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"Being adjacent to Metro Vancouver, while residents receive the same over-the-air TV and radio broadcasts available in the Metro Vancouver region." 72.38.11.18 ( talk) 23:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I've never seen anything in Point Roberts other than a sports bar. There's TJ's, Breakers, and The Reef. None of these are clubs. Thrillhouse85
Feb 13, 2007
--The Breakers is no longer open.-- whiterockgirl Jan 29, 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Whiterockgirl ( talk • contribs) 16:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
APOV is an issue here, a bit, but no biggie; the US claim to bisect Vancouver Island was spurious but I guess worth mentioning; what's missing here is the bit of treaty wording that the 49th parallel to the deepest channel, then the boundary would follow that to the sea; so mention of the Border Commission troops is required here, although I don't know the respective British and American commanders off the top of my head about it, i.e. "what we were told in school" (speaking as a BCer) is that the American commander of the border commission insisted on waiting until low tide (presumably a spring tide, i.e. the lowest possible water level) before defining where the 49th Parallel left the land and found its deepest channel; the British commander wanted it at high tide when of course the technical deepest channel after the boundary hit the coast was the sunken creek channel beneath Boundary Bay; if that had been the endpoint of the 49th Parallel boundary then Point Roberts would have been in BC, and incidentally the eventual selection of the Haro Strait boundary wouldn't have been viable, and Rosario Strait would have been the boundary southwards. I'm travelling and don't have t ime to source the relevant treaty text, but it's there, and my bit about the Border Commission troops is for now just hearsay, but heard from more than one teacher back in the '70s (all staunch anti-Americans of course ;-P), but somewhere in the commission's journals or related correspondence there must be something about the quarrel about the Boundary Bay mudflat; was it land or was it sea? My teachers may have been anti-Yank, but they also weren't the kind of people to go making things up. Skookum1 17:13, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Um just a question. If the border is the 49th parallel until sea then why isn't Point Roberts Canadian. The 49th hit's salt water @ sealevel before Point Roberts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.72.2.44 ( talk • contribs)
There's a very nice picture of the Northwest Angle. It would be great to get something similar for Point Roberts. -- Don Sowell 21:10, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I took a picture of Point Roberts when I was landing in a plane in YVR, I could not post it directly here but it is in Wikimedia under Whatcom county. Hopefully someone who has more access than me will put it here. user:mountserrat 12 october 2008.
Granted, textbooks on our side of the border (BC) are often just as murky and nationalistic as those south of the border, but there's some big holes and one or two loops in this section; I've quoted it whole below for parag-by-parag discussion as I I start weighing in on the main article, I'm kind of prolix (to say the least) and will overlengthen the material. There are major fixes needed, however:
Yes, yes, yes - all smoke and no thunder; I changed the incorrect Oregon Territory to Oregon Country and also added in the name of the region as it was known to the British who were actually in the place at the time.
Gee, this might be because there were no Americans in the territory at all at the time, whereas there were several British posts and a few hundred employees and settlers....Buchanan's "offer" (threat) to draw the boundary directly across Vancouver Island was spurious, and more tactical as it was made as a counter-threat to Britain's stated intention to hold the boundary at the line of the Columbia River, or at least at the line of the Cascades. Buchanan's bully-boy tactics were dismissed in Whitehall (the Briitsh foreign office). There is no need to mention this particular treaty round, however; there were a good six offers/positions and counter-offers/positions from either side, of which this was only one. Better here to refer to the Oregon boundary dispute page which will eventually have the full roster; this particular offer did not have anything directly to do with why the Pt Roberts boundary is where it is, either (see below).
Another threat, meant to force the British to sign what would become the Oregon Treaty; as with other such congressional motions, the Mother of All Parliaments had no reason to be amused but tolerated it in the midst of heated domestic politics; the upshot of which was a change of governments with the "hawk" outgoing foreign minister, Palmerston, replaced by a "dove" in the form of Lord Aberdeen. It's presumed in the US popular account, as suggested by the tone/mention of the April 18 motion, that the British Lion trembled in its boots (er, paws), but in actuality Palmerson was ready to declare war for the sake of the Oregon Country/Columbia District and the fact of the matter is that the British were armed to the teeth in North America and the Caribbean at the time; if it hadn't been for a change of government in Westminster the US would have found its threats thrown back in its face with all the might of the British Empire. And the British probably would have won, partly because US troops were busy brutalizing Mexico and also because the Royal Navy was far beyond the US Navy in capability at this time. There would have been no Oregon Territory at all (i.e. a US territory where the Oregon Country/Columbia District had been) and it's possible the US would have had to return to Mexico all of Nuevo Mexico and also California, and there wouldn't have been the merest slip of the US west of the Continental Divide. But again, all of which, including the sentence being commented on, that doesn't really have to do with why the Point Roberts boundary is where it is...
