The U.S.-Canada border, as seen on this satellite tv for pc map, largely runs alongside the forty ninth parallel — and wasn’t chosen at random.
Planet Observer/Common Photos Group through Getty Photos
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Planet Observer/Common Photos Group through Getty Photos
When President Trump hosted Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney within the Oval Workplace, dialog turned not solely to the connection between the 2 nations, however to the border itself.
Echoing a phrase he has utilized in current months, Trump described the U.S.-Canada border as an “artificially drawn line” — and advised it must be erased.
“Any person drew that line a few years in the past … like with a ruler, only a straight line proper throughout the highest of the nation,” Trump stated at Tuesday’s assembly. “Whenever you have a look at that stunning formation, when it is collectively — I am a really creative individual — however once I checked out that beaut, I stated, ‘That is the way in which it was meant to be.’ “
Trump: “To be sincere with you, Canada solely works as a state. We do not want something they’ve. As a state it might be one of many nice states. This might be probably the most unimaginable nation visually. In case you have a look at a map, they drew a synthetic line proper by it.” pic.twitter.com/oxzF3jzLOC
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 13, 2025
Trump has set his sights on Canada since taking workplace, speaking repeatedly of constructing it the 51st U.S. state. He additionally hit the nation — one of many U.S.’ prime buying and selling companions — with a 25% tariff on most items, additional antagonizing Canadians. That backlash is credited with propelling Carney — who campaigned on standing as much as the president — to an surprising election victory final month.
Carney informed Trump that Canada shouldn’t be on the market, and “will not be on the market, ever.”
However by describing the boundary line as synthetic, Trump appears to counsel in any other case, says Jon Parmenter, a historical past professor at Cornell College. He says the president’s characterization of the border downplays “the truth that it has a posh, deep historical past and that it is a vital a part of on a regular basis life on the North American continent.”
“It is an actual factor,” says Parmenter, who teaches a category on the U.S.-Canada border. “And it issues me, as a historian, to listen to individuals dismissing it as one thing that is synthetic … or in a way, illegitimate.”
Carney later informed reporters he was “glad you would not inform what was going by my thoughts” throughout that dialog.
The U.S.-Canadian border is the longest worldwide border on the planet, stretching 5,525 miles throughout North America. A lot of the border appears to be like like a straight line as a result of it basically is: The road largely follows the forty ninth parallel (of latitude north of the equator), whereas a smaller swath traces the forty fifth parallel.
The border is technically man-made: It was drawn on a map by the governments of America and Britain, which managed Canada till 1867. In that method, Parmenter says, it — like all borders — is a assemble.
“These are issues that individuals resolve is smart at a selected second in time,” he says.
However simply because it is not a naturally occurring border — like a mountain vary or an ocean — doesn’t suggest it is not official.
“The border is synthetic within the sense that it is not one thing that … individuals residing in proximity to it had any form of position in making,” he explains. “However it’s not synthetic within the sense that it is not actual, and that it does not matter, and there aren’t real-world penalties for traversing it in a fashion that’s deemed to be illicit.”
How the border got here to be
This 1861 illustration reveals the boundary line between the US and Canada.
The Print Collector/Heritage Photos through Getty Photos
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The Print Collector/Heritage Photos through Getty Photos
The U.S.-Canada boundary was formed by a collection of treaties that happened between 1783 and 1925.
The primary was the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution, acknowledged American independence and set the Mississippi River because the western border of the brand new U.S. — which continued to broaden all through the nineteenth century.
Years later, the Conference of 1818 formally established the border between the U.S. and British North America — later Canada — on the forty ninth parallel, from Lake of the Woods, Minn., to the Rocky Mountains. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 prolonged the border to the Pacific Ocean.
“Folks kind of sat down and have been going forwards and backwards, and contours of latitude turned the best approach to resolve a dispute over who received what,” Parmenter says.
Stephen Hornsby, a professor of geography and Canadian research on the College of Maine, says the selection of the forty ninth parallel particularly was no coincidence.
