Clearing the boundary – 49th Parallel out west
Toronto. In school we were taught that the 49th parallel out west forms a boundary between the States and Canada. Do a search for 49th and you can see a rich pile of data on what was really not such a simple decision at all.
Once again we find photography helping record history for us. A decision was made to ‘slice’ a swath of woodland along the 49th and add markers at various points. The Canadian Encyclopedia online has a typical story about the famous ‘unguarded boundary’ from a Canadian perspective.
My thanks to George Dunbar for unearthing this fascinating piece of Canadian and American history including the photograph shown (plus a few more taken more recently).