This is incredibly POV in language, as if the British - "the last concession which could be expected of America" is only yet more bully-boy grandstanding from a country that was still only a junior power. The US was already "expecting" the British to yield Forts Vancouver, Nisqually and Colville (and others) as well as company farms and settlements around them. And it was well-known that the HBC had established Forts Victoria and Langley in anticipating of losing the Lower Columbia; from the British side of things, the American pressure for even more, be it half of Vancovuer Island or all the (unknown vastness of) the mainland to a line at 54-40 (bisecting an established fur district separate from the Columbia District; see New Caledonia (Canada). Packenham, or his superiors, might well have put it "Britain cannot be expected to yield Fort Victoria", and if the BPOV were represented here you'd find that there was a lot of harsh talk in London, and also (though less militarily relevant) in the local fur company forts, about not yielding to the Yankee bully and reasserting British rights in Puget Sound and on the Columbia, and that war was worth it. All articles on the Oregon dispute make it sound like Britain was a feeble power ready to acquiesce if Congress waved its magic sceptre and the President of the day shouted loud enough (Polk and Buchanan and Jackson resemble no one so much as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez in their penchant for jingoistic speechmaking....). Even in London it was recognized that a 49th Parallel boundary across Vancouver Island would make possession of the coast between there and Russian America (54-40) untenable, and that any access to Fort Langley, which had been specifically and deliberately established in 1827 north of the 49th Parallel in anticipation of the 49th Parallel being drawn westward), would be subject to US controls in the straits between there and the open sea, with any hope of communication with the interior forts largely irrelevant; conceding on Vancouver Island was like conceding the whole thing and Britain was not about to do THAT. Yielding to an upstart junior power largely because of bluster and threats? London may have been preoccupied with larger events elsewhere to take too much of an interest in the Pacific Northwest; but it could not be seen to have given up the store, especially when the HBC was a very powerful store (the world's oldest company, to be sure, and proprietor of over half of North America at the time...).
So very weird to see Fort Victoria and the US spelling of "center" in the same sentence, but this is a US article so I'll have to "deal with it". The language of the second sentence here should be "the Mainland" rather than the "Lower Mainland", which is a post-boundary, post-settlement term; the implication in this sentence is that there was a diplomatic/negotiatory linkage between the threatened partition of Vancouver Island and the fate of Point Roberts. To my knowledge there was NOT, but if you have a diplomatic-history cite on this by all means put it in.
And here's the rub: the treaty was agreed upon as "the 49th Parallel to the deepest channel, thence via that channel to the open sea" - terminology which screwed with Point Roberts as well as a few years later, the San Juans. The account I've had is that the US Border Commission surveyors insisted on surveying across Boundary Bay at low tide, insisting that the line must go to deep water west of the peninsula, and should not begin in the middle of the mudflat east of it (today's Boundary Bay/Semiahmoo Bay); bluster and probably a bit of booze saw their British counterparts have to accept; the treaty says "the line as surveyed along the49th Parallel" and not the 49th Parallel per se, so once the Border Commission boys had had their way the legal survey was complete and the border was set; local British official opposition had no time to reach London, where of course the possession of a mere couple of square miles of land would have been seen as inconsequential (what with the Crimean War on the boil and all), so nothing came of the British border surveyor's protests. But there was, as far as I know, NO trade-off between Point Roberts and southern Vancouver Island, and the boundary was the result of a survey party's obstinacy rather than any thing specific in the Oregon Treaty. Which was concluded in 1848 not 1855. Maybe in 1855 there was a codicil to the treaty concerning Point Roberts, but if so that should be specficied; the Oregon Treaty, properly the Treaty of Washington, was ratified by both Congress and Parliament in 1846, not 1855. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Skookum1 ( talk • contribs) 19:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC).
