‘It Could Get Ugly': Life in the Part of Minnesota That's Entirely Surrounded By Canada

Politico

13-06-2025

NORTHWEST ANGLE, Minnesota — Paul Colson compared the Angle to a scene painted by Norman Rockwell: It's quiet, safe and the fishing's great. But life in this United States exclave — a 150-person pocket of Minnesota that is entirely surrounded by water and Canada — isn't always picture perfect, the third-generation resident acknowledged one morning last month.
The only way to reach this fishers' paradise without driving through Canadian customs is via prop plane, boat or — during ice fishing season — by snowmobiling more than an hour across the Lake of the Woods, the second-largest lake in the land of 10,000 of them. The Angle is only part of the country due to an 18th-century surveying error, which has made it the northernmost point in the contiguous U.S. For elementary-aged kids, there's a one-room schoolhouse (if you don't count the recently added gym and kitchenette), but starting in sixth grade students in the Angle have to go through four international border checkpoints and be bused more than 120 miles round trip to Warroad, Minnesota, for class each school day.
That separation from the rest of the U.S. doesn't just result in long commutes. Canada blocks the importation of a dizzying array of goods, even if they're just going from one part of Minnesota to this odd appendage of the state. That includes mattresses, potted plants, livestock, handguns and fish bait.
President Donald Trump's belligerent protectionism threatens to make it even harder to get by in the Angle. While Minnesota is a blue state, Colson was among the 79 percent of Angle voters who backed the Republican ticket in the last election. But since returning to office, Trump has attempted to rip up the trade deal he negotiated with Canada in his first term and repeatedly threatened to annex the country. An international trade court last month overturned the president's emergency tariffs on Canada, which Trump claimed were necessary to stem the alleged southward flow of illegal immigrants and fentanyl; the administration is appealing the decision.
The president's tariffs and '51st state' taunts set off a wave of outrage north of the border, prompting normally polite Canadians to boo 'The Star Spangled Banner.' The defensive patriotism has been a boon for Canada's Liberal Party and a challenge for U.S.-based companies operating there like McDonald's, which now advertise at some locations that its burgers are made of '100% Canadian beef.'
Those geopolitical tensions will be on sharp display starting Sunday, when Trump plans a three-day visit to Alberta for the annual G7 summit with the leaders of Canada, Japan and Europe's largest economies. If Trump further provokes the host country, few places in the U.S. are more at risk from the potential diplomatic fallout than the inherently isolated Northwest Angle. That could include the imposition of retaliatory tariffs on goods transported from the U.S. into the Angle or stricter restrictions on fishing in Canadian waters — a move that might trigger a second Walleye War, as locals refer to the last major fishing confrontation in Lake of the Woods.
Yet when I visited in late May, it was clear the Angle was still largely behind the president; there were nearly as many Trump flags as American ones flapping in the lakeside breeze. Angleites, like most Americans, were surprised to see Trump turn on Canada. But Paul and Karen Colson, his Canadian wife, are among the longtime residents who have welcomed the president's fight against their occasionally overbearing neighbor.
'We've gone through so much shit up here that I'm willing to try something else,' he said as Karen nodded along. They were sitting on the three-season porch of their home at the entrance of Jake's Northwest Angle, a fishing resort that was founded by Paul's grandfather. Karen, who has a green card, can't vote in the U.S., but Paul has pulled the lever for Trump in the past three elections. Their barn even features a poster of the president pumping his fist after he was nearly assassinated on the campaign trail.
'They've been as bad as they could possibly be,' Paul said of Canada, which tightly restricted the movement of people to and from the Angle for nearly two years during the pandemic, decimating its tourism-dependent economy. (While the Angle's permanent population is minuscule, it can swell to around 2,500 when the weather is nice thanks to summer residents and resort-goers, mainly from Minnesota and the Dakotas.) 'I'm at the point of whatever. Let her buck,' he said.
The Colsons, who are grandparents in their mid-50s, might be the Angle's most vocal critics of Canada. But they are far from the only ones. Canada has 'been sneaking in tariffs over the years,' said Joe Laurin, a former Polaris engineer who backed Democratic nominees Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in previous presidential elections. Now 'at least it's all public knowledge.'
Laurin is 59 and semi-retired, with a side gig running a Lake of the Woods tour company. He is also the volunteer manager of the Angle's community-funded internet radio station. It plays a steady stream of classic rock interspersed with a newscast about local events and fishing conditions that he updates weekly.
'Tariffs temporarily are going to hurt us,' he acknowledged as we sat in the only bar on the mainland of the Angle. 'But in the long run, will it wake some people up? Like, why are we paying tariffs on Canadian eggs?'
In order to reach the Angle, I took a circuitous route, starting off in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the closest major city, but dipped south into Roseau, Minnesota, to get a taste of what it's like to cross the border during a time of heightened Canadian-American tensions.
