STRADDLED LINE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 54, Issue 93, 30 January 1934, Page 8

STRADDLED LINE.

STATES AND CANADA. SOME CURIOUS PROBLEMS. After-dinner orators on, this continent are fond of growing eloquent over the three-thousand mile frontier without a fort or a gun which separates Canada and the United States, and hold it out to the world as an example in disarmament, 'states an Ottawa paper. . Sometimes harried Customs officials wish the line, were more sharply marked. ' Take the case for instance, of Beebe, a Quebec village. The village i» bounded on the south by a road down the centre of which runs the international boundary and across the road U the village of Beebe Plain, Vermont Motor-vehicles travelling along the road may easily have two wheels in Canada and two in the United States. Still more complicated is the case -i* Rock Island, Quebec, and Derby Line. Vermont, which run together without even a- road. Here the frontier cuLs through the heart of the twin community, which is really one, and many buildings straddle the line to the confusion of officialdom. The two towns get their water supply from the United States and their electrical power from Canada. One railway station, in Canada serves both. There are two lirebrigades, Ijut they go back and forth freely. There is one chamber of cor..moren for both, and the churches and lodges are international in their mem bership. In American Prohibition days unique problems in enforcement were presented, in residences built across the line. In rooms within Quebec it was legal r.o have and consume intoxicants; in thy Vermont rooms mere possession was a crime. Sometimes the place of ji-bottie held on a table had to determine ths issue. There are problems involving citizenship, when it is uncertain whether a child was born north or south of the line, and so on. In one building which straddles the line there is a blacksmith's shop or. the ground floor, with a door on the American side, and in the basement below it a wheelwright's shop with a Canadian entrance. Thus a farmer may have his horses shod in the United States while his wagon is being repaired in Canada.