Engaging the Line: How the Great War Shaped the Canada–US Border

Studies in Canadian Military History

by Brandon R. Dimmel

For decades, people living in adjacent communities along the Canada–US border enjoyed close social and economic relationships with their neighbours across the line. The introduction of new security measures during the First World War threatened this way of life by restricting the movement of people and goods across the border. Many Canadians resented the new regulations introduced by their provincial and federal governments, deriding them as “outside influences” that created friction where none had existed before.

Engaging the Line examines responses to wartime regulations in several border communities, including Windsor, Ontario; Detroit, Michigan; and White Rock, British Columbia. This book brings to life the repercussions for these communities and offers readers a glimpse at the origins of our modern, highly secured border by tracing the shifting relationship between citizens and the state during wartime.

This book will be an invaluable resource for those studying the First World War, borderland culture, the military history of the North American home front, and political culture.

242 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2017

Reviews

[Pascal Scallon-Chouinard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This study, published in the renowned Series in Canadian Military History, examines the impact of the First World War on the delimitation and management of the border between Canada and the United States, focusing on specific border communities in Canada (Windsor, Ontario; St. Stephen, New Brunswick; and White Rock, British Columbia) and the United States (Detroit, Michigan; Calais, Maine; and Blaine, Washington). The author shows that before the conflict, the border was a rather abstracted idea; it was permeable and unregulated. People circulated and worked on both sides of the frontier, and exchanges were numerous and varied, both economically and culturally. But the First World War brought a greater control of the border, in part because the United States entered the war later than its northern neighbour. Obviously, this had important consequences for border communities, who had developed a form of transnational identity, but more generally, it also helped define how the border would be defined, regulated, managed and defended on a national scale, right up to the present day.

In a context where this same border is being challenged by barely concealed expansionist aims (which are, moreover, part of the long history of relations between Canada and the United States), this important study provides a better understanding of a pivotal moment for transnational communities and its impact, both regionally and nationally.