borders

I grew up about 330 kilometres (205 mi.) north of the U.S. border. As a kid in Calgary, Alberta, the U.S. wasn’t a real place, just someplace you saw on TV. I didn’t visit until I was 15, travelling to a youth convention in Seattle. It was also my first plane trip. The Canada U.S border didn’t become real until I was an adult, attending university in Windsor ON across from Detroit. I learned two things. 1) The US isn’t as scary as I thought. 2) Even close to the border, Americans have no clue about Canada. I had another border experience more recently when I visited a friend who lives on the Quebec-Vermont border. He’s in one of two contiguous small towns where one side of a street is in the states, the other side is Canada. The border goes right through the library/opera house. Meanwhile for me things have come full circle. I’m back living in Calgary, far from the border, and with Trump in power, the United States is no longer a real place.

Libary and opera house, half in Stanstead PQ, half in Derby Line VT. Source is Wikipedia