The British needed to protect the northern a part of the continent for the fur commerce, whereas the U.S. needed as a lot of the Mississippi basin as attainable for agricultural settlement, Hornsby explains. They determined to separate the wind up based mostly on the river techniques, which on the time have been the principle method of touring across the continent.
The forty ninth parallel, Hornsby says, made for an “terribly handy dividing line.” Virtually all the rivers to the north circulation out by the St. Lawrence River system or the Hudson Bay, whereas rivers to the south circulation into the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico.
“Though it looks like a straight line throughout the land, while you begin to have a look at the river techniques and the bigger watersheds, it is principally a dividing line between the watersheds north and south of that line,” Hornsby says, including that “all of it makes excellent sense” on a map of North American river techniques.
It did not essentially make excellent sense in actual life, nevertheless. Parmenter says traces of latitude did not keep in mind geographical formations or the normal territories of Indigenous individuals already residing there.
“There are Indigenous nations whose territories truly spanned what turned the U.S.-Canada border, who come to seek out out when the survey occurs, ‘Oh, guess what, that is going proper by the center,’ ” he says. The Mohawk neighborhood of Akwesasne, in northern New York, is one instance.
How the border is demarcated
Over the following many years, as individuals moved westward and north, the U.S., the U.Okay., Canada and Russia negotiated some two dozen agreements, conventions and treaties to redefine the border, in keeping with the Worldwide Boundary Fee (IBC) — which itself was created by treaty in 1908 to survey and map the border.
“It is a very piecemeal course of,” Parmenter says. “It kind of basically is progressively drawn in a westward route, however over time. So the Nice Lakes space will get resolved, the prairie space will get resolved. The Pacific Coast and Alaska get resolved. And what you might have left over is the longest worldwide boundary on the face of the Earth, one which’s a really numerous border.”
Parmenter says there are numerous ranges of “depth and frequency of crossing as you go east to west.” Some stretches of the border are actively monitored, together with with helicopters and drones. However others, particularly in distant areas, are marked solely by monuments, like an obelisk or strategically positioned rocks.
“In lots of locations, it’s a very permeable border,” he says.
As a part of its mission to have a tendency the border, the IBC says it inspects and maintains over 8,000 monuments and reference factors and 1,000 survey management stations. It additionally retains a 20-foot large treeless zone — known as the vista — alongside the land boundary line.
“To make the boundary seen and unmistakable, we clear and keep a swath known as a vista that extends 10 toes on both facet of the road by dense forests, over mountain ranges, throughout wetlands and highlands and a number of the most rugged terrain North America has to supply,” its web site reads.
The vista, additionally known as the Slash, largely spans distant areas however is seen from sure land crossings, in addition to Google Earth.
A U.S. border patrol agent rides an ATV alongside “the Slash”— the boundary marker reduce into the forest — marking the road between Canadian territory on the best and the U.S., close to Beecher Falls, Vt.
Joe Raedle/Getty Photos
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Joe Raedle/Getty Photos
The place issues stand
Parmenter, a twin U.S.-Canadian citizen, says, “Individuals are on alert in Canada about this.”
He says there may be far more consciousness of the border in Canada as a result of such a excessive proportion of the inhabitants — by some estimates, as a lot as 90% — lives inside 150 miles of it.
Proportionally, far fewer People cope with the northern border each day — and till not too long ago have been far more centered on its southern border with Mexico, he says.
Whereas the U.S.-Canada border has been secure for a century, it is also true that it was renegotiated a number of instances in its early years. However Parmenter does not assume meaning a change is probably going now, particularly given Trump’s tariffs and the general state of affairs.
“It is all the time the case that in any relationship, issues can get higher, and I feel that either side would agree that there are some methods during which the administration of this specific border might be improved,” he says. “However the way in which to go about it’s by sober and considerate negotiations, not ultimatums, not excessive rhetoric, not discuss of annexation, as a result of all that is executed is to alienate Canadian individuals.”
