Partly in Vermont: A Borderline Case

"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 voilà, 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 sixième 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.