Inside the library where you can read in two countries at once

Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont – From the outside, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House looks like any other Victorian-style building from the early 20th century, complete with stained-glass windows, a grandiose façade and a slate roof.

But once inside, it doesn’t take long to see that the Haskell is unlike most places. That’s because the border between the United States and Canada bisects the building, leaving some readers and theatre-goers in one country – and the rest in another…

As borders become increasingly militarised around the world and a symbol of imposed divisions between communities, the Haskell stands as a testament to a time when people moved freely in this rural region, between the Canadian province of Quebec and the US state of Vermont.

And that is by design.

First opened in 1905, a year after the Opera House, the library was the brainchild of a wealthy local woman named Martha Haskell, who purposely built it in the US and Canada in a show of solidarity between residents of the then-porous border area…