A Brief History of U.S./Canada Relations

Parked at the border on the way to my grandparents’ home in British Columbia, we children pranced back and forth between American and Canadian soil. No one stopped or questioned us. No one asked for our passports. Our parents told us this was the longest unfortified border in the world. My Canadian cousins quipped that Canada should annex the U.S. as an eleventh province.

A state park to the south and a provincial park to the north comprise the international Peace Arch Park. The arch stands on the exact national boundary. Its U.S. side bears the words:

     “Children of a Common Mother.”

On the Canadian side is inscribed:

     “Brethren Dwelling Together in Unity.”

Like many siblings, we've sometimes squabbled. We took opposite sides in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. In 1859 in the disputed San Juan Islands between Washington Territory and Vancouver Island, an American farmer shot a British-owned pig he found rooting in his garden. British authorities threatened to arrest him, American settlers asked the U.S. Army for protection, and both sides landed troops on the island. Fortunately, diplomacy ended the “Pig War” with no casualties except the pig.

With World War II, Canada and the U.S. became close allies in military production and defense. Their strategic cooperation continued with the creation of NATO in 1949. An early-warning radar system against Soviet missiles in the 1950s evolved into the bilateral North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). NORAD continues to monitor North American air space for post-Cold-War threats like terrorism and drugs.

The U.S./Canada economic policy pendulum swings between protectionism and free trade. After the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 hiked the U.S.’s already high import duties, Canada retaliated. International trade collapsed. Later tariff reductions culminated in the bilateral Free Trade Agreement of 1988; its trilateral successor, NAFTA (1994), which added Mexico; and a NAFTA update, USMCA (2020). Whether new U.S. 50-percent tariffs on specific Canadian goods in August 2026 are legal under USMCA is above my paygrade. This trade war is another swing of the pendulum.

We’ve heard these issues will disappear if we eliminate the border by making the U.S. and Canada one country. Eleventh province, anyone?

Image: Peace Arch monument, Peace Arch Provincial Park, British Columbia.