The Roseau Port of Entry resembled a cross between a suburban bank and a prison. The port consisted of a single-story brick office building with a covered drive-through lane, like the ones in front of a teller window. But unlike most banks, it was surrounded by barbed wire, floodlights and surveillance cameras. A sign posted in front of the chain link fence said, in all capital letters, 'Welcome to the United States.'
After a dinner of fried walleye — perhaps the most sought-after fish in the Angle — I drove back into Canada via Warroad, Minnesota. Then I took the lone, partially paved road into the Angle. The last 19 gravely miles snake through dense boreal wetlands, which are home to deer, moose, bears and wolves.
My final customs encounter for the day was at Jim's Corner, an unattended border station named after a former resident. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol maintains a temperature-controlled booth at the Angle's main crossroad with an iPad where visitors record their passport number, license plate number and declare any goods they're importing. On the outside of the booth is a payphone handset that automatically connects with an agent from the Canadian Border Services Agency, who provides people leaving the Angle with an entry number that they'd need if they're pulled over in Canada. Failure to obtain an entry number could result in a fine of at least $1,000 Canadian dollars (about 735 in U.S. dollars at the current exchange rate).
Most children growing up in the Angle make a similar journey, from sixth through 12th grades. The bus to Warroad leaves at 6 a.m., making two stops to check in with Canadian and U.S. customs officials. The dozen or so students who make the daily trek leave pillows and blankets on board to sleep on the way to school; they do homework on the ride back. It takes about 90 minutes each way — if there are no issues at the ports. Locals told me stories about students having oranges and other contraband seized by aggressive border agents.
The distance and the border crossings are a huge hassle that effectively bars Angle kids from joining Warroad's Olympic gold medalist-producing hockey teams.
But the logistical difficulties of living in this Minnesota outpost have also insulated it from some of the drug use, theft and violence that occurs in other parts of the country; the Angle has only one part-time police officer. 'We really appreciate that we have no crime here, mostly because most American criminals can't get here,' said Karen, who leaves the Colsons' home and vehicles unlocked. 'All of our trouble comes from Canada,' Paul added.
Indigenous tribes have lived on and around Lake of the Woods for hundreds of years — and the Angle's swampy forested interior is still controlled by the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians. But European settlers, such as Paul Colson's grandparents, didn't begin developing the Angle until the 1920s. It was slow going, with no electricity service until 1973 and no phone lines until 1991.
Since then, the steady advance of technology has led to a fraying of the tight-knit community, according to the Colsons and other longtime residents. The mainland of the Angle was once home to three bars and would hold regular dances and movie watch parties. Now there's one watering hole left and people mostly stream videos at home.
'This shit has just destroyed society,' Paul said, holding up his cellphone. 'Every time you get new tech, you have less community.'
The growing social isolation of the Angle was evident last month and mirrors a broader national increase in loneliness. At a Thursday night play in the elementary school, there were nearly a dozen open seats for what was in years past a standing-room-only affair. (The performance of Little Red Riding Hood featured four of the school's five students, one of whom dressed as a Canadian Mountie instead of the traditional woodsman.)
At a men's bible meeting the previous evening, Mike Rasmussen and I were the only attendees. He is a retired U.S. Customs and Border Patrol chaplain who now leads services at St. Luke's, the only church in the Angle.
The president, Rasmussen suggested, has helped strengthen the bonds of this community, which prior to the 2012 election generally voted for Republican presidential candidates — as well as former Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson. There have been several Trump boat parades since the 2016 campaign, he said, and Trump hats and bumper stickers are now a common sight.
'I think you'll find 2 percent of the Angle's population would see Donald J. Trump as a disruptor,' the preacher said while showing me around the community in his side-by-side vehicle. 'The other 90 percent would see him as a unifier — or one that they would be proud to have come up and visit here.'
Among the quiet minority opposed to Trump: Rasmussen's neighbors, Brian and Jane Sage. Brian was a high school government teacher in Warroad; Jane taught 8th grade geography.
They have been outraged by the president's blanket pardons of Jan. 6 rioters and his efforts to dismantle the Department of Education. Closer to home, they worry about the impact that tariffs on Canadian timber will have on U.S. homebuilding and Marvin, a major window- and door-maker based in Warroad. 'Sometimes instead of reading history books, we disregard them,' Brian said as we sat at the Sage's kitchen table. 'No one wins in a trade war.'
Tensions with Canada aren't new to the Angle.
In 1998, then-Rep. Peterson introduced a messaging bill that would have allowed the Angle to secede from the United States. The measure brought international attention to the bitter Walleye War, a trade dispute over regulations that prevented non-Canadian anglers from catching walleye in the northern portion of Lake of the Woods — unless they were staying in Ontario lodges. Canada dropped the restrictions following intervention from the Clinton administration.
Two decades later, during Trump's first term, an anonymous petitioner urged the president to 'give Canada back the Northwest Angle located in Manitoba,' with the province spelled in all caps. The request to 'make America great by correcting' the colonial-era surveying error responsible for the Angle generated headlines on both sides of the border (and in the United Kingdom) but fell far short of the signature requirement that would have compelled the White House to respond to it.
