The Foreign Service Journal, October 2007

44 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 hy has Canada made such a fuss over the U.S. decision to insist on passports at the border? In principle, the new requirement applies to all foreigners coming into the United States. But in practice, it applies equally to Americans going abroad, because they will need that passport to get back into the United States. There is no inequity here. So why are Canadians so perturbed? This issue hinges, I believe, on a concept I first en- countered more then 30 years ago. During a research seminar at Trinity College, University of Toronto, I heard a historian refer to Canadians as “a border people.” Let me try to explicate this very Canadian sensibility. A Band in Name Only Start with the simple matter of geo-economics and demography. Although Canada looks on the map to be a very imposing territory, larger than nearly all other nation-states and with a length of coastline second to none, in human terms it is a very different kind of place. Eighty percent of Canada’s population lives in a band that is only one hundred miles wide, directly adjacent to the U.S. border, stretching over 3,000 miles. Much of the country is cold and inhospitable, corre- sponding to Voltaire’s dismissive quip about Canada as “quelques arpents de neige” (a few acres of snow). But within the zone straddling its southern border, Canada includes wine-growing locales that are much warmer than most of the northern, continental United States (e.g., Victoria and Niagara-on-the-Lake). One must keep in mind, however, that the swath of Canada containing its major cities is discontinuous and truncated, interrupted by huge expanses of territory vir- tually empty of people but containing gigantic lakes, sprawling forests, broad prairies and intimidating moun- tain ranges. Even more than in the United States, the population of Canada is concentrated in its great cities: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa-Gatineau, Cal- gary, Quebec City, Winnipeg and Halifax. These urban centers are isolated beads on a string, not homogeneous distributions of people and economic enterprise within a unified zone. As in the United States, and despite the Canadian penchant for owning a “cottage on the lake,” only about 1 percent of the Canadian population lives on farms. Manufacturing and services are spread out among the population centers, although Toronto has emerged with F O C U S O N T H E U . S . B O R D E R S C ANADIANS : A B ORDER P EOPLE E IGHTY PERCENT OF C ANADA ’ S POPULATION LIVES IN A BAND THAT IS ONLY ONE HUNDRED MILES WIDE , DIRECTLY ADJACENT TO THE U.S. BORDER . B Y C HARLES F. D ORAN W Charles F. Doran is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of International Relations at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.