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 maintaine d. Even in the most r emote and d ense forests, a twenty-foot wide swath o f cleared land d esignates the b order. The organization charged with maintaining this boundary is the Canada/United States International Boundary Commission (IBC), established by treaty in 1908. The IBC was init ially tasked with re-mapping and r e-marking the USA-C anada border, which both governments had sorely neglected over the preceding four decades, allowing boundary markers to become destroyed, damaged, or swallowed up b y 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
