(birds chirping) (water whooshing) (soft music) - The longest border in the
world is kind of strange. (soft music) It goes on for thousands
and thousands of miles, in like a straight line. And there's a bunch of weird
little details about this line that I'm becoming quite curious about. This is the border of the
United States and Canada. (soft music) Yeah I know, two Canada videos in a row. I'm just really into Canada lately. And Canada has got some
weird stuff going on and it's kind of just
like neighbor to the north that no one ever talks about because it's seemingly
just not that interesting, but it actually is really interesting. That's what I'm here to tell you. So let's do this. (upbeat music) - How is it looking up there, Dr. Chris? (upbeat music continues) I spent the weekend in Vancouver, BC hanging out with some friends. My friends, Chris and
Lizzie and Becky and Chris who are just gems of people. Really fun to hang out with, very talented creators. Iz, what are we up to? Where are we? What's going down? You can say it loud. Izi say it loud. (crosstalk) - We're getting ramen,
but I'm gonna say it - Okay ready, ready. - [Host] Okay go
- Great, three, two, one. - [All] We're getting ramen. - That worked out really well. And there was lots of FPV drones. (upbeat music) - Did you just crash it? - I'm very far away. (air whooshing) Do you hear it? - And while on this trip, one of the things I did
while we were driving around is what I always do, which is, pull out my
phone and started looking at the map of where we were. (gentle music) - And I just started to get
really curious about this line, this straight line that goes
on for thousands of kilometers. It's like 6,500 kilometers
worth of line on the map. And I've always just ignored
this line. It's kind of like, Oh, that's just like the boring line that separates these two countries that are like best friends and have no tension, no drama or nothing interesting about this line. It's just straight and boring
is what I always thought. Then the rabbit holes began. (upbeat music) There's actually some
really interesting stuff about this line like weird enclaves and a Skype border patrol and all this stuff that I'll explain in just a second. But first let's remember why I'm here. I came to explore and to have
a good time with my friends. (upbeat music) (crosstalk) (upbeat music) Okay, so back to this line. There's a whole history here. I don't know if you're interested in the history lesson right now. I'm not. So let's just put it this way. A lot of Canada used to
be owned by the French, (typewriter clicking) Fought some Wars with Britain, they lost the wars and
they were kind of like, nah, we'll just like
kind of surrender Canada. French writer, Voltaire
kind of hated Canada said it was "Just a few acres of snow" So the British take over Canada, the United States is starting
to expand to the South. They wanna take over tons of land. They want to go north
and take over Canada, but the British don't really
want them to take over Canada and they fight and they end
up not taking over Canada. And eventually they establish a line between north and south that says, this is Canada and this is United States. Through a bunch of treaties, they determine exactly
where the line's gonna be. (gentle music) There's one number that
completely determined how this border would look. And that number is actually the same name as this coffee shop that we're
in right now in Vancouver, (gentle upbeat music) Forty Ninth Parallel. (gentle upbeat music) (dry leaves cracking) This is not stable. I had this big vision
of sitting on this log. I don't think it's gonna work. (exhales deeply) Am I contributing to erosion
with all of this traipsing through the woods? Here they go. They've got a line. They've got a number, the 49th Parallel. (soft music) This is like the 1800s,
they don't have GPS. In fact they don't have any precise tools for actually measuring
what that line looks like when you're in the mountains of Canada. So they send a bunch of
people out with string. They made a bunch of straight
lines that were supposed to go along the 49th Parallel. And I mean, they did
a pretty darn good job for just like using string and compasses. I'm actually pretty impressed, but not surprisingly, if you zoom into this very straight line, you'll see that there's
actually a little bit of zigzagging going on. The border doesn't actually go perfectly along the 49th Parallel. To demarcate the border, they put thousands of these stone markings and then they also, to make it very clear, cut a gap in the trees
that's like 20 feet wide. It's kind of a bizarre-looking thing, especially from space. You just see this like gap in the trees. (upbeat music) To write the end of it,
continental United States, is gonna be south of the 49th Parallel and Canada would be north
of the 49th Parallel. This is a great thing when
you're looking wide at a map, but nature isn't super
good at straight lines, which is why when we draw borders, it kind of clashes sometimes with how the world actually works. And so you get some weird stuff (upbeat music) First over here in Vancouver,
zoom into Vancouver, and you'll see this little peninsula. This little peninsula is great, just like any other peninsula. But look what happens when you draw the 49th Parallel through it. This is Point Roberts. It's a little enclave that
belongs to the United States because it's South of the 49th Parallel. But you can see that it's
like, should be in Canada. (upbeat music) It's cut off from the US. This little town of like 1500 people is strange because there are people living
there who are US citizens. They belong to the State of Washington. (gentle upbeat music) They have a little elementary
school in this village, but what they don't have is anything above an elementary school. So anyone who wants to go to
school has to get on a bus, go across the border into
Canada all the way around like 40 kilometers or something like that. Back in the United States, go to school. And then back across into Canada and back into the United States. It's like four border
crossings in one day. Sounds like a nightmare. (upbeat music) Listen, I know we're talking
about the US-Canada border and everything but just take a minute to look at this mossy green forest that I'm in north of Vancouver. It's just the most magical
thing I've ever seen. - I'm really know far away (both laughing) - [Lady] So far away - Can you hear it? (upbeat music) - [Host] Is everyone convinced that moss is the greatest thing in the world yet. - Yeah, of course. - [Host] On the record?
