Petition asks US to return small piece of land to Canada due to survey error

TORONTO: Canada is the fourth largest country in the world by land area, yet an anonymous petition is requesting that the United States give back a small bizarre piece of land – dubbed Northwest Angleback to Canada.

The anonymous petition on the White House website said the issue had been a critical survey error by negotiators of the initial CanadaUS border who misunderstood the geography of the area, more than 200 years ago.

Also known as Angle Township, Minnesota, it is a 320- square kilometre land surrounded by the Canadian province of Manitoba to the west and Lake of the Woods to the east.

A small community of Northwest Angle, most working at a handful of fishing resorts – is nestled between the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario but comes under the US.

More than 100 people who live on the land rive through about 100 kilometres of Canadian territory to reach the rest of the US because it is not linked to the rest of Minnesota due to a 1783 pact between Britain and Canada based on what was said to be an inaccurate map.

The land in question has no traffic lights and anyone who wants to do groceries or shopping would have to go through Canada and into Minnesota and cross the international border twice.

The petition which appeared on Dec 30 last year needs 100,000 signatures before Jan 29 to get a response from the US government. With six time zones, Canada ranks fourth largest, geographically, after Russia, China and the US.

According to the online petition, one way to make America great again ( President Donald Trump’s election campaign slogan) is to undo the mistake but local folks have weighed in on the issue and are not keen to come under Canada but happy to be neighbours.

In retrospection, when British and US were negotiating the terms for the end of the American Revolution, they were to figure out, among other things, where the new US ended, and where Britain’s North American possessions began. — Bernama