Original photo by Jeff Whyte/ Shutterstock
The U.S. and Canada share the longest land border in the world, and along any border that measures in the several-thousand-mile range, there are bound to be some quirks. One of those is Point Roberts, a tiny U.S. town in Washington state that’s essentially cut off from the rest of mainland U.S. by the Canadian border. The small town of only 1,200 or so residents is what geographers call a “pene-exclave,” which is a part of a country that is only accessible by traveling through another country. Point Roberts lies at the tip of the Tsawwassen peninsula, which is under the 49th parallel — the circle of latitude that largely marks the western portion of the U.S.-Canada border. Although Point Roberts residents could technically travel by plane or boat to the U.S. mainland without entering Canada, nearly everyone commutes through British Columbia to get to other parts of Washington state.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factAlthough Canada has the nickname “the Great White North,” nearly 70% of its residents live south of the 49th parallel, in major cities such as Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City.
Point Roberts isn’t the only U.S. pene-exclave along the 49th parallel. In north Minnesota, a 120-square-mile speck of land dubbed the “Northwest Angle” is separated from the rest of the state by the Lake of the Woods. Short of taking a boat ride (or driving across the lake when it’s frozen), the area’s 120 residents have to cross the U.S.-Canada border twice to hang out with other Minnesotans. This strange pene-exclave was created in large part due to a cartography error; the map used to create the northern border of the U.S. during the negotiations that led to the 1783 Treaty of Paris included an inaccurate depiction of the Lake of the Woods, which was supposed to hit the “northwest angle” of the border. Yet even when more accurate maps were created, Americans were loath to change anything in the treaty that had granted them their independence. A joint U.S.-Canada boundary commission has maintained the boundary around this strange slice of Minnesota since 1925.
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The name “Canada” was derived from a description of the present-day city of ______.
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The name “Canada” was derived from a description of the present-day city of Quebec.
Canada finally resolved a border dispute with Denmark in 2022.
Hans Island is a 0.5-square-mile landmass that lies 11 miles off the coast of both the Canadian territory of Nunavut and northwestern Greenland, in the Nares Strait. Although this barren rock sports no vegetation, it was nonetheless at the center of a 50-year-long border dispute between Canada and Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark. The disagreement began in 1973 when the countries met to settle disputes along the Nares Strait. Hans Island became a point of contention, so the officials decided to discern its status at a later date. But that decision came to a head in 1984 when Canadian troops stuck a maple leaf flag on the rock and buried a bottle of the country’s finest whisky there. A few weeks later, Denmark responded to this provocation with a flag planting and a schnapps-burying ceremony of its own. This bit of friendly back-and-forth became known as the “Whisky Wars,” and the battle “raged” for nearly 50 years (at worst, maybe some feelings were hurt). Finally, in June 2022, the two countries settled amicably, with Canada taking ownership of roughly 40% of the island while the Danes took the remaining 60%. The agreement was sealed with a ceremonial exchange of liquor bottles. The Whisky Wars officially ended, and now Canada and Denmark enjoy the world’s longest maritime border — conflict-free.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
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