Talk:Point Roberts, Washington

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[edit] "nightclubs?"

I've never seen anything in Point Roberts other than a sports bar. There's TJ's, Breakers, and The Reef. None of these are clubs. Thrillhouse85

Feb 13, 2007

[edit] Topics

Um just a question. If the border is the 49th parallel until sea then why isn't Point Roberts Canadian. The 49th hit's salt water @ sealevel before Point Roberts. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.72.2.44 (talk • contribs).

It's not actually 49th until the sea but rather it ends at the Strait of Georgia, hence Point Roberts' situation here. --Andylkl [ talk! | c ] 16:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I undersand that, but according to the agreement Point Roberts should be Canadian no?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.72.2.44 (talk • contribs).
No, because it hits Boundary Bay, not the Strait of Georgia, before Point Roberts. --Kmsiever 04:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC).
Never mind, thank you for trying. :-) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.72.2.44 (talk • contribs).
See below; the border should have ended at Boundary Bay, but for the obstinacy of the US Border Commission troops-surveyors who insisted on surveying across it at low tide, when most of it is mudflat; but it's definitely below sea level and part of the sea during other parts of the day than low tide.Skookum1 02:12, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
BTW for all the effort made in drawing the boundary to the Strait of Georgia, if I'm not mistaken Point Roberts is a net cost to the U.S. and has been ever since; one reason is dependency on Canada for water, cost of transporting kids to school (via Canaa) in other parts of Whatcom County, increased costs on emergency services, other state services, and so on.Skookum1 02:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Better picture

There's a very nice picture of the Northwest Angle. It would be great to get something similar for Point Roberts. --Don Sowell 21:10, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Whoo-ee!! APOV content: Treaty History specific to Point Roberts section

Granted, textbooks on our side of the border (BC) are often just as murky and nationalistic as those south of the border, but there's some big holes and one or two loops in this section; I've quoted it whole below for parag-by-parag discussion as I I start weighing in on the main article, I'm kind of prolix (to say the least) and will overlengthen the material. There are major fixes needed, however:

After years of joint occupation of the disputed area between the Columbia River and Alaska known as the Oregon Country to the Americans, and as the Columbia District to the British, James K. Polk was elected president of the United States on the campaign slogan "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight".

Yes, yes, yes - all smoke and no thunder; I changed the incorrect Oregon Territory to Oregon Country and also added in the name of the region as it was known to the British who were actually in the place at the time.

While his government asserted that the title of America to the entire territory unquestionable, Polk and his secretary, James Buchanan made an offer of a boundary at 49 degrees with the line straight across Vancouver Island, with no commercial privilege to be granted to the British south of the line, with the exception of free ports on Vancouver Island. This offer was rejected by the British and withdrawn by the US shortly thereafter.

Gee, this might be because there were no Americans in the territory at all at the time, whereas there were several British posts and a few hundred employees and settlers....Buchanan's "offer" (threat) to draw the boundary directly across Vancouver Island was spurious, and more tactical as it was made as a counter-threat to Britain's stated intention to hold the boundary at the line of the Columbia River, or at least at the line of the Cascades. Buchanan's bully-boy tactics were dismissed in Whitehall (the Briitsh foreign office). There is no need to mention this particular treaty round, however; there were a good six offers/positions and counter-offers/positions from either side, of which this was only one. Better here to refer to the Oregon boundary dispute page which will eventually have the full roster; this particular offer did not have anything directly to do with why the Pt Roberts boundary is where it is, either (see below).

On April 18, 1846, notice was forwarded to London that the US Congress had adopted a joint resolution abrogating the treaty of 1827 which provided for joint occupancy.

