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People outside of alaska usually seem to refer to alaska as being remote or out of the way, as if it were some island but in reality it has a pretty big border going on with canada. Is there a different affinity to the US's northern (or maybe eastern/southern for alaka) neighbor among alaskans than some among the lower 48ers?
People outside of alaska usually seem to refer to alaska as being remote or out of the way, as if it were some island but in reality it has a pretty big border going on with canada. Is there a different affinity to the US's northern (or maybe eastern/southern for alaka) neighbor among alaskans than some among the lower 48ers?
No, ya hoser. Eh.
I keed! I have no idea. I imagine Juneau folks might, sharing a border and all, but here in Barrow, Canada is as far from me, figuratively speaking, as my former home in VA.
We're a lot further from Canada's major population centers than parts of the Lower-48 are, so there's no reason we'd be terribly concerned about people in Toronto or even Vancouver. We have some friends in Whitehorse though, and I don't think of them as foreigners in any sense, just like they're in a smaller, further east version of Fairbanks.
I'd say quite a few of us feel a connection to the Yukon and maybe northern British Colombia, but Canadian politics and mainstream culture are more remote to us than the goings on in the lower 48 states.
Personally, I live in one of the towns closest to the border (still 200 miles though), so I usually wander through Dawson and Whitehorse once a year or so. The Yukon seems like an extension of interior Alaska to me.
I think you'd find closer connections in some lower 48 border communities. Derby Line, VT is really half of one community for example. They've had town meetings by VT rules over the border on the Canadian side, and the library is half in Canada and half in the U.S. The Canadian border areas near Alaska are largely pretty isolated, much like many of the Alaskan communities along the border, and roads can be scarce too.
Even though we share a long land border, there's only 5 points where roads cross that border: Hyder/Stewart, Haines, Skagway, Tok/Beaver Creek and near Chicken. And all these are remote areas...
You'll actually find some contention between us & the Canadians... On the Yukon River, fishing can be severely restricted in years of low runs because a certain of fish are required to be allowed to pass to Canadian waters. And peopling fishing along the Yukon aren't sport fishing... They are getting fish they need to eat during the winter.
And there's been disputes in Southeast over fishing areas and numbers. One year fishing boats in Prince Rupert blockaded the harbor so the Alaskan ferries couldn't port there in protest over fishing numbers.
But I will say this about the Canadians... They put brown gravy on their french fries.... And there is no better way to eat fries than with brown gravy.
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