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Canadian Border Runs Through Their Kitchen
Life can get pretty strange in the border town of Estcourt Station, Maine because the U.S.-Canadian border runs right through the remote rural town.
When Edmond Levesque and his wife Gemene sit down at the dinner table, they dine in two different countries. "The border actually slices through our kitchen table," says Levesque, a retired railway worker. "It's great when you can pass the peas from one country to another."
And when they sleep in one of the up-stairs bedrooms, their heads and hearts belong to Canada, but their feet are in America.
There's nowhere else on the border where the boundary cuts through people's homes, according to customs officials. The town was first split in two in 1956 when survey-ors drew the official boundary line right through houses on one of the town's main streets. Although most residents laugh about the situation, it does cause problems.
For example, Rollande Trudel's garage is in the U.S. but her house is in Canada. "We have a refrigerator in the garage and we have been told we're not allowed to keep food there and then bring it back into our home in Canada," she says.
Since the town's only hospital is on the Quebec side of the border, all the town's . children are born there. But U.S. babies can choose U.S. or Canadian citizenship or both when they become adults.


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1991 - Volume #15, Issue #4