Morse’s Line, Franklin, Vermont, 95 km southeast of Montréal, is on the international border. Cows outnumber automobiles. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans a new ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ there. The Texas border is not getting all the attention.

William Bothwell Vermont dairy farmer Clement Rainville has a problem. Washington wants part of his farm for the project. Forget the compensation offered. The land in question produces 1,000 bales of hay to help feed 160 milch cows. “Homeland Security has been given buckets of money and they’re going to spend it”, says Sharon Lee Tyler, a local U.S. customs inspector.

The new border crossing indicates that Uncle Sam thinks Immigration Canada is too lax in screening visitors and especially immigrants. It is evident that some who arrive here do not intend to assimilate and become Canadians. They come for other reasons. Some hope to transplant their homeland’s laws and social norms. The grant of citizenship should include the renunciation of all political and cultural (but not, of course, sentimental) allegiance except to Canada.

This country should be neither a U.S.-style ‘melting pot’ nor a Canadian ‘fruit salad’ but, rather, a land for those who seek a new home and a new beginning. Diversity and unity, freedom and law, self-interest and community spirit must be balanced. We must not become a land of unassimilated immigrants. Those who wish to retain here allegiance to another culture or country should be denied citizenship. That said, one’s highest loyalty should not be to any nation but, rather, to rectitude and justice.

In the coming quarter century the population of the world will grow from 6 to 8 billion. The increase will be chiefly in the undeveloped world. Climate change and other factors will increase migration. North and South America will be the desired destination of multi-millions from Asia, Africa and a Europe under increased immigrant pressure from the fecund and often still tribal Third World.

Although any Canadian government is hesitant to face the political fall-out of altering radically our immigration policy, with our low birth rate and aging work force we need many immigrants. We also need a clear consensus about the best kind of newcomers and where they should be settled. Our changing relationship with the United States also requires consideration. Canada is, after all, an American nation. When in the future millions of would-be migrants besiege our shores we may have to learn to see ourselves as part of a Fortress America. Heaven forbid that our foreign policy ever be made in Washington but both continental defence and immigration policies are indicated.

In the background of all the foregoing lies the matter of our hardwon international border, especially the on-land portion of it between seven provinces and ten states. For the patriot that border can be an emotional issue. “At Queenston Heights and Lundy’s Lane / Our brave fathers, side by side, / For freedom, home and loved ones fought, / Firmly stood and nobly died”. So wrote Alexander Muir in “The Maple Leaf Forever”, a patriotic song that we seldom hear.

When I was on the Elderhostel lecture circuit I taught a course called “The Struggle for the Border”. It surprised ‘American’ retirees that there had been a Canadian fight for liberty and independence not unlike their own. Our struggle was not against John Bull; it was with Uncle Sam. In a way it still is. If, as Trudeau said, Canada is a mouse, the U.S.A. is not so much an elephant as a tomcat. It purrs when appreciated but it can be annoyingly self-assertive and independent.

After the 18th Century revolutionaries in the old colonies shattered the possibility of continental unity the chief British concern was the retention of Nova Scotia for naval purposes and of Newfoundland for the fishery. The first border line was drawn in the Maritimes. When the new republic demanded that the United Kingdom renounce its claim to Upper Canada and to forts in the Ohio country, further negotiations were necessary and new border lines had to be laid down. The United Empire Loyalists who had suffered from violence and expropriation had no desire to be ruled from Philadelphia or New York.

The War of 1812 resulted in an impasse. Thomas Jefferson had said that the conquest of Canada was only a matter of marching. Roughnecks from Tennessee and Illinois enlisted but many New Yorkers and New Englanders refused to march against their Loyalist kinfolk in Upper and Lower Canada. The wild-eyed Kentuckian Henry Clay and President James Madison, a Virginian, advocated an attack on Canada while Britain was being threatened by Napoleon.

When in 1934 it was becoming clear that Britain, Canada and the U.S.A. had a dangerous common enemy, an international fraternal organisation presented the Peace Monument to the C.N.E. grounds in Toronto. In apology for the U.S. troops that landed there in 1813 and torched the Upper Canada Parliament building, an inscription reads, “Peace be upon you : Upon you be the peace”. Although we now have a porous but checkpointed border, that peace endures.

This is not the place to summarise five Elderhostel lectures on the struggle to define the border. Suffice it to say that in 1838 war threatened again on the Quebec/Maine frontier. A compromise resulted in the way that state bites up into the area between Québec and New Brunswick. In the Pacific region the 1848 Oregon controversy led to the extension of the 49th parallel to the Strait of Georgia and thence south around Vancouver Island to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

When the United States bought Russian America (Alaska) in 1867 that border with Canada’s future province of British Columbia had to be defined. Because of a new British ‘special relationship with America’, in 1911 Canada lost much of its Pacific coast to the U.S.A.

In the 20th Century’s Great Wars Canada, Britain and the U.S.A. finally became allies. Increasingly common interests have made crossborder and trans-Atlantic hostilities unthinkable. On this continent, however, the Homeland Security paranoia intensifies. We do understand it.

At least, the location of the boundary is agreed.