Another threat, meant to force the British to sign what would become the Oregon Treaty; as with other such congressional motions, the Mother of All Parliaments had no reason to be amused but tolerated it in the midst of heated domestic politics; the upshot of which was a change of governments with the "hawk" outgoing foreign minister, Palmerston, replaced by a "dove" in the form of Lord Aberdeen. It's presumed in the US popular account, as suggested by the tone/mention of the April 18 motion, that the British Lion trembled in its boots (er, paws), but in actuality Palmerson was ready to declare war for the sake of the Oregon Country/Columbia District and the fact of the matter is that the British were armed to the teeth in North America and the Caribbean at the time; if it hadn't been for a change of government in Westminster the US would have found its threats thrown back in its face with all the might of the British Empire. And the British probably would have won, partly because US troops were busy brutalizing Mexico and also because the Royal Navy was far beyond the US Navy in capability at this time. There would have been no Oregon Territory at all (i.e. a US territory where the Oregon Country/Columbia District had been) and it's possible the US would have had to return to Mexico all of Nuevo Mexico and also California, and there wouldn't have been the merest slip of the US west of the Continental Divide. But again, all of which, including the sentence being commented on, that doesn't really have to do with why the Point Roberts boundary is where it is...

The British emissary, Richard Packenham, had previously been advised that the last concession which could be expected of America was in bending the boundary at the 49th parallel around the lower end of Vancouver Island.

This is incredibly POV in language, as if the British - "the last concession which could be expected of America" is only yet more bully-boy grandstanding from a country that was still only a junior power. The US was already "expecting" the British to yield Forts Vancouver, Nisqually and Colville (and others) as well as company farms and settlements around them. And it was well-known that the HBC had established Forts Victoria and Langley in anticipating of losing the Lower Columbia; from the British side of things, the American pressure for even more, be it half of Vancovuer Island or all the (unknown vastness of) the mainland to a line at 54-40 (bisecting an established fur district separate from the Columbia District; see New Caledonia (Canada). Packenham, or his superiors, might well have put it "Britain cannot be expected to yield Fort Victoria", and if the BPOV were represented here you'd find that there was a lot of harsh talk in London, and also (though less militarily relevant) in the local fur company forts, about not yielding to the Yankee bully and reasserting British rights in Puget Sound and on the Columbia, and that war was worth it. All articles on the Oregon dispute make it sound like Britain was a feeble power ready to acquiesce if Congress waved its magic sceptre and the President of the day shouted loud enough (Polk and Buchanan and Jackson resemble no one so much as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez in their penchant for jingoistic speechmaking....). Even in London it was recognized that a 49th Parallel boundary across Vancouver Island would make possession of the coast between there and Russian America (54-40) untenable, and that any access to Fort Langley, which had been specifically and deliberately established in 1827 north of the 49th Parallel in anticipation of the 49th Parallel being drawn westward), would be subject to US controls in the straits between there and the open sea, with any hope of communication with the interior forts largely irrelevant; conceding on Vancouver Island was like conceding the whole thing and Britain was not about to do THAT. Yielding to an upstart junior power largely because of bluster and threats? London may have been preoccupied with larger events elsewhere to take too much of an interest in the Pacific Northwest; but it could not be seen to have given up the store, especially when the HBC was a very powerful store (the world's oldest company, to be sure, and proprietor of over half of North America at the time...).

At this point in time Fort Victoria was viewed as the future center for settlements on Vancouver Island. It was deemed necessary around this point in time to give up territory on the Lower Mainland to keep Vancouver Island part of British North America.

So very weird to see Fort Victoria and the US spelling of "center" in the same sentence, but this is a US article so I'll have to "deal with it". The language of the second sentence here should be "the Mainland" rather than the "Lower Mainland", which is a post-boundary, post-settlement term; the implication in this sentence is that there was a diplomatic/negotiatory linkage between the threatened partition of Vancouver Island and the fate of Point Roberts. To my knowledge there was NOT, but if you have a diplomatic-history cite on this by all means put it in.

In June 1848, Lord Aberdeen, British Foreign Secretary, proposed a treaty making the 49th parallel the boundary to the sea, giving Great Britain the whole of Vancouver Island. The treaty was concluded on June 15, 1855.

