U.S. Community Is a Mecca for Canadian Consumers

Gasoline is sold by the liter, the beers at the local taverns are priced in Canadian dollars, and the community supermarket features refrigerated tubs stocked with the store’s bestseller: two-pound slabs of Kraft American cheese.

“The Point,” as its 950 year-round residents call it, is the northwesternmost corner of the continental United States, a tiny, tree-covered peninsula nestled against the Canadian border. Created in 1846 by Washington diplomats who refused to put a downward divot in the parallel line marking the boundary between the United States and Canada, the Point today has become a schizophrenic community, a 4.9-square-mile U.S. enclave that allows Canadians to escape their country and its often high taxes.

Here, the climate is far milder than in nearby Vancouver and most of the homes are summer houses owned by Canadians. And here, most of the merchants openly cater to Canadians, who drive across the border by the thousands to buy cheap U.S. gasoline, beer and dairy products--or shelter their yachts from Canadian taxes.

It’s all quite legal, overseen by customs and immigration officials from both countries who stand watch at the one border crossing on the British Columbia road that most residents of the Canadian province know leads to cheaper prices.

Asked about what makes Point Roberts tick, Nick Kiniski, a professional wrestler-turned-bartender, quipped: “It’s the G, M, Cs--gasoline, milk and cheese.”

Everything--and everyone--in Point Roberts depends on the Canadian dollar and its value against the U.S. dollar. “Whatever the Canadian dollar does, Point Roberts does,” real estate salesman Jim Julius said.

When the Canadian dollar goes up, Point Roberts can be jammed, especially on weekends when a two-block drive from the center of town to the customs station can take 90 minutes or more. But when the Canadian dollar is worth no more than 73 cents on the U.S. dollar, as it is now, a bowling ball could roll down Gulf Road, the main business drag, and not hit a single car with British Columbia license plates.

None of this would have happened had Washington diplomats heeded the warning of a British foreign minister who cautioned Americans 150 years ago that Point Roberts was a mistake. Attached to the Canadian mainland on the north and surrounded by water on three sides, Point Roberts would be an “inconvenient appendage . . . a patch of ground of little value in itself,” he said.

At that, the Americans dug in their heels and refused to allow a slight wiggle in the 49th Parallel, the straight line that British and U.S. diplomats drew to define the mainland border between the western United States and Canada. A British land commissioner declared the Americans were confident that Boundary Bay to the east of Point Roberts would fill with silt and they soon would have a solid land connection from Washington state to the Point. That hasn’t happened.

After two years of back and forth between the British and Americans, the British gave up and in 1857 allowed Boundary Marker No. 1 to be planted on the rugged peninsula north of what was then a small fishing village populated by a few Icelandic immigrants.

That decision made 3,142.8 acres of land on the peninsula’s southern tip U.S. soil. The Americans’ only remaining problem was how to get here. Unless traveling by boat, the answer was--and is--through Canada.

Even with interstate-quality highways connecting British Columbia to Washington state, getting to the Point takes about an hour from nearby Bellingham, Wash. That assumes quick stops at the two border stations, one at Point Roberts and another at Blaine, north of Bellingham.

Since Point Roberts still lacks a doctor, hospital, drugstore or full elementary school, many full-time residents spend a lot of time traveling to the adjacent Canadian town of Delta or farther to obtain the services that most Americans take for granted. To speed the process, a special “pace” lane has been established for commuters.

Then there is the telephone problem. A call to nearby British Columbia is billed as long distance. Julius’ solution: two cellular telephone accounts--one for Americans, the other for Canadians.

That’s nothing, of course, compared with the weekend problem. Especially summer weekends, the Point is jammed with British Columbians escaping to the cottages they own along the community’s three beaches.

Thousands more show up to hear rock bands at the two taverns here and guzzle cheap beer--a pint of draft beer sells for $2 compared to $4.85 in Vancouver.

Vancouver Sun writer Larry Pynn, who has spent many weekends here, described the behavior of young Canadians as not much better than college students on their annual trip to Fort Lauderdale.

“The Swedes do it in Denmark, the Brits do it in Spain, the Germans do it, well, pretty much everywhere, so why shouldn’t Canadians do it in Point Roberts?” Pynn wrote in a 1993 newspaper article. “After all, the place should rightfully be ours anyway, right?”