Unsettling the Border: Conway and Pasch Aim to Animate a Border, to Considerable Success

By Keith Edmund White*

Beyond the Border: Tensions across the Forty-Ninth Parallel in the Great Plains and Prairies Kyle Conway and Timothy Pasch, editors McGill-Queens University Press, 2013 9 Essays, 250 pages

How tense can things get along the Canada-U.S. border, a border shared by two nations many consider to be the most similar and diplomatically aligned in the world? Yes, Canada and the United States are exceptionally close; heck, the United States even exempted Canada from its recently disclosed NSA surveillance program. However, Canadas supposed sameness to the United States masks significant national differences, and the prominent role the Canada-U.S. border has played in shaping lives, defining economies, and creating national identities. Kyle Conway and Timothy Paschs collection of essays, Beyond the Border: Tensions across the Forty-Ninth Parallel in the Great Plains and Prairies , aims to slay humdrum assumptions related to the study of the Canada-U.S. relations, particularly along the nations Great Plains and Prairies border region. And, to the credit of its contributors and editors, Beyond the Border skillfully charts borderland tensions that are not only engrossing, but continue to shape politics and culture on both sides of the border. The book pushes readers to think beyond the border. But in doing so, it seems to also push expert and general readers alike to rediscover the borders historic and contemporary dynamism. And this dynamism extends even to the Great Plains and Prairies region stretching from Iowa to Alberta that many only know as fly-over country. Conway and Paschs thesis: While artificial, the Canada-U.S. border continues to play a critical role in defining of the national identities of Canada, the United States, and crossborder Native peoples; and for that role to continue, Canada and the United States must ensure post-9/11 security concerns do not wall-off, literally and culturally, the worlds largest shared border. Conway and Pasch detail the thesis through nine essays collected from a binational group of academics and doctoral candidates. These essays run the cross-disciplinary gambit: charting television and film distribution, early and contemporary political disputes, and the regrettable and eye-opening history of borderland Native peoples. Conway and Pasch place the nine essays within three thematic sections: The Meditated Border, The Political Border, and The Native Border.

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In The Meditated Border, Kyle and Pasch reveal that the arbitrary act of creating a national border can end up reinforcing real and imagined differences in national identities. Two essays explore Canadian television programming, while the sections final essay charts how the posi tioning of railroad tracks and certain natural geographic features created distinct Canadian and American entertainment cultures. (One noteworthy highlight: The U.S. State Department actually monitored a Canadian television program because it, in the departments view, depicted post-9/11 U.S. border security and anti-terrorism policies negatively.) The Political Border offers three case studies exploring historical and contemporary political disputes along the border. Two essays detail the multilayered decisionmaking process that defines Canada-U.S. water politics. Climate change, the complicating presence of subnational governments in Canada-U.S. disputes, and proliferation of crossborder stakeholders have made Canada-U.S. water disputes more difficult to navigate, in a region where access to and protection from water is critical. The third essay, deftly researched and written by current University of Western Ontario PhD candidate Brandon Dimmel, explores the fascinating Prohibition-era booze politics of the St. Leonard Hotel. This sections bulletpoint insight: the Canada-U.S. border has been firm or flexible depending on the interests of crossborder communities. And while this may delight crossborder historical junkies, the borders role in complicating smart regional approaches to shared resources will illuminate and exasperate readers in equal measure. The Native Border is devoted to the borders most intriguing and underappreciated aspect: the Native peoples who territories transgress the forty-ninth parallel. The section explores the past injustices faced by borderland natives, and their efforts to stop the Canada-U.S. border from painfully, and arbitrarily, severing their respective national sovereignties and cultures. The three Native Border essays highlight how the experiences of Native peoples along the Canada-U.S. border can hold lessons for the Mexico-U.S. border; explore how Native authors problematize the existence of the border in literature; and, in Phil Bellfys masterful essay, chart the slow but real progress made in recognizing the crossborder travel rights of the Anishnaabeg. The section forces readers to acknowledge the still ongoing, and woefully addressed, human costs imposed by the Canada-U.S. borders creation. But Beyond the Border is not without its flaws. The first section, with the exception of Paul Moores contribution, simply does not stand up to the others. Admittedly, starting the book with essays on Canadian television will perhaps make the book appeal to a wider readership. But the first two essays, with one lacking focus and the other adopting an almost prattling approach, fail to yield illuminating insights.1

But, then again, the authors could not predict my immenseand perhaps irrationalchagrin from their essays glaring omission of two Canadian television classics: Corner Gas and Trailer Park Boys.

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But theres also a larger shortcoming. Conway and Pasch stay too rigidly within the constructs of the essays they have compiled. As a result, they make some glaring omissions in their opening and concluding remarks when discussing the Canada-U.S. border and bilateral relationship. First, the editors are far too hasty in their discussion of a recent and significant development in the Canada-U.S. relationship, the Beyond the Border (BTB) Initiative. The initiative, which includes dozens of security and economic proposals aimed at enhancing Canada-U.S. border security and trade, admittedly is not the focus of this collection of essays. But the editors uneven review of the BTB Initiative in their conclusion, emphasizing aerial drones and cyber security, shortchanges the significance of the initiatives economic proposals. It is these crossborder economic proposals that may determine whether Canada and the United States maintain the flexible border that Conway and Pasch prize so dearly. The Native Border, the books most illuminating section, could benefit greatly from more effective framing by its editors. Yes, it is worth highlighting the U.S. governments recognition, albeit indirect, of the Anishnaabeg as a crossborder North American Ingenious nation. But theres no mention of the concrete economic and political tensions that have triggered the crossborder Idle No More movement. But these flaws are understandable. As professors of communications, Conway and Pasch are not attempting to fully survey the cultural, political, and economic dynamics of the Great Plains and Prairies border region. Instead, they seek to reestablish the Canada-U.S. border as a useful and still rich area of study by weaving together diverse borderland viewpoints. Judged from that benchmark, Conway and Paschs book is an admirable accompli shment.

*Keith Edmund White, J.D., is editor-in-chief of CUSLI-Nexus: Law & Policy Blog, the webpublication arm of the Canada-United
States Law Institute. He also serves as a legal & policy research consultant for the Woodrow Wilson Centers Canada Institute, where he writes for the Beyond the Border Observer, a blog that tracks news related to the Beyond the Border Action Plan and Regulatory Cooperation Council.

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