A Library on the Canada-U.S.Border Is Ensnared by Trump’s Foreign Policy

Once upon a time, a rich widow who was a citizen or two neighboring countries hired artisans to raise a majestic building and gray granite and stained windows. Only the best wood adorned the reading rooms in their library. The cherubs shot over the arc of proscenium in their opera.

But the most important request of the widow, and perhaps unusual, was that the building is located exactly on the common border of the nations. Inside, the black ribbon that represents the limit ran along the wooden floors, a symbol not of the division but of the lasting friendship between the two lands.

Then, one day, the leader of the country to the south settled to annex his neighbor to the north. One of its trusted emissaries visited the building.

“State 51,” he said, stepping on the north on the black film. “We,” he said, going back.

President Trump’s tariffs against Canada and his threats to turn it into an American state fed a deep crisis among Canadians, abruptly forced to rethink their relations with their neighbor, the rest of the world and even among themselves. But they have also overturned the life of the small city through the border, where many Canadian and American communities had taken intertwined and intimate lives.

Perhaps anywhere along the stretch of 5,525 miles-stirred, the most lung in the world, idealism, idealism finds a more powerful expression than in a somnoling corner of more southern southern Quebec and vermont to the north. There, the Library and the Haskell’s Opera House has been horcated on the border since 1904, the creation of Martha Stewart Haskell, the rich widow who chose the location, not only for her symbolism, but also for Canadians and US.

For decades, the Canadians left Canadian land and walked along an open sidewalk next to the library to reach their main entrance, located on the side of the United States, passports are not required.

But the United States announced in March that it would prohibit Canadians directly accessing the library, saying that the open border policy of the library has led to cases of smuggling and other security conerns.

Start in October, all Canadians who wish to use the main entrance will first have to go to a nearby border crossing in the United States, passport in the hand and the United States.

Canadians who are not headlines of the Hassell Library have already banned the legs to use the open sidewalk in the library. A new sign warns that if they do, “they will be arrested and will face the prosecution and/or elimination of the United States.” Most Canadians now enter through a previously not used rear door.

The repression in the library and the opera house followed a visit in January by Kristi Call, the Secretary of National Security of the United States. The US authorities had been pressing to restrict access to Haskell in recent years, also suggesting that Canadians and Americans turn to visit him, library officials said.

Within the library, Mrs. Name and her entourage stood on the south side of the black ribbon while looking at the library staff on the other side. American officials described illicit cross -border episodes that involve the library, while library officials argued that they had security.

Suddenly, the name of Mrs. stepped on the tape and backed up a couple of times, saying: “51st state, we”, while his entourage laughed, library officials said, who remained speechless.

“I was embarrassed because I’m American,” said Kathy Converse, a long time volunteer in Haskell and his unofficial historian. “The other ladies, I think, were stunned because all Canadians and offended.”

Since then, the library officials and in the two contiguous cities, Stanstead in Quebec and Derby Line in Vermont, have fought to keep the installation open to all. The US authorities say, they are exaggerating the potential threat represented by the Porosa Library.

The restrictions, they say, run the risk of destroying the special link between the two municipalities, which share drinking water, wastewater facilities and a long history. The Canadian flags fly from the Porches on the side of the United States.

The drama that has wrapped in the library is in many ways a reflection of a larger Phenomenon that takes place in the two cities such as Mr. Trump’s campaign against Canada has altered the relations between the two neighbors.

In the past, for many locals, the two communities used to be essentially one. They are in one restaurant and used the pool in the other.

“It was almost as if the border was there,” said Fran Gundo-Gross, an American who lives in Derby Line and was borrowing a library novel. Mrs. Gontter-Gross was “furious,” he said, about the new restrictions against Canadians, adding: “Everything is crazy.”

As the Haskell has been found at the Geopolitical Tensions Center, journalists from all over the world have been descending in the library, at a two -hour journey from Montreal or Burlington.

“They have come from Germany, Switzerland, France, Japan, so many!” Sylvie Boudreau, president of the Library Trustees Board said. “Martha Stewart Hassell deliberately wanted the library on the border. But I don’t think in 1901 I could imagine where we would be today.”

Haskell was already 70 years old, the long widow and the heir to the fortune of her husband’s wood when the land broke into her project in 1901.

“He was rich, politically influential, and people would come home for books and theater,” said Converse.

The construction was wrapped in 1904-completed with a library on the ground floor and an opera of 400 people on the top two floors, a couple of years before Haskell’s death.

The possible family donated the building to the two communities on both sides of the border, and people continued to visit the border without any.

Mrs. Boudreau, president of the Board of Trustees, is an officer withdrawal from the Canada Border Services Agency. When he joined the agency in 1998, a decade after the signing of a free trade agreement between Canada and the United States, the talk was further opening the border, he recalled.

“In three years, I didn’t think I would have a job,” said Boudreau.

But while border security intensified after September 11, 2001, the attacks, the library and the opera house continued to operate as imagined by Haskell.

“Although I worked at customs, I am a person who believes that there should be no borders,” said Boudreau. “It’s utopian, I know.”

“At the same time, because I worked at customs, I understand the risks,” he added. “When people come and go like this, their details do not put themselves in the system.”

According to customs and border protection of the United States, the library “continues to be leveraged by people trying illegally to the United States and smuggle products.”

In 2018, a Canadian man had a sentence at 51 months in prison for smuggling more than 100 Quebec Vermont guns, including several hidden firearms in backpacks that were brought to the library from the Brom in a brom in a brom in a left on a left on a left on a left on a left on the left on a left left on the left.

Library officials have pressed security in recent years, said Boudreau. Staff members are more attentive. They inform border officials on both sides of any special event or group visit.

They have banned family gatherings that used to take place within the library, where foreigners living in Canada or the United States, unable to visit the other country, would meet. They point out that US authorities have surveillance cameras trained in the building, including a new hidden inside a bird house.

After the US authorities restricted access to the main entrance, the library officials opened a back, located on the Canadian side, which had not used the leg. Then, for now, Canadians can enter the library from the rear, using an impromptu catwalk of large carpets extended on the grass.

Canadians can continue to use the return from October. Both Canadians and Americans are now obliged to leave the one they entered.

Library officials are planning extensive renovations on the Canadian side in response to restrictions. So the library is still cozy for Canadians, officials are installing a new setback, erecting an awning and building a walking parking lot and small parking lots.

A Gofundme campaign has already raised almost 200,000 Canadian dollars, twice the budget for renovations. Perhaps the history of the library and the opera of the rich widow would end up happily forever.

“I think there is a feeling of this little library intimidated by this powerful administration, and that helped encourage people to contribute,” said Steve Timmins, a Canadian who visits the library. “In the light of what is happening, it is an important symbol of friendship that cannot be distance tasks.”