Award-winning journalist Jacques Poitras will speak about life along Maine’s border with Canada and his new book, “Imaginary Line: Life on an Unfinished Border,” at Thomas College in Waterville on March 16.

His book, published last September, is a political and sometimes personal history story about the border.

Poitras started following stories about Maine’s international border with Canada when he worked for Edmundston’s Telegraph-Journal newspaper, in Madawaska County, New Brunswick.  It’s a community where French heritage and culture are evident on both sides of the border.

“Border regions captured my imagination,” said Poitras, who lives in New Brunswick.

Thomas College political science professor Emily Shaw invited Poitras to speak to her class.

“‘Imaginary Line’ is a natural selection for our class,” she says. “Given the strong economic, social and historical ties between America and Canada, I feel like understanding the relationship is a critically important thing for Maine college students.”

In his book, Poitras describes the cultural impact on people who share their family life and their economies in the region, going back several centuries. By its history and culture, Maine’s Canadian border is more like an international community than a division between two countries.

French Acadian and Franco-American history and culture are inseparable from the border because of centuries of settlements along the St. John and the St. Croix Rivers. A formal international border was created in 1842 with the final determination being the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. This occurred nearly 250 years after the first settlement on the border in 1604, when Samuel de Champlain and Sieur de Mons established the short-lived French colony on St. Croix Island.

Although the uninhabited island is located on the Maine side of the international border, it’s situated in the middle of the St. Croix River between Calais and St. Stephens NB. Canadians think of St. Croix Island the way Americans think of Plymouth, Mass., where the Pilgrims settled.

But border security has changed dramatically since September 11, curtailing the once-easy cross-border flow of families and trade along the international border.

“The border is a powerful symbol,” he writes.

It’s a dividing line between two friendly countries that, until recently, wasn’t taken too seriously.

The border was simply a point where one community blended into another on both sides of the international boundary. Poitras describes how international border policy at the national level is challenging the prevailing culture and shared history in the St. John Valley and St. Croix River regions.  The political debate about sovereign security is affecting cultural and economic relationships that thrived for centuries.

“Imaginary Line” is timely because both sides of the border will be hosting events tied to the 2014 International World Acadian Congress. As many as 55,000 people are expected to attend the Congress, traveling along the Maine, New Brunswick and Quebec borders to visit historic sites and to participate in organized family reunions.

Poitras shares some Acadian culture through his wife’s family. He grew up speaking French because it’s the language his father spoke at home.

Poitras has spoken at the University of Maine in Fort Kent, in Presque Isle, in Calais and Bangor. For information contact him at jacques.poitras@gmail.com

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