A cross-border meeting place for divided families was the site of a plot to bring dozens of firearms from Vermont to Quebec

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

It was built deliberately to straddle the frontier between the two countries – a symbol of cooperation and friendship between Canada and the US.



More than a century later, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House continues to allow residents of both countries to mingle without having to cross a border.



But a court case this week has cast the cross-border institution into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons after it became an unwitting setting for a scheme to smuggle dozens of guns into Canada.

Alexis Vlachos, 40, a Canadian citizen, pleaded guilty in a Vermont court on Monday to charges relating to a plot to use the library to smuggle backpacks full of handguns into Canada on at least two occasions, according to the US attorney in Vermont.



Prosecutors alleged Vlachos worked with two Americans who purchased dozens of firearms in Florida and drove to Vermont. The American pair then visited the library, leaving a backpack full of firearms stashed in the washroom.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘We’re basically one town, but we’re split in half,’ said a pizzeria owner. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Soon afterwards, Vlachos entered the building to pick up the backpack and carry it into Canada, according to court documents.

Vlachos, who is facing up to 20 years behind bars, is also accused of smuggling another 34 firearms into Canada by hiking across remote areas along the border. His lawyer, Paul Volk, declined to comment on the case ahead of Vlachos’s sentencing in May.

Police uncovered the cross-border plot after staff at the library noticed something was amiss.

“This guy came in and he looked like he had stepped right out of GQ,” said Nancy Rumery, the director of the Haskell library. “Everybody else is trudging around in Sorels [Canadian winter boots] and parkas and he’s in this beautifully tailored outfit and expensive leather boots.”

The case is something of an exception in the library’s long history as a meeting point for the region’s deeply intertwined community of Canadians and Americans.

During much of their existence, the hamlets around the library – Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont – paid little mind to the border. Hockey teams would cross over for games, American churchgoers attended Canadian church services and neighbours stepped across the boundary to chat.

After the September 11 attacks, authorities began cracking down on the porous border. Streets that once hosted traffic from both countries were fenced off and a row of potted plants was erected as a barrier on a stretch of the border near the library.

“We’re basically one town, but we’re split in half,” said Hendrik Stremmelaar, the owner of a local pizzeria in Stanstead.

Today, the facility is the last public building straddling the US-Canada border.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Black tape marks the US-Canada border inside the library. Photograph: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images

The entrance to the library, which sits in the US but is accessible to Canadians, is watched 24 hours a day by US homeland security.

Inside, a line of electrical tape demarcates the international boundary. About 60% of the building, including the books, is located in Canada. Upstairs, in the opera house, the audience sits in the US while the performers are in Canada.

As many as 250 people a day pass through the library in the summer, said Rumery, who has worked at the library for nearly two decades.

In recent years, the library has also become a hub for families divided by the border, such as the Syrian family living in Toronto who recently showed up at the library to meet their American relatives.

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“They didn’t have the appropriate documents to cross the border, so they met here,” she said. “It’s getting to the point where it’s every other week, a family shows up.”

The growing trend has left staff torn between asserting the facility’s purpose as a library and embracing all that comes with its unusual location, she said. “We’re a library. I don’t want to shush you when you haven’t seen your grandmother in forever.”

As the gun-smuggling case makes headlines, Rumery worried that the renewed attention could spark calls to clamp down on the building’s cross-border status. “That’s our greatest fear,” she said. “That at some point the people responsible for border security on either side are going to say: ‘This is just too much.’”