Trade War Isolates Campobello Island, FDR’s Longtime Summer Home in Canada

The trade war between America and Canada has struck home for the roughly 1,000 residents of Campobello Island, the Canadian enclave bordering Maine that hosted the summer retreat of President Franklin Roosevelt and became the setting for the Oscar-nominated 1960 movie “Sunrise at Campobello.”Accessible by road only via an 850-foot-long bridge from Maine, the island relies for mail, groceries and other supplies on a daily truck which travels to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge under customs seal from a border crossing 50 miles away. But since Tuesday, American customs officials have barred the truck from entering the United States, reportedly because it contains milk and alcohol, both of which are prohibited from entering America from Canada as of this week under an executive order from President Trump.The truck was stopped “because it contained items on the U.S. trade banned list,” the Canadian member of Parliament for the region, John Williamson, told a local newspaper, the Brunswick News. “The truck also contained the island’s mail from Canada Post and this has obviously caused a bit of excitement and commotion on the island.”The truck can still reach Campobello using a roundabout route that requires taking two ferries. But one of those ferries, which is privately operated, is scheduled to shut down for the winter on October 12, creating pressure for an early resolution to the standoff.Campobello’s mayor, Harvey Matthews, told the Toronto Globe and Mail he has raised the matter with Canada’s foreign ministry and the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra. “You can live without the alcohol, but the milk is pretty important,” he said. “It’s pretty stupid for two countries that are supposed to be neighbors to be fighting over this foolish stuff.”The standoff is perplexing to residents on both sides of the bridge, who regularly cross over to shop, gas up their cars, or buy lobsters. The two countries share fire and emergency services and jointly fund and manage the former Roosevelt property, now the Roosevelt Campobello International Park, which is described on its website as a “singular example of international co-operation.”Canadian officials point out that existing procedures already ensure that none of the delivery truck’s contents can be offloaded in the United States. Under an international “in-transit” bonding protocol managed by the two countries, the truck’s cargo doors are secured with a tamper-evident, serialized customs tag before the truck leaves Canada. The seal is again inspected when the truck reaches Campobello Island to ensure that it is intact.A similar arrangement allows American goods to travel duty free to Point Roberts, Washington — a peninsula that lies south of the 49th parallel in the United States but is accessible by land only through Canada’s province of British Columbia.“It’s as safe as you can get,” Mr. Williamson said in an interview with Canada’s CTV network on Wednesday. “I can make the comparison that the United States is not stopping our planes … from flying over their territory … And this truck should be treated in a similar fashion.”

Trade War Isolates Campobello Island, FDR’s Longtime Summer Home in Canada

Trade War Isolates Campobello Island, FDR’s Longtime Summer Home in Canada

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