A Shared Library Becomes an Unlikely Front in the '51st State' Debate - WSJ

DERBY LINE, Vt.—The stately, stone-and-stained-glass library in this tiny border town in the rolling hills of Vermont plays a pivotal role in Canadian mystery writer Louise Penny’s forthcoming novel. In the book, a shadowy cabal has hatched a plot to tap Canada’s vast resources by making it the 51st state. Penny’s beloved Chief Inspector Armand Gamache meets with a U.S. contact at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, trying to foil the plan.

“When I wrote it, I thought, ‘How am I going to make this believable?’” said Penny, who lives about 40 minutes from the library but spoke from her second home in London, of drafting the novel’s outline three years ago. “This was before Trump and the whole thing.” Today, the notion of someone wanting to annex Canada seems less far-fetched. And Penny and the Haskell have become unlikely symbols of pushback.

The library straddles two nations. A line of black tape on the hardwood and terrazzo floors marks the international border running through the building. For more than a century, residents of Derby Line (population 687) and Stanstead, Quebec, (population 2,824) have borrowed books, enjoyed live performances and mingled at the Haskell in a shared space that erases the divisions between the two countries.

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Sure enough, in March, U.S. officials informed the Haskell that Canadians would need to be card-carrying library members to enter via the front door. Others would have to visit the official border crossing first. After Oct. 1, all Canadians will have to show a passport and go through the port of entry before entering the library from the U.S. side. Drug and human traffickers were exploiting the single entrance “and we are closing that loophole,” a DHS spokeswoman said.

But the Haskell’s leaders had their own plan. They turned a utilitarian emergency exit on the Canadian side into a new entrance and launched a fundraiser for improvements, like parking, wheelchair ramps and a more inviting design. Soon, Penny, the mystery writer, called and contributed 50,000 Canadian dollars, or about $36,000, to get things going. Donations poured in, nearly reaching 300,000 Canadian dollars.

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