JAMES MADISON'S REVENGE - PART: "DEUX"

Writing earlier in the week about the revenge of American politicians over losing the "War of 1812", I became nostalgic over the very special relationship between our two nations.

It is a relationship which I fear may further erode as June first approaches and new rules, required by America's Homeland Security Agency, go into effect for the use Passport identification in travel between the two countries.

I grew up in the mythic "Republic of Madawaska" which straddles the geographic border between the northern portion of the State of Maine, and the Northwestern tip of the Province of New Brunswick. It is an area where, although the midway point halfway across the St. John River marks the divide between our two nations, there really isn't much anything else to markedly separate us.

Fact of the matter; the very locale of the international border is an accident of history. Having as much to do with imbibing in "Gin", than in the reality of serious geo-political discussions. To wit: The Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 which, in the aftermath of the "War of 1812", settled the international border from the Atlantic Ocean to the tip of the Lake Superior gateway to the western prairies.

In the process, the British representative, a financier and politician, Alexander Baring - "Lord Ashburton" - ceded to the U.S. more than 7000 square miles of disputed territory between the New England States and the Maritime Provinces. On his return to Great Britain, that choice earned the First Baron Baring, til the day he died the dubious title of Lord Surrender.

Lest I digress: Lord Ashburton, doubtless in a not infrequent Gin fueled haze, actually agreed to adjusting the border north by about one mile between Quebec and New York State so that "Fort Blunder"; an American fortification built accidentally inside Canada, fell within American lands. It's now called Fort Montgomery, New York.

When the treaty annexed the 7000 square miles of disputed land to the United-States, it settled claims arising from the "Aroostook War" euphemistically called the "War of Pork & Beans" which waged over the vast timber resources of Maine and New Brunswick. In August of 1827, John Baker declared the "Republic of Madawaska"...He was then promptly arrested by British Colonial authorities...fined 25 British pounds...and jailed in Fredericton for not paying the fine. Meanwhile his wife, Sophie Rice, sewed together a flag of the American Eagle and Six red stars. An example of which to this day, flies over City Hall in Edmundston, New Brunswick.

Growing-up in the Republic of Madawaska two or three generations ago, I recall being pretty much oblivious to the existence of the international border. Not ever, never once, do I recall anyone considering it an impediment to our daily lives. Aunts, uncles and cousins lived in one country and worked in the other. We shopped, walked, crossed over both sides of the border as the normal part of the daily routines of our way of life. Francophone Acadian young ladies of my generation, entertained...and were entertained...by the thousands of American military servicemen posted at the nearby "Strategic Air Command" Loring U.S. Air Force nuclear base located just across the border amongst the potato growing fields of Aroostook County, Maine.

Loring Air Force base is long gone. Closed for good as part of the budget retrenchments of the first term of the Clinton Administration. The rest though stands the very real reality of grinding to a screeching halt when the passport rules are implemented in about six weeks. It's much too late to reverse nearly two hundred years of history. A chunk of our innocence and long standing relationships though will suffer irreparable damage when the new border rules tighten-up our precious freedoms of association starting on the first of June.