US-Canada relations tested as border library faces new restrictions | John L. Micek (2025)

DEBRY LINE, VT ― If, by some chance, you find yourself in the Haskell Free Library and Opera House here, and you’re looking for tales of heartbreak and disappointment, spare yourself the trip to the romance books.

They’re written all over Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec, sister communities on either side of the U.S. and Canadian border, that have unwittingly — and unwillingly — found themselves thrust into the ongoing feud that’s pushed relations between the two nations nearly to the breaking point.

The century-plus-old library, which straddles both sides of the border, was built as a testament to the enduring friendship between the two nations, and a none-too-subtle thumbing of the nose at the artificialities of border lines.

That’s all about to change — in the most profound and visceral way possible.

Last month, the Trump administration announced that the library’s Canadian patrons would no longer be allowed to use the main entrance on Caswell Street in Derby Line, where homes proudly fly the flags of both nations.

Without providing evidence, federal officials said smugglers and drug traffickers were “exploiting” the library. They argued that the move would end “such exploitation by criminals and [protect] Americans,” The Guardian reported.

New rules set to go into effect in October will require Canadians to go through an official border crossing before they can use the library, the newspaper reported.

There are several of those official ports of entry across the community, staffed by heavily armed border personnel.

Library officials are working on a more permanent solution to make it easier for Canadians to enter the library and stay on the right side of immigration.

The library board’s president, Sylvie Boudreau, shook her head sadly as she recounted the story in a reading room that can only be reached by crossing to the Canadian side of the building.

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“I think we need to rise above all that, and we need to be stronger. And this is what’s happening right now, because that closure of the access, you know, outraged a lot of people,” she told MassLive during a visit earlier this week.

That’s because the ties that unite Derby Line and Stanstead run deep.

The library’s founding couple, Henry and Martha Stewart Haskell, were a cross-border love story. She was Canadian. He was an American. And those ties endure to this day.

Residents of both towns head across the border every day to shop and visit family and friends. Expectant mothers from Stanstead travel to the hospital in nearby Newport, Vermont, because it’s closer than the one in Sherbrooke, Quebec, the next big town.

“We do a lot of community things,” Harvey Stevens, a member of Stanstead’s town council, told MassLive during an interview at town hall on the Canadian side of the border.

“We have an international water company that is an international water company for both communities. We also have fire departments that cooperate with each other,” he said, describing what he calls the “360″ relationship between the two towns.

A local arts collaborative, CANUSA, provides cross-border programming, he continued.

That interrelatedness is brought to vivid life at the library, where friends and neighbors on both sides of the border rub elbows regularly.

Walk through the front door, where you’re greeted by a mixed American and Canadian staff, and you’re in the United States. Walk a few feet more to the stacks, crossing a noticeable line of black tape, and you’re in Canada.

It’s possible to journey between both countries dozens of times in a single visit. And you’ll hear American English and Quebeçois “Franglish” spoken in equal measure.

A clerk, speaking in French, recounted her pride in the library, its history and its place in the community.

Head upstairs to the opera house, with its original wedding cake cornices and Edison-reminiscent lighting fixtures, and you can sit in the audience on the U.S. side, while performers strut and fret their hour on the stage on the Canadian side.

But it’s still a long way from the simpler times of the early 20th century and informal border enforcement. U.S. immigration officials started battening the hatches after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, according to The Guardian.

Boudreau said she noticed another shift in tone after President Donald Trump won the White House for the first time in 2016.

With Trump’s second term in 2025, there has been yet another shift in tone, one further exacerbated by the Republican president’s trade war, the 51st state barbs, and his dismissive use of “governor” to refer to former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

In March, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem created a stir when she visited the library, hopping back and forth across the line of tape and repeatedly quipping “51st state,” a reference to Trump’s increasingly serious talk about annexing the nation’s northern neighbor.

To say the American muscle-flexing didn’t go over well is a bit of an understatement.

“I hear in my village, some people say they won’t go into the States anymore,” Boudreau said. “And some people are afraid. And I’m trying to tell people, ‘You know what? Stop listening to all this. Okay, these people were our friends, our family for so many years, you cannot just, you know, cut that out.’”

Which is not to say that there haven’t been issues.

In 2018, Alexis Vlachos, 40, a Canadian citizen, pleaded guilty in a Vermont court to charges that he tried to use the library to smuggle handguns into Canada from the United States. He was sentenced to 51 months in prison, according to published reports.

“We’re on the border, right?” Boudreau said, acknowledging the challenges, but offering an attempt at context. “But it’s not something that’s happening every week, you know?”

Still, the bonds of friendship go only so far. And while both Boudreau and Stevens stressed that their nation’s quarrel is with the U.S. government, and not its people, the frustration and hurt are nonetheless palpable.

“It created a movement of solidarity and unity that I haven’t seen in years,” Boudreau said. “Because, you know, over time we take ... things for granted.”

In the near term, residents on either side of the border are looking ahead to Canada’s federal election on April 28.

The outcome of that race, between current Prime Minister Mark Carney, of the Liberal Party, who succeeded Trudeau, and Conservative candidate Pierre Poilievre, could profoundly reshape cross-border relations.

Boudreau and Stevens also are looking to 2028 when Trump, who is term-limited, is supposed to leave office — though he has been making noises about circumventing the constitutional ban on serving a third term.

Then, they both said, there is an opportunity for a reset in American and Canadian relations.

Stevens fell back on the words of former President John F. Kennedy, reciting his remarks in a May 1961 speech to the Canadian Parliament.

“‘Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies,’” Stevens said in a way that suggested that he had done more than just commit Kennedy’s words to memory.

“So many Canadians live in Vermont. Many Vermonters [and] New Hampshire people live in Canada. So I think that both nations, both people realize that it’s not them that is doing it, it’s someone else that’s causing some frustrations,” he said. “And they just sort of like hope that once this is over with, we can get back to normal. So it may take a little time, but I think it will.”