Not that there's that many; it just occurred to me when seeing this come up on my watchlist that Gene Kiniski is a prominent bar-owner on the Point; so if there's ever a section on "notable residents of Point Roberts" he should be on it. "The Breakers", the other bar down there, and vintage that it is, should maybe be mentioned as it's a bit of a cross-border institution for thirsty Canadians, esp. in the days before Sunday drinking in BC....I think there's a handful of American actors/celebs who (discreetly) maintain places on the Point, preferring to sleep in the US or something (while working in Canada); can't remember who exactly but I know I saw this somewhere.... Skookum1 22:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I have a vague memory of there being a short-lived movement within the US government to, as a gesture of gratitude, cede Point Roberts to Canada in or around 1980. Canadian diplomats in Iran issued six Canadian passports to six US diplomats and whisked them out of Iran in January of 1980. Shortly after the incident became known, there was a movement in the United States to formally thank Canada. One of the ideas was to give the Point Roberts enclave to the Canadians. The 1,000+ residents quickly killed the idea. I have done a quick search of the web and see nothing of the sort documented. Is this a valid memory, or am I mistaken?
What's with the description in the Climate section of Point Roberts as being in a " blue hole"? The blue hole article is all about limestone sinkholes, which really doesn't seem to be at all relevant here... ?? 75.18.189.145 21:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
This article had external links embedded in its copy. As per WP:LINKS, external links should be reserved for the "External links" section. Inline linking should be reserved for linking to other Wikipedia articles. Specifically:
External links should not be used in the body of an article. Instead, include them in an "External links" section at the end or in the appropriate location within an infobox.
-- Kmsiever 22:09, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I apologize for not making this clear when I responded earlier. WP:LINKS does not just talk about inline external links. Please review the entire guideline. In particular, please review "Links to be considered" and "Links normally to be avoided". -- Kmsiever 14:45, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
In the demographics section, there are ~1800 households to ~1300 people. More households than people?
Dotancohen ( talk) 11:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Alot of the households down there are Canadian owned summer cabins; without year round residents. I'm thinking that the quoted "1300 people" is referring to permanent year round residents. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Whiterockgirl ( talk • contribs) 15:57, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, somebody was eating the wrong source material, unless there's a later treaty I've never heard of; easy enough to fix the dates but who made that edit?? And I totally disagree with the diplomatic history here; Point Roberts was not a trade-off for the whole of Vancouver Island; the US offer to bisect Vancouver Island was spurious and a hardline position and was a way of counterfoiling British intentions to retain Puget Sound and/or the north bank of the Columbia. Point Roberts wasn't even really known about; and the extension of the 49th Parallel to the waters of Georgia Strait was meant to be to the saltwater; not across the saltflats, as the US Border Commission head honcho insisted; it was an interpretation of the terms of the treaty, stonewalled by this guy vs his British counterpart, that resulted in Point Roberts. Plainly put: Point Roberts was not a bargaining chip for Vancouver Island. What's in this article sounds like an emendation from a certain history which interprets things a certain way; apparently maybe even cribbing wrong dates from a faulty and misrepresentative interpretation; Point Roberts and the Angle (I don't mean the Minnesota Angle, but the slice of US water off Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal) were not even on the table in London and Washington; most people barely knew the map; even Haro Strait hadn't been assumed as the route of the boundary; Rosario was a shorter and calmer route through the archipelago and had been assumed to be the destined boundary, which was how the San Juans fracas came down when someone realized it was possible to push the boundary another step further to the Haro Strait from Rosario Strait; and "giving up some of the Lower Mainland" is irrelevant; the British had to give up the whole of the Puget Sound lowland, of which the Lower Mainland is the remaining fragment; and again, there was no giving up a bit of the Lower Mainland, namely Point Roberts, to protect the British hold on an island which already had British forces well-entrenched as well as a recognizable claim of actual (not theoretical) occupancy. Anyway, I see I've commented on this section before and it's still there......I'm wondering if a peer review might be the way to go here, someone to come in who realize it's two-sided story, and the story that's currently there is not only diluted but distorted; it doesn't even jibe with the Oregon boundary dispute page, which has its own problems....whatever.....I won't mess with it, I'm just always shocked to see such bad history. Not even fuzzy history, half-accurate. Actually wrong history....but people believe what they want about the past, or what they need to.....04:22, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I happened to look in the Puget Sound/Boundary Bay category in Wikimedia Commons and found this image, which has Point Roberts in the background as seen from the beach in Crescent Beach (Surrey). Didn't want to place it on the page without agreement; an alternate view, possibly a better one, might be something taken from a BC Ferry, with the view of Mt Baker and some of Whatcom County in behind; if someone thinks to take/upload one. Skookum1 ( talk) 23:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I see the text refers to Point Roberts as a "practical exclave" and "quasi-exclave". Why is exclave qualified? What is the difference between Point Roberts and an ordinary exclave?