Ceding the Angle to Canada is now firmly off the U.S. political agenda, with Trump instead musing about taking over all of the True North. Canadians have firmly rejected that idea, handing control of Ottawa to Prime Minister Mark Carney, a Liberal who made opposition to Trump a central tenet of his campaign.
'President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us,' Carney said in his April 29 victory speech. 'That will never ever happen.'
The most noticeable change in the Angle since Trump was reelected, locals said, is the uptick in helicopter traffic.
Anglers in the area have posted videos on social media of Canadian choppers hovering above boats. Propeller wash isn't great for fishing. But many of the resort owners and visitors I spoke with said they support the increased surveillance.
The surge in patrols has produced some unexpected results, with the flow of illegal immigration now in reverse. 'We're seeing more people leave the country,' U.S. Border Patrol agent Jared Berg said at a community meeting on a Tuesday afternoon. He described a new phenomenon of undocumented people leaving the U.S. for Canada, only to be sent back to the states, and then on to their home countries.
Even more federal law enforcement officials are headed to the Angle in July, when the U.S. Coast Guard plans to conduct so-called border integrity operations.
Why are those necessary, I asked.
After a long pause, Commander John Botti responded carefully. 'There isn't a glaring problem that's causing us to do this surge,' he said. 'This surge is in alignment with current presidential directions.'
But Trump's chaotic approach to policymaking — informed more by instinct than analysis — is already impacting Lake of the Woods County in ways that aren't immediately visible on the Angle. For instance, his DOGE-led General Services Administration is seeking to cancel the lease of an office in the county seat of Baudette, Minnesota, that was used by officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a local water agency — even though they are renting the space from the U.S. Postal Service.
'In D.C., it might make sense,' Mike Hirst of Lake of the Woods Soil and Water Conservation District told me outside the community meeting. 'But it's the federal government paying the federal government for the lease.' (USDA officials 'have asked GSA to rescind the office closure' notification, a spokesperson said in a statement. 'All business services are continuing to be conducted.')
'We've been working on that, to make sure that they don't cut that,' Hirst said. 'Because it's kind of silly.'
The president's appeal to hardscrabble Angleites isn't immediately obvious. Trump is an Ivy League-educated real estate scion from New York City, whose main experience with the wilderness is from when his golf ball has veered off course.
Some Trump voters I met during a week of reporting in the Angle gave policy reasons for their decision: Rasmussen, the preacher, liked that the president has limited access to abortions. Rick McKeever, another resort owner, approvingly cited Trump's hostility to gun regulations.
The Colsons hope Trump will force Canada to ease the travel restrictions on law-abiding Americans, who can't join them in this beautiful stretch of the nation's frontier without a valid passport or driver's license and birth certificate. (Americans with drunk driving convictions are also generally barred from entering Canada, however briefly.) 'We don't have funerals on the Angle because you can't schedule deaths,' Paul said.
'Our kids have friends in town that can't come and visit them because they don't have passports,' added Karen. 'And they're just in Roseau, a few miles south of the border.'
Others talked vaguely about culture war issues like the Democratic Party's support for the rights of asylum seekers and transgender people — neither of which are common in the Angle. 'All the Democrats voted [that] it's OK to have guys in girls' locker rooms,' said Laurin, the first-time Trump voter who has no children of his own. It's unclear which vote he was referring to. 'It kind of bothered me,' he said.
As we boated to a resort bar on Oak Island, Laurin also talked about conservative claims that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had forced schools to place tampons in boys' restrooms — an allegation that earned Kamala Harris's Democratic running mate the moniker 'Tampon Tim.'
'I don't even know if any of that was true,' said Laurin, who delivers the local radio station's weekly newscast. (It wasn't). 'But that was kind of the news up here.'
Meanwhile, some Angleites were blissfully unaware of Trump's trade war — or the market gyrations and recession whispers it's caused. Resorts were booked up for the summer with Midwestern visitors, and Canada hasn't imposed the 25 percent tariffs on goods traveling from Minnesota to Minnesota that it's levied on other U.S. imports.
Others acknowledged the U.S.-Canada hostility, but predicted it would fade away. 'It's like two kids in the same family, battling each other,' Rasmussen said. 'I think in a year or so, everything's going to iron out good.'
Some Angle residents weren't so certain. Trump and Carney are 'two men in high-power positions spitting at one another,' said Nathan Truesdell, the owner of Jerry's Bar and Restaurant, who noted that the Minnesota community relies on Canada for electricity and — perhaps more importantly — access to the most walleye-rich fishing spots north of the invisible border.
A gay man originally from Kentucky, Truesdell worked on the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama and moved to the Angle a couple of years ago with his partner, a fishing guide. To avoid upsetting his Canadian regulars, he discourages talk of U.S. politics at Jerry's, the last remaining bar in the Angle.
'It could get ugly,' Truesdell said of the simmering international feud. 'It could at any moment.'