ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTORY PUZZLE: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE IBC COMMISSIONER The border separating Canada and the United States extends for well over 5,000 miles, “over mountains, down cliffs, along waterways and through prairie grasses.” No wall divides the two nations and no troops guard the vast border, but nearly every mile is carefully marked and maintained. Even in the most remote and dense forests, a 20-foot wide swath of cleared land designates the border. The organization charged with maintaining this boundary is the Canada/United States International Boundary Commission (IBC), established by treaty in 1908. The IBC was initially tasked with re-mapping and re-marking the USA-Canada border, which both governments had sorely neglected over the preceding four decades, allowing boundary markers to become destroyed, damaged, or swallowed up by vegetation. A subsequent treaty between the two nations, ratified in 1925, made the commission “the permanent caretaker of the boundary area” and tasked it with repairing damaged boundary markers and keeping “the boundary vistas open.”1