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Comment by _the_inflator | Hacker News Reader

This is funny.

Even funnier are the so-called line houses along the USA/Canada border: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_house

The US-Canada border situation is more sad than funny in the post-9/11 world. I wish the borders were open between US and Canada as they are in Europe. But crossing the border, even though it is barely marked, is a serious crime and heavily enforced.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/jogger-who-a...

This is only true in certain places. For example, in the thousand islands, the border between US and Canada is VERY nebulous. A line on a map exists, but you can drive your boat around the islands, entering and exiting the US dozens of times, and absolutely nothing will happen to you. The US Coast Guard is there boating around watching, but only rarely pokes around peoples boats.

Now I'm sure if you landed and somehow were talked to by the border police and didn't have a passport you'd be pretty screwed, but honestly thats pretty unlikely to happen. I know an old couple set in their ways who to this day just boat across the river sans passport for a favourite restaurant.

Not only that, but due to limitations in 19th century surveying technology, the actual 49th parallel as measured by a high precision GPS+GLONASS+Galileo receiver is some dozens of meters different from where the practically enforced line is (such as zero avenue and its ditch in South Surrey/Langley, British Columbia where it meets Whatcom County, WA).

If you go here and search for "B street, Blaine WA" and right click in google maps, look at the latitude, the actual 49th parallel is considerably south of what is enforced in practice. Much of Blaine, and a very long strip all the way to the great lakes, is actually in Canada...

https://www.google.com/maps/place/B+St,+Blaine,+WA+98230,+US...

Also fun: the border between the NWT and Yukon has never been surveyed, so no ones really sure exactly where it is.

I also found this (online) exhibition documenting the whole USA/Canada border rather interesting: http://www.clui.org/section/united-divide-a-linear-portrait-...

Although from a European perspective, the post 9/11-state of that border also seems somewhat depressing…

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