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The US-Canada Border Is 5,500 Miles of Pure Nonsense

CGP Grey · 37.4M views · 2013-06-05 · 4:42

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Overview

CGP Grey walks through the odd history and quirks of the US-Canada border, including how it was surveyed and its irregularities such as exclaves.

On Hacker News

HN recommends it as an entertaining overview in any thread about border oddities.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2016–2020

Topics

World historyGeopolitics & foreign policy
Search by tags
bordersgeographycanadaexclaveshistory

What people said

sandworm101 · 2020-09 · Recommendation

There is a great youtube video on this and similar can-US border irregularities. Search for "Canada-US no touching zone". There is another exclave near vancouver. [VIDEO]

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gregmac · 2020-01 · Recommendation

There's a great CGP Grey video on the Canada-US border well worth watching if this interests you: [VIDEO]

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CoolGuySteve · 2019-01 · Recommendation

There's an entertaining CGP Grey video about other oddities in the US-Canada border. [VIDEO] Considering how inconvenient it is in some geographies and how small the patches of land are, I'm always surprised the State Department doesn't negotiate a land exchange treaty with Canada to fix what are essentially cartography bugs. Both sides would spend a few tens of millions compensating people for land seizures and dealing with the administrative overhead of negotiating and ratifying the deal but would gain it back over time with simplified border stations.

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Sources

Video by CGP Grey, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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