Comments on: The Canadian Border http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6670.html Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago boys including those pictured above. Fri, 25 May 2012 18:44:34 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: Ginny http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6670.html/comment-page-1#comment-291809 Ginny Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:40:27 +0000 http://chicagoboyz.net/?p=6670#comment-291809 Thanks Jim Bennett. As usual, you bring a history lesson. And remind us that we often fail to credit, support and even understand the sense of duty and submersion of self that makes the trains run on time and our children grow up healthy and mature. Thanks Jim Bennett. As usual, you bring a history lesson. And remind us that we often fail to credit, support and even understand the sense of duty and submersion of self that makes the trains run on time and our children grow up healthy and mature.

]]> By: Jim Bennett http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6670.html/comment-page-1#comment-291803 Jim Bennett Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:03:10 +0000 http://chicagoboyz.net/?p=6670#comment-291803 The US-Canadian border is a remarkable thing in history. John Keegan has a wonderful passage at the beginning of Fields of Battle pointing out that the Lake Champlain corridor was the route of five major invasions in the eighteenth and early nineteen centuries. There was no inherent reason why the rest of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries shouldn't have seen five more invasions, this time with far more lethal weapons. In eastern Canada and the US east coast, you can still see in some places the massive fortifications built in the early nineteenth century in expectaton of another US-British war. Just as well that war never came, because a few decades later every one of the fortifications built in the American South were breached by the Union forces, most of them in only a few days. The point is, the US-Canadian border wasn't disarmed by accident or random chance, nor was it predestined. As with the assimilation of the 19th century immigrants, it was the result of hard work on both sides, which set in process first a detente, and eventually an understanding, and finally a firm alliance with world-historical consequences. It is part of our patrimony handed down from previous generations. If people really want "peace education" they should teach the real story behind the US-Canada border. The US-Canadian border is a remarkable thing in history. John Keegan has a wonderful passage at the beginning of Fields of Battle pointing out that the Lake Champlain corridor was the route of five major invasions in the eighteenth and early nineteen centuries. There was no inherent reason why the rest of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries shouldn’t have seen five more invasions, this time with far more lethal weapons. In eastern Canada and the US east coast, you can still see in some places the massive fortifications built in the early nineteenth century in expectaton of another US-British war. Just as well that war never came, because a few decades later every one of the fortifications built in the American South were breached by the Union forces, most of them in only a few days. The point is, the US-Canadian border wasn’t disarmed by accident or random chance, nor was it predestined. As with the assimilation of the 19th century immigrants, it was the result of hard work on both sides, which set in process first a detente, and eventually an understanding, and finally a firm alliance with world-historical consequences. It is part of our patrimony handed down from previous generations.

If people really want “peace education” they should teach the real story behind the US-Canada border.

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