This US City Could Be Sold To Canada

point roberts washington is surrounded by water on three sides and the canadian border on the fourth distinctive geography is a huge part of its unique identity but when the pandemic closed the u.s border the roughly 1 000 residents in town were stuck you have got everything that an island has but no boat like a castle with a moat and its drawbridge up the point has been called the safest place in the world from coronavirus a blessing and a curse point roberts washington had no zero cases of covid19 even so some would rather remove the border entirely by selling point roberts to canada do you support discussions between the united states and canada regarding the purchase of point roberts by the government of [Music] canada also please subscribe to our channel off the cuff [Music] though commonly misunderstood and disagreed upon by visitors and locals alike point roberts is a pen exclave which can only be accessed through the canadian border from the mainland this makes getting there extremely difficult during times when the border is closed as president trump is closing the border with canada in fact for us it was a complicated journey heading to washington normally we would just drive through the border but with them being closed we had to charter a private boat to get to point roberts that was kind of a lot of work to find her way here we then met up with tom and his wife desiree who took us to our airbnb but getting here wouldn't have been possible without auntie pam who actually sent us a suggestion that we visit point roberts in the first place hi i'm chris poynt roberts feels isolated but in reality it's only a 25 minute drive from vancouver often the border checkpoints clear thousands of visitors a day this is the rumor that's gone around for years is that we have had 80 up to 85 people here in witness protection and all you ever did was go to marketplace and go to the gas station people would have no idea who you were while chris continued his conversation with auntie pam i took to the border to see what the hype was at that truck that's the canadian border that's how close we are in fact this road roosevelt way is the border so i decided to walk the full length of it until we ran into blackberries canadian blackberries undoubtedly the roots are in canada and the fruits are overflowing into this american street and they are pretty good the border is more than just a berry patch for the residents it significantly impacts their lives because it's surrounded by water and border does that mean you're kind of stuck absolutely yeah we never thought this would happen with canada we never thought that there would be a time when canadians didn't like us well okay so let's talk about the benefits of being closed off now how many coronavirus cases do you have we have none yeah we still have none we have gone from being this the safest place in america to now being the safest place in the world and that is crazy because we have had so much media coverage is this small town the safest place in the usa and you don't really think of those issues i guess with governor 19 to the border restrictions but they're caught in the crosshairs yeah should we just annex point roberts i don't know what the americans would say about that i continued to walk the border until i ran into a real canadian in canada would you have a quick conversation with us over the border here this is where we are you too is called the vista you ever heard of that no what is the vista all around all around the country they maintain a a swath of land 20 feet wide 10 foot into canada 10 foot into the us and they like it if people like me maintain the stuff and so it's visible from space so the 20 feet that's in between us right now they want to keep perfectly level and clear to see from the sky we have all these parcel services right because it's so much cheaper to be shipped into the u.s than into canada and your variety is so much better is there a lot of that do people cross the border to purchase certain goods a lot of people cross the border to purchase gas and basic supplies if you get it shipped from the states it's like 5.95 shipping to point roberts and 150 shipping to my house and what happens if you cross it's not a good thing since i'm on camera across i wanted to see the official border crossing so this is the u.s and this is canada and where we are is kind of right in the middle guys are looking in the window okay we're not being suspicious at all just staring with the camera but to get back into america it looks like we have to go through all that so are we stuck while the border has played a significant role in the city's upbringing no one could have planned for the current scenario and who better to talk about it than the border guards themselves while harris went into the belly of the beast my conversation with pam was interrupted by a friend of hers hello hi this is chris this thing has several errors bennett took me to the far west side of the border where we had our own strange encounter you know that doesn't surprise me if they're coming up here to meet someone well hi are you are you meeting to like say hi to somebody on yeah yeah yep see that's how that's how it works because of the recent restrictions at the border friends and family frequently meet up while remaining in their respective countries turns out this neutral zone is more strict than some thought they don't want anyone on the strip at all yeah the canadians were complaining about people coming across onto this draft i talked with one of the u.s border guards and said that that they're starting to um to come down and complain about people coming onto this side over here okay just to warn you ahead of you yeah that's good to know i don't want to leave i didn't want you to get i don't want you to get in trouble if they do go across the border they can have their privileges taken away