In an unexpected turn of events, the Washington Post is reporting that Donald Trump has become ensnared in yet another border dispute, but this one may be more personal even than Trump’s vendetta against our neighboring country to the south.
At least the border wall fight with Mexico can be explained relatively simply by Trump’s racism and the racist tendencies of his supporters. The only explanation, however, for what’s happening off the coast of Maine is that the President is still sore about the treatment he got from Canada — and young, handsome Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — at the G7 Summit held in Quebec in June.
Shortly after the dust-up between Trump and Trudeau, the US Border Patrol began sending speedboats as sentinels in the area of Machias Seal Island, an unpopulated outpost in the Bay of Fundy between Maine and Nova Scotia.
Those agents began detaining Canadian lobster fishermen for the first time in history — although both countries are allowed by joint agreement to fish the waters.
Shortly after the G7 Summit, those fishermen described incidents around the tiny island, inhabited only by a handful of Canadians who man a lighthouse on the treeless rock of an island.
I have no idea where they came from,” said Laurence Cook, a lobsterman and representative of the Fishermen’s Association from nearby Grand Manan Island. “We’ve never seen U.S. Border Patrol in the Gray Zone before.”
The Gray Zone is the 277-mile area surrounding the area where fishers from the United States and from Canada each work the waters mostly for the prized crustaceans. But despite the agreement over fishing, each country claims the island as its own. The Canadian Foreign Ministry has said they would be investigating the incidents, which they indicated happened in Canadian territory. Cook, the Fishermen’s Association representative, said that at least ten Canadian boats had been detained and questioned by the US Border Patrol, grilled on whether they were hauling drugs or illegal immigrants.
Andrew Patterson, a charter boat captain in the area, summed up the dispute with a disturbing possibility:
God forbid if oil or natural gas were ever found here.”
Featured image via DC Tribune Gallery
