A Tale of Two Traumatized Border Towns

It's like a bridge over troubled waters, man.

The town of St. Stephen, as seen from Calais. Or maybe the other way around. (Wikimedia Commons)

It’s not often an unassuming road bridge that played a key role in fond childhood memories makes the news, but it’s even weirder when it makes headlines a few days later for very different reasons. None of them related to terrorism, espionage or smuggling, which are actually more the sort of thing you might expect from a remote border crossing between Canada and the US than becoming the newest example of our rapidly deteriorating relationship.

The short Ferry Point International Bridge links the coastal towns of St. Stephen, New Brunswick and Calais, Maine across the tidal St. Croix River, and is located just a short drive from my hometown of Saint John, the OG incorporated city of Canada and possibly its foggiest. I must’ve crossed it at least two dozen times on family road trips, often headed to Boston’s much bigger airport, and somehow breezing through the checkpoint made a trip to Europe or California seem suddenly more real. It was also where my father once blew my mind after stopping halfway across to casually explain we weren’t just in two different countries but in separate time zones like we were sitting in a DeLorean instead of a shitty Dodge Dart. There was usually a pretty good haul from the Duty-Free shop too before driving back across it on the way home.

Normally the recent International Homecoming Festival wouldn’t earn much media attention outside of any remaining local newspapers given that it’s boring and has gone on for half a century without incident, but we live in a time when it’s now considered newsworthy if dozens of Canadians and Americans voluntarily choose to meet in the middle of a symbolic bridge to exchange awkward hugs or handshakes.

Although this year’s “Hands Across the Border” almost didn’t take place, according to CTV News:

Just hours before the festival’s official opening, the Town of St. Stephen announced the Canadian portion of Saturday’s international festival parade would proceed. It had previously been cancelled due to a lack of confirmed participants, but the town said there had been a last-minute “enthusiastic influx of parade entries.”

While this may seem an encouraging tale of plucky and/or lonely neighbors who didn’t have a problem with each other to begin with coming together in a time of billionaire-caused strife, the truth is the festival was nearly on its last legs anyway, according to the group’s Facebook page. There was still a LOT of paperwork involved even under Sleepy Joe and it’s hard for locals to get revved up about cross-cultural diversity when pretty much everyone has an idiot family member on the other side of the river. Local legend has it that, during the War of 1812, the British military gave the town elders of St. Stephen gun powder for protection and they ended up sharing it with their buddies across the water for Fourth of July fireworks.

Canadians even politely overlook the callous mispronounciation of the fellow border town Calais — or callay as in Jabberwocky calloo — it is named for as “callous” because Mainers did their best to to say mercy for France’s aid in the Revolutionary War.

But everything is different now, thanks in part to surrounding Washington County, who voted solidly for Donald J. Trump all three times and are now left wondering why the neighbors don’t want to visit anymore. It’s worth noting twice as many Canadians offering olive branches reportedly showed up on the bridge as y’all did although we admittedly brought NB premier Susan Holt and TV crews to the show. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Derry) didn’t make it but clearly she must have concerns.

One person with no intention of ever returning is Angela Daigle, a retired healthcare worker from Saint John without a criminal record, who was recently stopped at the same crossing from visiting her American fiancé because of the suspicious amount of clothes she was carrying for a two-week visit to help him recover from back surgery.

Her partner, Wabanaki elder David Saggler, is a former mem­ber of Maine’s House of Rep­res­ent­at­ives and says he was given private assurance from border officials the issue was resolved after reaching out although he’s clashed with them before. Instead, his betrothed tried again at a different crossing a couple of miles upriver and ended up handcuffed to a bench for hours until Kong got tired and released her. One can only imagine how bored border guards must become in rural crossings like these even before Canadians stopped visiting, but she’s white and it’s the middle of nowhere so at least ICE weren’t involved.

But she most definitely wasn’t up for a third attempt so Slag­ger, a dual citizen and mem­ber of both the Houlton Band of Mal­iseet Indi­ans and Wood­stock First Nation, says he’s now selling his home, renoun­cing his US cit­izen­ship, and mov­ing to NB for good.

“This is not the country I grew up in,” Slagger told the County. “It reminds me of Nazi Germany.”

There would be no small amount of irony if the man gets chased out of his own country by white supremacists since it was the Wabanaki who helped early explorer Samuel de Champlain survive his first North American winter at the river’s mouth way back in 1604.

Building bridges with the white man might’ve been their first mistake.