- rakslice ( talk) 21:27, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
The weather data is unsourced. Can someone provide a source? -- Matthiasb ( talk) 17:43, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
The weather data is from weather.com ( http://www.weather.com/outlook/driving/interstate/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/98281?from=36hr_bottomnav_driving), please feel free to verify and cite. Nice topo! Gnatdroid ( talk) 04:03, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
Is it just me, or does the image of a warning sign threatening arrest and prosecution seem like it's a bit out of place? It'd be one thing if we were talking about, say, the border in Arizona, where there are a lot of people illegaly crossing the border, but this seems like an awfully austere image for a fairly mundane place. Do we have a better image somewhere, something that shows a bit more of Point Roberts than just the warning sign at the border? Mønster av Arktisk Vinter Kvelden ( talk) 05:43, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
The Bob is a common nickname for Point Roberts. Yet, it is removed every time I add it. Am I doing something incorrect in adding this information? Thank you in advance for any help offered. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.86.148.7 ( talk) 16:25, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
This article mentions the "ZCTA" three times, but never says what this is, or what it stands for. I can't fix this myself, since I don't know what it means - but I think it needs to be filled in by someone who knows something about the topic. (After I tried looking this up, it appears that it stands for "ZIP Code Tabulation Area", but, not being American, I don't know nearly enough about this to feel confident in explaining this within the Point Roberts article.) M.J.E. ( talk) 03:05, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
When you look at a sattelite view there seem to be a couple of places where it looks like the roads used to form junctions across the border. One is the place in the west pictured in the article with the warning notices.
The other is at the east side of the island where there is residential development on both sides of the border. There are two roads that line up between the canadian and US developments, 66 street with derby street and 67 street with meadow lane. The latter case in particular is only blocked by a fence and concrete vehicle barriers.
Did these roads used to go through in the past before the US got so paranoid about it's border? Plugwash ( talk) 08:32, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
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While the article states BC Tel originally provided phone service to Point Roberts until 1988, I can provide further elaboration. I can mention that BC Tel, until it merged with Telus, was majority owned by a US-controlled parent company that was a subsidiary of GTE. When I worked for the phone company Northwestel, I had access to internal AT&T Longlines documents that showed 206-945 and 604-945 both listed as Point Roberts, with the same V&H coordinates, indicating the code was homed on one area code, and protected in the other area code, probably to facilitate local 7-digit dialing between Point Roberts and the adjacent areas of the B.C. Lower Mainland. As of now, 2020, the Local Calling Guide [1] shows that Point Roberts has no local calling with any other exchange, in Washington or in British Columbia. Also, 604-945 is now used in Port Coquitlam, a few miles east of Point Roberts. GBC ( talk) 22:49, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
Changing "uses" to "used" in the description of the COVID-era ferry - the Port of Bellingham always described it as a temporary measure and it has been discontinued since late 2021. Sworked ( talk) 16:02, 22 September 2022 (UTC) SCW 09:02, 09 September 2022
One sentence in the section History reads as follows:
"The area around the southern Tsawwassen Peninsula was a favored fishing spot for several Coast Salish groups, who named the peninsula "q̓ʷulƛ̕əl̕"."
It is overtly hostile to the reader to provide the name of something in an unfamiliar alphabet without any further explanation, transliteration, or pronunciation.
I hope someone knowledgeable about this subject can fix this. 2601:204:F181:9410:FD3D:A469:D0EA:3E2D ( talk) 03:23, 18 April 2024 (UTC)