Voyageur 125
A Border Library Cut Canadians Their Own Door, and Carney's in Paris, Looking Past the US.
News for residents of the “11th province”: Canadians abroad.
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A Border Library Cut Canadians Their Own Door
The Haskell Free Library and Opera House has sat on the Quebec-Vermont border for more than a century, its front door in Derby Line, Vermont and its reading room reaching into Stanstead, Quebec. For generations Canadians walked in the front door without clearing customs. Now they can't.
In early 2025 US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended the arrangement and barred Canadian patrons from the American entrance. So the town built its own. On Wednesday the library cut the ribbon on a new Canadian-side door, about $700,000 in work, half of it paid by donors after the story spread. Mystery writer Louise Penny helped rally the giving.
"It's finally done," the board president told a crowd of about a hundred.
A library that spent a hundred years proving the border didn't have to mean a wall now needs two doors to accommodate the Canucks. Times are a-changin’.
Read more: CBC News / The Boston Globe
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A photo from the old country:
Carney's in Paris, Looking Past the US
PM Mark Carney is in Paris this week and will meet with President Emmanuel Macron this evening at the Elysee. The stated reason is that Canada is handing France the G7 presidency before the leaders' summit, which is running next week in Evian-les-Bains. The real reason is that Carney wants more of Canada's trade aimed away from our neighbours to the south.
Carney has said since Davos that Canada wants/ needs to expand non-US trade, and France is now Canada’s third-largest merchandise market in the EU. This same European jaunt will next take the PM to Ireland, with defence and technology deals on the table along with the regular trade chitchat.
This year's G7 is expected to skip the usual joint communique in favour of issue-by-issue statements, a workaround that’s seen as a way to dodge a fight with the United States over the wording.
If the strategy sticks, Canada may soon do more of its business across the Atlantic than across the 49th parallel.
Read more: The Globe and Mail / World Economic Forum