The American City CONTROLLED by Canada

[Music] right in the middle of u.s canada border is a blip a mistake or as some would say a problem due to a mapping error in 1783 this northern minnesota town is now cut off from the mainland united states and the only way to get there is to cross into canada for 50 miles then cross back through the border into the town of angle inlet usa but then two years ago the border with canada closed trapping the residents in place but then the border partially opened so long as you have a vaccine and a negative kova test within 72 hours which the people in angle inlet don't have access to there is nothing remotely close to a lab and a defibrillator about a close to a hospital you're going to find up here but we planned a trip for less than 72 hours to use the same test twice and visit this uniquely placed american city controlled by canada to find out what their ideas are for liberation we were stuck in the middle of a blizzard on our way up so we stopped in the closest city to the border to meet with brian who operates the plows what is it like 40 or 50 of canadian populations below us because like toronto and all the capital is down by the lakes great lakes so they're south of us too so these canadians aren't as tough as they think they are believe me there's some tough ones there too but the northwest angle is minnesota but you cannot get to it on land unless you go through canada in their their entire industries tourism fishing i mean they don't you know they don't get any other income from anything else but people coming up and so there's a service up there that plows like 30 miles of ice road to service all these resorts they got to get fuel to them they got to get food and groceries you know beverages all that stuff so they they haul these these roads up there in previous years in order to access their own country the people of angle inlet banded together to plywood road 37 miles long on top of the lake so on the map where where does ice road start and end to get to the angle well so last year was the first year it was ever done right oh wow yeah so it's it only was done because of covet because otherwise people would just drive up it's an hour hour 20 minute drive so it started at our resort and then came out to this corner here because you have to you can't go into canadian waters right and then come up to get to the northwest angle unfortunately record snowfalls this year made the lake impassable now they're um they have found other means too like they're they're doing bomber services i believe there's some outfit out of duluth that's flying people in so they're plowing um like ice runways for the planes to come in and land and drop people off let's say we have a pretty average sized car and a lot of heart how far do you think we can make it okay not not in a car i mean i wouldn't recommend it when you called yesterday they said you're coming up and i said well they're you're forecasting a blizzard so yeah i hope you guys know what that means it's kind of amazing that we got this far right the kent is saying that the map shows the angle um i think it's over there hopefully get out on the [Music] and ice one ever saw him again after a valiant attempt it was clear that we weren't in fact going to take the ice road so we took the truck up to the border oh jeez she's intimidating then a long drive through canada finally america [Music] but wait after entering back into the continental us we had to track down a local checkpoint here we go a few clicks on a touch screen and almost two hours later we were in we should be in america [Music] [Applause] this whole process is something that many residents of the northwest angle have to go through twice a day our first meeting was with paul a resort owner and lifelong resident who had strong opinions about the border inconvenience we're trying to figure out how to take this to a court what would you take to court exactly holy [ __ ] not being able to go to your own country that seems like a infringement of your liberty isn't it but if i can get a rule if i can get somewhere if you can just get it filed that will create a lot of attention this process among other things has led some to believe that maybe this part of the world should just be canada instead of building a wall a new petition is simply asking to redraw the map there's a petition to the white house that asked donald trump to give it back to canada look minnesotans are already honorary canadians why don't you just take all of us great walleye war as it came to be known ended amicably i mean is there a point for any of these places that says maybe it shouldn't just be canada would you want to give up your citizenship because you can't because you can't get some bureaucrats together to come up with a simple solution you know as american citizens we need to not only follow our laws but a foreign country's law right everybody talks about the longest undefended board in the world try living with it i mean what would be a solution to that problem it's like very inconvenient well a solution would just be have a travel corridor the idea of a travel corridor could mean a tunnel or a bridge but so far the most realistic choice would be to allow residents to travel on the pre-existing roads between the northwest angle and the rest of the us without stopping at customs it could be protected by cameras transmitters or other methods to ensure people go or they say they will try to point out the fact that there's the exact parallel on the south side of this lake and that's the cn rail line then it goes down at warroad it runs about 36 miles united states and goes back up and in that's canada's big east-west line 23 trains in 24 hours there's no place else where you have a land crossing commercial goods going through and not checking customs look overhead you'll see idling trains right there so i'm telling people let's go block the damn train treat me like the train be a neighbor reciprocate it's not the first time we floated blocking the train back in the walleye wars we also did it and the fbi called us up about it okay what yeah but that's the thing people up here we're remote we don't we don't we're not looking for drama right we just want to run our business and be law abiding honest to god right look where we've chosen to live if paul were to block the train the amount of money in crude oil that would stall on the tracks would be alarming is that 45 000 a car how much is that 646 million 875 000 that's in one day those are those are numbers that'll make you tingly back here finding a better method of border crossing for us citizens