Imaginary Line
Life on an Unfinished Border
By: Jacques Poitras
Published: September 23, 2011
Format: Paperback, 342 pages
ISBN-10: 0864926502
ISBN-13: 978-0864926500
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
"Borders are crucibles, places where populations and countries collide: how they manage that collision says much about them", writes provincial affairs reporter for CBC News in New Brunswick, Jacques Poitras, in his insightful and deeply personal book Imaginary Line: Life on an Unfinished Border. The author describes how the international boundary between New Brunswick, Canada and Maine, USA, represents a microcosm and a focal point of relations between individuals, regions, and entire nations on both sides of the border.
Jacques Poitras understands that despite grand political theories of security and free trade, and of a north-south or an east-west axis, a border is really about people on each side of the line. At the ground level, the author provides stories of people who behave as if the border existed only as an abstract concept. With the international boundary slicing arbitrarily across the Maine-New Brunswick region, people on both sides of the imaginary line share deep and multi-generational connections that transcend international politics, language, and cultures. The border, as a very arbitrary and artificial creation, was the work of politicians, diplomats, and international agreements. Those legal niceties break down when the author visits real people, who live on and with that imaginary line as part of their lives.
Jacques Poitras (photo left) recognizes that the previously informal border crossings became much more restrictive after 9/11. Political forces are moving in the direction of even more tightly regulated boundaries. Against this current reality, the past crashes up against the present along that imaginary line. Moving from that high level view, Jacques Poitras presents the border as a more human phenomenon, with more richness of life and consideration of possibilities, than a line drawn on a map. The recent political events have increased the isolation of two groups of people who lived their lives as one large community.
Jacques Poitras provides a richly nuanced, and very personal experience, of life on the increasingly isolated Maine-New Brunswick frontier. The author presents the the concept as a microcosm of Canadian-American relations through the following sections:
* Drawing the line
* Holding the line
* Blurring the line
For me, the power of the book is how Jacques Poitras presents the story of the Maine-New Brunswick boundary as a proxy for for the shifts in Canadian-American relations, and as a very human challenge that disrupts the lives of a long standing community. The book works on both the macro and the micro level. The ever evolving, and never completely finished border represents the constant winds of change in the relationship between Canada and the United States. While history often focuses on the high level events, as if the people affected by them were only an afterthought, Jacques Poitras brings the fascinating stories of real people to life.
The border too represents the changing political and social moods within each country. For Canadians, the ongoing interplay between the east-west and north-south views of development are reflected in that unseen line. For Americans, the shifts between openness to the world, and a closing into isolation, are also demonstrated in their ever evolving views of the border. As a microcosm and as a grand symbol, the Maine-New Brunswick border may be unseen, but maintains a powerful and ongoing effect on everyone around it.
I highly recommend the well researched and deeply engaging book Imaginary Line: Life on an Unfinished Border by Jacques Poitras, to anyone seeking an intriguing examination of the effects of international borders in general, and the Maine-New Brunswick boundary in particular, on the way people on both sides interact, think, and perceive the world.
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