from crossing back and forth with cameras in the bushes and a hidden microphone i went in to get some information from the united states border patrol we're filming a small documentary project on point roberts and the community that lives here sure um would anyone be interested in speech about that call we do an interview you know screw that we're on behalf of the department of homeland security well we were denied then bennett took me to the history center if you want the complete history of point roberts we have a timeline right there point roberts has always been an area of interest in fact in the early 1800s there was an expansion competition that had multiple countries fighting over the land the british empire united states spain and russia all fought over what is now known as washington shortly after the bloody war of 1812 russia and spain rescinded their claim on the territory which only escalated tensions between the us and britain come the 1840s expansionists in the united states were fired up and in 1844 james k polk's presidential victory over henry clay further motivated those ready to see the country grow polk adopted the slogan 5440 or fight which refers to the latitude line of 54 degrees and 40 minutes essentially promising americans that they would receive the northwest corner of the continent or they would go to war polk's first border move was to annex texas from spain this dramatically increased tensions in the south and while on the brink of war the british wanted to negotiate the northern border to avoid any bloodshed polk caved on his promise and settled to draw the border at the 49th parallel the oregon treaty was signed in 1846 and the border was clear at least on paper each nation recruited their own teams to mark the physical division however again the americans and british disagreed on how to move forward the brits chose to mark the land every mile while the u.s skimped on resources and followed a haphazard approach unsurprisingly mistakes were made notably a piece of land that jutted down into the united states in the georgia strait known as point roberts after several renegotiation attempts the united states has never given up the land making point roberts well a confusing place but with restrictions and social tensions escalating many in town want change in fact while getting lunch with bennett we ran into someone who could tell us exactly how damaging the kovid 19 border closure is to the point roberts economy nowhere else in north america possibly the world is facing what point roberts is if you're real there's no drugstore there's no doctors there's resident doctors there's no vet for your pets i mean go around take a look you'll see there's nothing here so we went for a drive and aside from the vast green spaces and low traffic roads we found an alarming number of for sale signs many of these were posted by hugh wilson and how has the city changed since the border has been closed we call it the canadian-less summer kind of lonely yeah every summer thousands of canadians flock to point roberts and not just the ones with wings canadian tourists are the beating heart of the economy in fact 75 percent of the homes in point roberts are canadian-owned vacation properties which now stand empty and then he said something surprising i've had people say we'll get rich off that yeah i mean you would wouldn't you we would get rich off what good evening members of council do you support formal discussions between the united states and canada regarding the purchase of point roberts by the government of canada thank you so yeah john lesso a former resident of point roberts is proposing to sell the area to canada so chris met him at the border kind of why did you feel that it was necessary to do this like you specifically i don't know i guess because there's only a few people that could probably pull it off and i'm one of them does that sound egotistical because it's true so i'm sitting on the border of u.s and canada essentially what you propose is to get rid of this border correct well that's one thing i mean it wasn't to get rid of the border so much as it was to put it to the vote of the people but that would certainly involve uh you know yes uh eliminating the border those five square miles would be added to the lower part of the tuwasan peninsula and be part of canada it's something that people should at least have an opportunity to uh to talk about so could you list off the potential benefits if this were to become canadian well first of all you'd have access to schools and medical care which you do not have now currently in order to access hospitals and other essential services residents have to travel into canada to the mainland u.s and then back bearing the full brunt of this inconvenience are children who must cross a border four times every day to go to school john's proposal would allow students to go to school in tawasan a town right across the border he's also fighting to give dual citizen status to residents offer canadian medical care and remove all border restrictions but what's the path forward for this to actually happen and is it even legal i sent out emails to justin trudeau donald trump all the governor hinsley all of the elected officials but the whole idea was to secede point roberts if you want to call us a seat or sell to canada you have to have an act of congress some of the local elected officials have said well if that's what the people want i'm not going to stand in the way of it while the problems in point roberts are clear and now exaggerated with the border closure many in town disagree with john personally i'm totally against it it's a legal nightmare absolute legal nightmare i think it's very disrespectful to the community as a whole most of the community the full-time people like myself are against it if you look at a map an aerial map and you see the tawassen and then you see point roberts you can really