- I was on board. - [Host] Yeah, you've been
on board since the beginning. - I was on board from the begins. - [Host] You're on board now, hater. - I'm on board. - [Host] I've got everyone on board. - Listen, (indistinct) the whole time - Shut up Becky. (upbeat music) - Okay. So back to this line, keep going down the straight line. And eventually you'll hit an area where the whole straight line, 49th Parallel thing doesn't really work as a place to draw border. The treaty says that as soon
as this 49th parallel hits this Lake, it's called Lake of The Woods that the border would need to trace the Northwest corner, meaning the upper left
corner of this border, and then continue onward.
But there was a problem. The map they were using
to draw this border was kind of bad and inaccurate. And so it made the lake
look a lot more round and cleaner and like more in line with their vision for the border. But then when they went
to actually survey it, they realized that this northwest
corner of the upper left was actually way up here, (gentle music) making the border have to
go up to fulfill the terms of the treaty and then continue onward. From there it starts to follow rivers and it goes into The Great Lakes. And it's a little more complicated, but in the process of going
up to fulfill the treaty and hitting the upper left of this Lake, you get this, (gentle upbeat music) this little blob of land
is appropriately named The Northwest Angle. It's the only piece of the
continental United States that is north of the 49th Parallel. There's a couple hundred
people who live there and if they want to get in
and out of their community, they have to go to this little booth and they have to video-call like Skype the border patrol to like report that they're coming in and out and declare whatever stuff
they wanna bring in and out. That's so cool. It's like Skype border patrol. Sounds cool. I should do that someday. (upbeat music) We went into this sea-plane in Vancouver and we flew over all of these islands. (upbeat music) And I started to realize
that while it works to draw these really straight lines in the middle of Canada, when you get to the east
and the west coast in the Canada region, you start
to get a lot of little islands, lots of water weaving
in and out of violins, cutting them all up. And that's hard to draw lines through. Luckily on the west coast, they were able to not stick
with the 49th Parallel, which would have cut Vancouver Island, just in a weird place. They
dipped it down and whatever. But over on the east
side, they didn't do that. And you end up with this line. (upbeat music) This is Canada, but the only way to get into Canada from here is through this land bridge that goes
through the United States. Kinda weird, probably
not that big of a deal. In fact, none of these
are actually a big deal. Like they're all like kind
of goofy, weird things, but they don't actually cause
like too much inconvenience. Although the high schoolers
having to go through four border crossings every
day is actually pretty weird and a huge inconvenience. So I take back what I just said. So it was a great weekend in Vancouver. I loved hanging out with
these wonderful people and I learned a little
something about this big, straight line that I
didn't know anything about. And it confirmed to me
something that I've learned time and time again, which is some lines on the
map look really simple. And they just look like straight lines, but you zoom in enough, you'll always find weird stuff. So it's always interesting to zoom in that's I guess the moral of the story. Anyway, thanks for watching. (upbeat music) Alright. I'm gonna do an
ad now about something that I care a lot about, which is Audible. I listen to a lot of Audible
and I have since 2011 as this giant library
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lot more, I'm dyslexic. So reading is like a
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r/borderporn