numbers are putting significant limits on our potential long-term growth and prosperity. Our economy lags behind other OECD countries in terms of innovation and our entrepreneurs tend to be very risk-averse. We remain a resource economy. And then there is the weather. Our winters are simply hell.
Now, what if I told you we could solve all of these problems, both Yankee and Canuck, with one simple step? Interested? Well, it’s true. I propose that we formally offer certain American states the opportunity to join Confederation and become Canada’s next provinces.”
— Scott Gilmore, MacLeans Magazine
“The Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 was signed by the United Sates and Canada to provide the principles and mechanisms for preventing and resolving disputes concerning water quantity and quality along the entire border. The scope of the Boundary Waters Treaty covers more than 130 rivers and lakes intersecting the Canada-U.S. Border that stretches some 8,800 kilometers (5,500 miles), 40 percent of which is water. The Laurentian Great Lakes are some of the most prominent boundary waters in the North American continent.”
— John H. Hartig, Burning Rivers
Coast implies borders. Literally, the American third coast is largely the northern boundary with Canada. Cartographers can chart this section of the border from the boundary waters in Minnesota through the St. Lawrence Seaway. Detroit’s Belle Isle sits on the edge of the Canadian border, but you would only know it by checking your cell phone on the island’s eastern shore: international rates apply.
The name “Boundary Waters” is generally applied to the network of lakes in the Superior National Forest, just west of Lake Superior. But in a loose sense, the northern waters of the Great Lakes are the boundary with Canada, which until 9-11 and more intense during the coronavirus pandemic, was a fairly open crossing — perhaps open since the War of 1812.
The boundary with Canada never meant much more than a check point. (“Do you have anything to declare?”) While the sometimes agonizing wait in line at the border crossing and the inevitable guard at the check point who’s having a bad day, I never thought much about crossing the line, except to check the exchange rate and buying British dark chocolate version Kit Kat at the duty free shop. No disrespect of the distinct cultures on either side, it really wasn’t a big deal. Until, one dark night on the edge of a cliff on the outskirts of Cleveland overlooking Lake Erie. My friend, Norm, advised me to be alert. A picnic table, located precariously near the edge of the cliff, was said to be a lookout for Canadians who may launch the long-anticipated surprise attack on the United States — dating back to the War of 1812. Perhaps now, with the disaffected populations of the Blue states, ever so blue by the political reality in this country, Canada could take us without a fight.
The premise of this blog was not so much to define the edge — or the cliff, as it may be — but to explore the possibilities of this space that is really co-occupied. Or as the First Nation people may see it, no boundary at all. While this coast varies in its northern and eastern vistas, my perspective is generally north of the the Blue states, more than likely into a whiteout, as in that memorable wintry scene in the movie Stranger than Paradise, when the trio of disaffected, frigid young people look out into a whiteout on Lake Erie, a metaphor of their lives.
For those of us on the “Freshwater Coast,” the distance between Canada and the United States has grown greater following the terrorist attacks of 9-11 and the most recent efforts to contain the coronavirus, not to mention the apparent chaos of American society, causing some to consider asylum north of this border. Politics aside — if that’s even possible at this point in one of the most dramatic presidential campaigns in recent American history — the boundary waters that form the third coast are much less of an impervious wall that President Trump was said to have considered as a parallel to his proposed Mexican wall, and more of space to consider ideas and impressions unique to this region and universal.