see the line and one side is green and the other side is all developed you'll see right across the border our every house there is probably two million dollars right it's very very expensive if canada bought this all of our real estate would be like tremendously valuable which is woohoo you know on one hand i think oh i could sell my house for a couple million i could buy a little condo on a mainland and a villa in tuscany but you lose this i've been here for 30 years yeah it's my hometown yeah and you would lose your hometown but when you take away the border you also are effectively eliminating the small town charm that points point roberts has right now yeah but it's not i mean since i mean what do you consider charm it's great to be able to live in point roberts if you have a life outside of point roberts the prospect of selling point roberts caught the mainstream media and caused a bit of a whirlwind in town so why just a few days later did pat grubb the editor and the publisher of the all point bulletin print so we talked with pat grubb the editor and owner of the all points bulletin the media craze how did that affect the city um i mean some of the reasons why he gave um they make sense but um other there's just there's so many die-hard americans here they're just not going to want to see this place turn into another country right it doesn't seem like a very american thing yeah let this go yeah i always like in the living in point roberts like being in a dream why do i go through the border four times a day to go to work why do i have to like leave the point in order to go to a pharmacy when you're in a dream it all makes sense there's a dream logic but then you wake up you go well that was strange yeah yeah that is interesting i mean that's why we're here we it is it is a unique strange thing what what a border does to a city when it's isolated yeah yeah well especially now the unique land and city have given rise to an equally unique community i always look at this place as being it's geographically canadian politically american and culturally both 75 of our properties here are owned by foreigners it's america canada it's america canada it's america canada this community when we get together for fireworks and things we seeing oh canada first and then the star spangled down earth i mean half the population here is dual canadian and and us you were a strange little fish bowl that way tom and desiree who we were staying with in town invited us to dinner so we decided to try and thank them with a homemade dessert we're going to make a blueberry blackberry a blackberry cobbler for tom and desiree there's some we're up here in canadian airspace [Music] hello here we come bearing gift wow but how did you even make it we've been asking ourselves that's the main question [Music] oh it's so nice to have you guys here it's really great so when did you know you wanted to be here it's so rural and so kind of you got beach you got trees and forest whining dogs but you're so close to vancouver so it's got that great urban you know thing going on where you can get some action and go in the city and do your city thing and then blast out and be here on what feels like an island but it's not an island a insanely large body of water i mean how do you feel when you're here do you feel like you're on an island yeah i mean we've walked from one end to the other and yeah there's water on both sides yeah you can't go that way yeah wear this close to vancouver could we have what we have here for me to have my own yoga studio yeah i mean that's unbelievable and would you be able to do that say 500 feet down the road no no no why is that because you you'd need a couple million dollars oh you set that up we needed to know what tom and desiree thought of our blackberry cobbler you guys must have had so much fun [Music] and what made you come up with this idea to to propose to sell the city to canada [Applause] just like you have the same kind of uh drive that you know brought you from minnesota to seattle but you're doing it because you you love what you're doing i see some of your work it's part of your passion and and why not have the property down there look like canadians anyway it's relatively easy to do so you believe in your heart that this will eventually become canadian yes yes i think canada will purchase point robbers but it will happen guaranteed [Music] while the future of poynt roberts is hinged on a few factors if the border opens up if the selling process continues and how safe the city remains from colvid one thing is for sure the people in this quaint little town aren't going anywhere

Channel: Off the Cuff

Views: 2,074,640

Rating: 4.8487525 out of 5

Keywords: point roberts, washington, map error, 49th parallel, us canada border, exclave, city for sale

Id: ARYL03Dq8cg

Length: 19min 24sec (1164 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AForceNinja]

They wouldn’t sell it in a million years

[u/metabotropic1990]

Sounds like the American government needs to invest in point roberts if residents want to stay put and stay on American soil

[u/BcbornLeo]

Hahaha the US give something up? Good luck

[u/GalacticSenateLaw]

Point Roberts is such a terrible place to be. They need to just give it away cause I doubt the states are getting any economic benefit from that place because nobody ever shops there or wants to live there.

[u/Oldwizzarde]

Haha good one. They’ll take that and take more if they want.

[u/Belou84]

If it becomes part of canada, the property value will instantly double.

[u/stronkerton24]

As a Canadian I can guarantee no Canadian wants any America cities to be incorporated into Canada.

[u/Randomuser1818]

She snaked out the people in witness protection 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

[u/JC1949]

Why would Canada buy it? I think we should charge the US for taking it off their hands. Kind of like a disposal fee.