Partly in Vermont: A Borderline Case

By Phil Blampied

"This is the border," says Irene Bolduc, stepping in off her porch and pointing to the edge of a doorframe. "See, over in the living room, you are in the United States. Step into the kitchen, et voil`a, you are in Canada."

Here at the edge of northern Vermont, the international boundary lies right across a quiet but thickly settled small town. On the American side, the town is called Derby Line, Vt.; on the Canadian, Rock Island, Que. Local historians believe that the border runs the way it does because an 18th century British surveyor named John Collins was drunk on the job.

That must have been quite a toot. The international border meanders by the freshly painted porches of stately, old Victorian houses, across shady green backyards, between sprouting rows of beans and lettuce in stubbly gardens, even through the shelves of books in the town's Binational Library, across the narrow Tomifobia River and the dusty, noisy corridors of the factory that spans it, and finally along the floor of the Bolducs' living room.

To most Americans the border between the U.S. and Canada seems hardly more than an arbitrary division between two similar and friendly nations. To Bolduc and her family and others in town, the border they straddle represents a very real division. As Derby Line sees it, Canada and the U.S. are distinct sovereignties, often at odds about dozens of minor points of currency, taxes and domestic law.

Bolduc is a Canadian citizen. So is her son Michel. When Michel, now 30, lived at home, he carefully kept his bed on the Canadian side of his bedroom. Now the room belongs to his younger sister, Arlette, 15, an American citizen by virtue of being born in the Newport, Vt., hospital. She has moved the bed to the U.S. side of the room, not out of sibling self-assertion, but because she knows that the location of the bed could be an important technicality should anyone challenge their respective citizenships.

Irene and her husband Lionel put in a new heating system a few years ago, buying Canadian equipment for the Canadian side and American equipment for the American side. Otherwise, had U.S. or Canadian officials dropped in and found hardware from one country on the wrong side of the house, the Bolduc household would have been technically guilty of smuggling. Says Irene with a weary Gallic shrug: "You just don't take any chances."

Everyone here, whether walking two blocks to shop, or traveling from Montreal to Boston, must report citizenship and whatever purchases have been made, then pay the duties. Travelers going either way never know whether they'll be asked just one or two questions, or be subjected to an extensive search of car and luggage. Customs men decide which on the basis of what a Canadian official calls "le sixieme sens." In general U.S. goods are cheaper, so Canadians pay a punitive duty on them. The U.S. tries to discourage the importing of Cuban cigars and of course the arrival on American soil of illegal workers.

Over the years the border has occasionally tightened up like a vise. During Prohibition, for instance, American officials tried vigorously, and sometimes violently, to stem the flow of bootleg liquor from Canada. Dr. Gilles Bouchard claims that when he examines some of the aging farmers in the region, he still finds bullet-wound scars. "I'll ask where they got them," he says. "They'll just shrug and tell me they used to run rum into the States."

Trouble with border officials can still seriously disrupt a man's life. Take the case of Terrence Walsh, who now works as an American customs inspector himself, and once was employed by the Butterfield Co., an industrial cutting tool factory which is the town's major employer.

The factory is built right across a narrow, frothy stretch of the Tomifobia River and the border runs through it. Two companies are housed in the building: an American corporation buying American raw materials and turning out products for American customers; a Canadian corporation turning Canadian materials into Canadian products. Both are called the Union-Butterfield Division, which belongs to Litton Industrial Products, Inc. in the U.S., and to Litton Business Systems of Canada, Ltd. on the other side. No machinery, materials or goods can cross the borderline in the center of the building--carefully marked by wall plaques and dabs of red paint--unless the appropriate customs service is notified and a duty is paid. Vending machines just a few feet over the line will not accept the currency of the other country.

Walsh was reassigned from a job on the American side to one on the Canadian side. "The company said they'd take care of the details," he remembers. But they didn't do it right away. After several days at work, Walsh was stopped at the Canadian customs house on his way to work. He told them about his transfer.

"They blew up," he remembers. "They claimed I hadn't registered and told me I was in big trouble." For a few anxious days, Walsh feared that he would lose his job, and perhaps even the right to cross freely into Canada.

The most dramatic border incident in Derby Line occurred on July 14, 1976. Rifle-toting plainclothesmen suddenly appeared at every door and window of the town library, an imposing turn-of-the-century granite and brick structure just outside the center of town, and the only public building standing in the U.S. and Canada at the same time.

Without explanation, the library was closed for three days. Inside, unknown to residents, officials of Canada and the U.S. were taking testimony for an international drug trial. Three Canadians had previously been extradited to Milwaukee to stand trial on federal charges.

They couldn't return to Canada with out "breaking" the extradition request.

But the primary witness against them, also a Canadian, was already in jail in Canada, and afraid to come to the U.S. because of outstanding charges against him. So the three Canadians were flown to Vermont and led in manacles through the front door of the library--in the U.S.--while the witness came in through the fire escape on the Canadian side. The hearing took place back and forth across the thick black line marking the location of the border across the floor of the library.

The troublesome border was drawn in 1774 when British authorities ordered a surveyor to set the line between the colonies of Canada and Vermont at the 45th parallel, the exact midline between the equator and the North Pole. Local historians have cited records of liquor rations brought along on the trip. And these explain why, they say, when the survey was through, the border was set more than a quarter of a mile too far north. But for that British rum, Derby Line would have been firmly in Canada for the past 205 years, and the border in an unsettled, and much less complicated, stretch of open countryside. -- Phil Blampied

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