For over a century, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House has stood on the border between Derby Line, Vermont and Stanstead, a city in the Canadian province of Quebec. In a community where the border is marked by flowerpots, the library stands as a symbol of American-Canadian friendship built upon centuries of shared culture, demographics, and economies.
Until this March, patrons from both countries were able to access the library using its American entrance without having to pass through an official border checkpoint. This leniency has shifted sharply; in response to US Border Patrol rule changes, Canadians now need a library card to use the American entrance, though they can use a new Canadian entrance without a card. The Trump administration signaled skepticism of the library’s openness when Secretary of the Interior Kristi Noem toured the library on a surprise visit in February following the killing of a US Border Patrol agent on I-91 highway.
More broadly, President Trump’s trade war with Canada could fundamentally alter the nature of the relationships between Americans and Canadians that make up the library’s community. His impulsive on-again off-again tariff threats have contributed to chaos and confusion. Amid rising tensions, the library’s status as an exception to US singularity and “fear of the other” provides insight into the US obsession with the border and the broader shift in America’s global standing.
Derby Line and Stanstead reflect the best qualities of their respective countries: The ability to cooperate and the opportunity to prosper together. However, spurred by President Trump’s rhetoric, many Americans have begun to view the Canadian border—much like the border with Mexico—as a source of fear, where “unknown” people or goods can enter the country. In communities in the United States where the border does loom large, like in Derby Line, the demarcation has been viewed differently. Evelyn and Rodger Coupe, a retired couple of Derby Line who are both members of the Haskell Library’s Board of Trustees, say that community members on both sides are “open to people who are different from them.” They emphasize the possibility of respecting the border while also engaging in cross-border friendships and taking advantage of all of its benefits.
Sylvie Boudreau of Stanstead, who is a retired Canadian customs officer and is the current president of the Board of Trustees, says that the community is like “a big big family.” Despite the security concerns following 9/11 and the explosion of border restrictions over the past decade, she says the community remains united, and that the “kind of division that [some politicians] want us to have, we don’t have it.” American fears of what lies beyond the border, a fear which largely originates from the heartland, have not gained much traction in the community. To many residents in Derby Line and Stanstead, the border is a symbol of opportunity, community, and shared values as manifested by the Haskell Library.
President Trump has repeatedly based his tariff threats on claims that Canada must curb the amount of illegal drugs, particularly fentanyl, flowing into the United States across its northern border. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pointed out that the amount of drugs crossing the northern border represents a fraction of what crosses the southern border of the US. In 2024, of the 21,889 pounds of fentanyl seized at all US border points, only about two pounds were seized on the northern border of the northeastern statistical regions including Vermont. Vermont, however, possesses the perfect location and infrastructure network to facilitate drug trafficking. The northern terminus of the I-91 highway—which offers a direct route for traffickers from Montreal to New York City, Boston, and other major American cities—is just half a mile away from the Haskell Free Library. Despite the insignificance and infrequency of drug trafficking across the northern border, the narrated possibility inspires fear in the minds of Americans everywhere.
This rise in American fear has been clearly revealed by President Trump’s recent tariff threats against its neighbors. Canadians have quickly and loudly united against these US tactics. Many Canadians have begun to avoid American products and travel to the United States. Tariffs would also harm American consumers. Thus, Americans and Canadians alike are on the front lines of the impending war.
The Coupes, who view the border as a positive attribute of the community, highlighted that so far “people in other countries can separate the American people from the American government.” The quarrel is not between the people. People in Derby Line and Stanstead have existed in a harmonious shared community for centuries. Now though, Trump’s actions threaten to tear this community apart. A resurgent rise in American fear of the other has already begun to fundamentally change the community.
American fear is demonstrated by the recent militarization of the border with Canada around Derby Line. Between 2021 and 2024, three surveillance towers were built along the border in Vermont and northern New York. These towers came during a time of increased toughness on border policy on both sides of the border. Their construction also reflects the success of fear-mongering about the other by Donald Trump. The United States hopes to build 1,000 of these towers along its borders by 2034. If the United States were truly interested in reducing the flow of drugs and, as Trump likes to mention, undocumented immigrants into the country, different strategies should be employed. The Haskell Free Library demonstrates that American fear of the Canadian border is ironically misplaced.
In 2018, a Montreal man was convicted in an American court for using the Haskell Free Library as a gun smuggling transfer point between the US and Canada. In 2010 and 2011, as part of a larger operation, he smuggled over 100 firearms which had been purchased in Florida across the border to be resold in Quebec. On two occasions, guns were left hidden in a backpack placed in a trashcan in the library’s bathroom. Then, he would pick up the firearms, exit the library, and walk into Canada without passing through an official port of entry.
The use of the Haskell Free Library as a gun smuggling transfer point reflects more recent concerns that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has raised in the face of President Trump’s tariff threats. In response to Trump’s repeated tariff threats, Sheinbaum claimed that American firearms fuel Mexican cartels, in turn allowing for rampant drug trafficking into the US. In fact, Sheinbaum cited a statistic from the US Justice Department that 74 percent “of the weapons used by criminal groups in Mexico come from north of the border.” Despite being thousands of miles from Mexico, the use of the Haskell Free Library to smuggle American firearms reflects the veracity of Sheinbaum’s claims. The library’s border-gap, allowing this exceptional smuggling to occur, was not the cause of a disruption to the community’s unity. Rather, the United States’ deeply flawed gun laws allowed this to happen. The Haskell Library model does work; external, preventable factors represent the true risk, American policies acting as a boon to illegal foreign activities against itself. Perhaps Mexico and Canada should be defending themselves against the United States, and not vice versa.
The Haskell Free Library represents the United States at its best. However, recent shifts in American national identity, manipulated by political elites, threaten to undermine friendship and opportunity. Americans often project fear onto external actors, whether they are foreign governments or independent groups. This fear-mongering has crescendoed to the point that communities and neighbors are being torn apart. Fear injected into the American consciousness is antithetical to the idea which allows the Haskell Free Library to exist. As a result, the parallel tracks of American and Canadian history are beginning to diverge. Isolationism based on pointless fear will not benefit the United States or Americans.
In the face of so much fear in the media and from leaders on both sides of the border, Boudreau says, “I am worried, but I am not fearful.” The rise of fear as a coercive tool to control large populations should worry us all. Internal introspection and increased trust among Americans and non-Americans alike will only stand to strengthen the American experiment.