So Long, Canada?

Americans and Canadians will never be as neighborly as we were in the 20th century. Well-to-do Yanks will still hike in Banff and weekend in Vancouver. But the spontaneous college road trips from SUNY Plattsburgh to Montreal, or the Pennsylvania family taking a day trip to Niagara Falls -- those won't happen as often. The less we cross the border, the fewer friendships we'll form, the less we'll marry each other, the less we'll work together. "I feel like the U.S. are our cousins, and we've lived through so much in the maturing of the New World," a woman from St. Catharines, Ont., told me. "I hate to see barriers."

From So Long, Canada

Canada and the Unites States are siblings in a very true sense. We disagree and even have spats, but in the end, we make up. We depend on each other. We work with each other, marry each other, play together. It's always been that way, and it's definitely been that way in our area of St. Vincent, Pembina, Emerson, and Noyes.

But with the increasing border security it's making it harder and harder to have the intimacy we've had down through years past. And I think that's a damned shame, to put it bluntly. I feel we had something special and neighbors, and a handful of people - some terrorists and some politicans - are trying to take that all away.

I don't usually pontificate on politics here, but I had to say something because this blog is about places, places dear to me and to many of you. This issue is divisive to the places and people we care about.