Nanaimo Station 49° 09’ 50’’ N 123° 56’ 34’’W
Deadman’s Island,Vancouver (looking south) 49° 17’ 52’’ N 123° 56’ 33’’W
Coming home to roost The final picture of the series was taken not only in the proximity of the 49th parallel like the others, but was made precisely on it. The meridian that forms the border between Canada and the USA also runs through about four kilometres of Austria.This stone marker is located in a pleasant forest area near a lake.The site is approximately 30 metres from where the Iron Curtain hung across Europe until 1989, making it relatively inaccessible for almost half a century. Prior to the First World War there was no national border here at all, the area being part of the Habsburg Empire.The little monument also marks the intersection with the 15° East meridian, which makes it an abstract chronological border – one hour (UTC +1). The post-midday July sun streams through the trees illuminating the forest floor and reflecting off the little lake just beyond the border. Birds sing, insects buzz, water bubbles over stones and a butterfly cuts its own erratic and silent pathway through the air.The Austrian woods, that in two steps would become Czech, are like a doll’s house version of British Columbia’s temperate rainforest although both preclude the breadth and depth of vision normally associated with landscape views. But the countries involved in this triangulation network have another thing in common: the instrumentalisation of difference and relative powerlessness for gain, often distilled into racism. Standing among the sunbeams I have to make an effort to conjure up the shades of those who were racially isolated, refused their civil rights, stripped of their property and, if they were among the fortunate few, managed to slip over the right border to safety.And on the other side of the world it may be right that, as George Bowering put it, people in British Columbia think in terms of geography rather than history. But it might just be that, in certain places at certain times, geography is history. g
Austro-Czech border 49° 00’ 00’’ N 15° 00’ 00’’ E
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