is a difficult conversation let us know in the comments what you think should happen maybe this part of the u.s should just be canada a few of the 119 residents in angle inlet live on islands so the local plow crews continue to make ice roads that connect to the mainland one of those island residents joe who happens to live in a literal lighthouse is an expert on the history of the angle the lake of the woods goes like seemingly forever north squiggling between those 14 000 islands can you go all the way up there yeah on boat so the law is in the summer you could go you could go here yeah as long as you don't that's what's going on can you go as long as you don't touch land you could go anywhere as soon as you touch land you need to call in so you could go yep all the water all the way up there while as long as you don't touch land you could go anywhere on the lake you want but in the winter you can in the winter they treat isis land to figure out how two or actually three countries got to this point we're gonna need a little history with chris or actually with me i am chris by just looking at the strange little bump on the top of minnesota it doesn't really make sense right well at the time of its creation it didn't make sense then either it all started with the treaty of paris in 1783 great britain and the us had agreed upon a border with canada on the eastern side of the u.s that looked like this however the border was planned to end at the northwesternmost point of lake of the woods because they for some reason had that in writing and wanted to stick with it what is the true northwest most part of lake of the woods is it angle inlet yep oh it is yep so they were not wrong there right then in 1807 with the louisiana purchase things got tricky the british government felt that the new border should connect the pre-existing border from the east straight across the water to the 49th parallel and continue westward from there but the united states remembered that they owned the northwesternmost point of lake of the woods no one really wanted to relinquish what was in words to change any wording from the original documentation would be altering the very piece of history that granted the us to be well the u.s it seemed that everyone understood how crazy the map was canada and great britain even attempted to buy the land but america being america shut it down it's not perfect but angle inlet is how it was to be after being filled in on why this place is actually american we set out to find joe's wife anita who had stationed a fish house just feet away from the canadian border the border here is marked by black poles stuck in the ice mean you're like living five feet from canada right now you can and i definitely you know canada i definitely had the gps out making sure i was fishing on the u.s side they they'll check yeah i mean what would happen if you actually like what let's say it's super white out and you put your house like a couple feet on the canadian side what would happen there's no exceptions i mean even if i said hey i didn't realize that it's not going to be forgiving you're breaking in a lot you know and that's because the ice is considered land in the winter exactly so in the summer you could go right over there wherever you want yep as long as you have your canadian license you're fine it's it's there when you catch oh you caught a baby you know when you catch big fish with this 10 pole here the pole literally is like fish like this daddy you have people coming from all over the world to fish right here right at the border of canada and the u.s yep well they come from all over because this is the walleye capital of you know the world that people get big walleyes and that's what they come here for trophy fish they they come in musky fish too that's a big thing oh baby it's not very big it's a sagger while it may look easy to cross the border especially in winter the consequences are no joke one of the prominent modes of transportation around here are the bombardiers basically a minivan bred with a snow machine these special vehicles are essential in the northwest angle however bombers stopped being made over 40 years ago because they were no longer necessary we met with angle outpost resort owner jason as he pulled his fleet into his shop after a long day on the ice it's just a lot of lake to cross too i mean yeah it's an hour and 45 minutes in one of these things and like yesterday i did it and it sucks when you can't see it can be dangerous i mean if you break down out there or get lost and these are old machines they break down and so what about like the numbers this year every year it's gone up gone i've gone up but this is by far the worst year we've had yeah so the i mean the kids have to go through the border twice yep so four borders jack rides the bus a couple times a week so you know we can't go to town to go to a funeral but they can come across and buy beer whenever they want it's [ __ ] i have a little bit of bitterness towards canada i can't help it yeah hopefully i didn't express too much of it but after another quick rip in the 4x4 across the ice road we met with travis a part owner of the sunset lodge and a guy who takes the border very seriously what if you were to go across the border right now football throws away you walk over say hello to the canadians i'm doing anything wrong that's going to keep me out of canada i'm taking everything down the line they say i can't come today i'm not going today if i have a couple of drinks i'm thinking about it like i i got to stop i want to fish canada not can i safely drive my vehicle home but that will mess with my ability to do my job in canada because i won't be allowed on a day like today where it's negative 10 degrees out raging winds you kind of have to wonder like what are what are people coming out here for yeah it's a trophy fish i mean the fish of a lifetime i call them lifetime fish for a reason you know you might only get one as we left the angle well once we got unstuck for the final time it was hard to forget the resilience of the 119 people on angle inlet who face a daunting task standing up to an entire country be sure to subscribe and let us know in the comments what you think should happen about this border inconvenience and if you're interested in this type of video be sure to check out our episode we did about point roberts washington

Channel: Off the Cuff

Views: 4,122,871

Keywords: map error, northwest angle, border closure, canadian border, border irregularity, annex, secede, North of the border

Id: tE-9YPxCBLo

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 27 2022