And here's the rub: the treaty was agreed upon as "the 49th Parallel to the deepest channel, thence via that channel to the open sea" - terminology which screwed with Point Roberts as well as a few years later, the San Juans. The account I've had is that the US Border Commission surveyors insisted on surveying across Boundary Bay at low tide, insisting that the line must go to deep water west of the peninsula, and should not begin in the middle of the mudflat east of it (today's Boundary Bay/Semiahmoo Bay); bluster and probably a bit of booze saw their British counterparts have to accept; the treaty says "the line as surveyed along the49th Parallel" and not the 49th Parallel per se, so once the Border Commission boys had had their way the legal survey was complete and the border was set; local British official opposition had no time to reach London, where of course the possession of a mere couple of square miles of land would have been seen as inconsequential (what with the Crimean War on the boil and all), so nothing came of the British border surveyor's protests. But there was, as far as I know, NO trade-off between Point Roberts and southern Vancouver Island, and the boundary was the result of a survey party's obstinacy rather than any thing specific in the Oregon Treaty. Which was concluded in 1848 not 1855. Maybe in 1855 there was a codicil to the treaty concerning Point Roberts, but if so that should be specficied; the Oregon Treaty, properly the Treaty of Washington, was ratified by both Congress and Parliament in 1846, not 1855. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Skookum1 (talk • contribs) 19:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC).

I do not pretend to know the history of this area and for the most part what you have written certainly sounds reasonable. I especially like your idea to encapsulate a lot of this information instead to the Oregon boundary dispute. However, my reading of the original post gave me the opposite impression, that it was clearly CPOV ("C" for Canadian in this case). It's all a matter of perspective, and I'd much rather discuss the historical facts (if only I knew them). Please enlighten us further, but skip the part about "all the might of the British Empire" (as well as the subsequent hyperbole) because I don't think any of this especially frightened Americans during the previous two encounters and it certainly smacks of something other than NPOV. Gnatdroid 01:15, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] some improvements

  • Needs a representative photo
  • As said above, the illustration at Northwest Angle is pretty cool
  • Factoid about Canadians coming over to buy cheap gas: the gas stations measure in liters
    • and we spell that "litres" ;-)Skookum1 21:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
What is a “factoid” and how is it similar or different than a fact?
  • What is the border like along Roosevelt Way?
  • Many Canadians use the marina for moorage. True/false?
    • Believe so - moorage rates are cheaper, as is the cost of a boat in the US, and marine fuel.Skookum1 21:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Where do Point Roberts residents get produce and meat? it can't be brought across the border
    • I believe shipments of that kind are passed between Blaine/Douglas and Tsawwassen/Pt Roberts crossings "in bond", i.e. technically the contents of the trucks never "enter" Canada, as they're sealed. This would especially apply to the various foodstuffs stored in the megamarkets oriented at Canadian customers, given the incredible volume of sales of same (eg. also for dairy products...and come to think of it, gasoline). Transport in sealed/bonded trucks seems the only answer, short of a daily barge from Bellingham (?).Skookum1 21:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Many practical/logistical questions that people ask about the place are answered in the article, good job
SchmuckyTheCat 17:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notable people/residents section?

Not that there's that many; it just occurred to me when seeing this come up on my watchlist that Gene Kiniski is a prominent bar-owner on the Point; so if there's ever a section on "notable residents of Point Roberts" he should be on it. "The Breakers", the other bar down there, and vintage that it is, should maybe be mentioned as it's a bit of a cross-border institution for thirsty Canadians, esp. in the days before Sunday drinking in BC....I think there's a handful of American actors/celebs who (discreetly) maintain places on the Point, preferring to sleep in the US or something (while working in Canada); can't remember who exactly but I know I saw this somewhere....Skookum1 22:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] cede Point Roberts to Canada?

I have a vague memory of there being a short-lived movement within the US government to, as a gesture of gratitude, cede Point Roberts to Canada in or around 1980. Canadian diplomats in Iran issued six Canadian passports to six US diplomats and whisked them out of Iran in January of 1980. Shortly after the incident became known, there was a movement in the United States to formally thank Canada. One of the ideas was to give the Point Roberts enclave to the Canadians. The 1,000+ residents quickly killed the idea. I have done a quick search of the web and see nothing of the sort documented. Is this a valid memory, or am I mistaken?

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