Trump Ends Canada Access At Shared Border Library
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Yet another symbol of unity and peace destroyed by the Trump administration. Everything Trump touches dies.
The Haskell Free Library and Opera House was founded in 1901 and completed in 1904 by Canadian-American philanthropist Martha Stewart Haskell and her son, Horace Stewart Haskell, as a gift to the bordering communities of Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec. Intentionally built on the border, it was conceived as a symbol of unity and a place for cultural enrichment for both countries, with its entrance in the U.S. and most of the books located in Canada. The building is also a designated heritage site in both Canada and the United States.
Source: AFP
In a picturesque town on the U.S.-Canada border, workers under dark clouds were building a new entrance for Canadians into a library to replace one that had long symbolized bilateral closeness.
For more than a century, Canadians in Stanstead, Quebec, could walk through a door in the Haskell Free Library into Derby Line, Vermont, without passing through customs.
But U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has canceled the arrangement, citing the need to counter “illicit cross-border activities.”
Standing on the black line inside the library that demarcates the US-Canada border, Sylvie Boudreau, Haskell’s board of trustees president, said the Trump administration’s announcement caused “a lot of anger on both sides.”
“It’s the end of something,” she told AFP.
As a result of the U.S. action, a new entrance is being constructed on the side of the building to give Canadians access to the library.
Canadian access to the library has been restricted before, including when tighter controls were imposed following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and again during the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the Trump administration’s announcement marks the first definitive end to an arrangement that signaled enduring U.S.-Canada unity for many in Stanstead, a town dotted with large Victorian houses about a 90-minute drive from Montreal.