“Entre Amis in an Era of Polarization”

By Stephanie Bangarth and Sara Beth Keough

In March 2026, a Canadian historian and an American Geographer met in Cambridge, ON to begin a collaborative project, literally “between friends,” inspired by Canada’s 1976 bicentennial gift to the United States, the coffee table book Between Friends/Entre Amis.[i] The year 2026 marks the 50^th anniversary of this gift. And we are those two scholars.  Looking at this book together, as friends and scholars from opposite sides of the border, inspired questions about the current relationship between Canada and the United States. What did this book mean to the two countries at the time of its publication? What does this book mean 50 years later? How has the polarization of the Canada-U.S. relationship changed the meaning of this gift?  This essay is our reflection on the historical context of the book and some possible answers to these questions.

First edition publication of the book Between Friends/Entre Amis. Photo by authors.

Between Friends/Entre Amis was Canada’s official gift to the United States on the occasion of its bicentennial in 1976. Twenty-six Canadian photographers were commissioned by Lorraine Monk of the Still Photography Division of the National Film Board of Canada, and some 220 photographs were ultimately included in the volume. Designed to celebrate “the longest undefended international border in the world,” photographers were tasked with capturing images within 30 miles of the Canada-U.S. border, beginning in the Arctic, down the Alaska panhandle and across the Rockies, prairies, Great Lakes, Quebec, and the Maritimes. McClelland & Stewart’s press run was the most ambitious Canadian publishing project to that time. Indeed, some 200,000 copies were printed, and the book received outstanding praise and criticism in the press on both sides of the border. A special Presentation Edition was extended for American dignitaries. Pierre Trudeau and Lorraine Monk personally gave President Ford his copy in a Washington ceremony. The entire project cost about $1 million (in 1976).

Lorraine Monk and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau present President Gerald Ford with the bicentennial gift, Between Friends/Entre Amis in the Rose Garden at the White House. Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.

The photos are expressive, capturing a land and some of its people at work and at home. There is beauty, subjectivity, exclusivity, and some aberrations in these images (the juxtaposition of a motorcycle gang in Detroit and a ladies lawn bowling club in Buffalo is one). The language in the volume is warm, even intimate—entre amis. The rhetoric of friendship has long been central to Canada–U.S. relations. It is a phrase that appears in speeches, trade negotiations, military alliances, and cultural exchanges. It reassures publics that despite disagreements, the relationship is stable, civil, and enduring. But what does “friendship” mean in an era marked by democratic backsliding, culture wars, and deepening polarization on both sides of the 49th parallel?

Anniversaries are culturally important on both sides of the border, and independence anniversaries are significant opportunities to reinforce national identities. The book was not the first anniversary gift exchanged between the two countries. In May 1967, then President Lyndon B. Johnson presented “The Great Ring of Canada,” made of Steuben Glass in Corning, NY, to then Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson to commemorate Canada’s centennial. The Ring is on display today in the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa

President Lyndon B. Johnson and Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson gaze at The Great Ring of Canada during the 1967 World Exposition in Montreal, a gift from the United States on Canada’s centennial anniversary. (Source: Corning Museum of Glass and Steuben.com)

But, the book was unique. It was a visual time capsule of people and places along the border in 1976, albeit filtered through the Canadian national lens, and of the National Film Board of Canada in particular. There are several distinctly “Canadian” things about the book: the combination of English with French translations, a focus on snowy landscapes, and an over-emphasis on the rural, which does encompass most of the territory of Canada.

Thus, there is more in this collection than meets the eye. Lorraine Monk insisted that all photographs be in colour, lest Americans think the book cheap. The Canadian government provided 20,000 copies to be distributed free to libraries and public institutions in the United States and Canada, split evenly between the two nations. Dotted throughout the volume were political quotations about the border in French and English, with translations provided in an insert. One such quote is from former Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker: “Our peoples are North Americans. We are children of our geography, products of the same hopes, faith and dreams.”[ii] Book-giving has been a part of official and unofficial diplomacy, as Jody Mason and Janice Cavellnote.[iii]

Historians remind us that the language of friendship has always done political work. During the Cold War, officials framed continental defence cooperation as a partnership among equals, even as asymmetries of power were obvious. The creation of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in 1958 was presented not only as strategic necessity but as evidence of mutual trust. Friendship often softened sovereignty concerns. The same was true in trade. When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force in 1994, its supporters often described it as the natural extension of an already intimate economic relationship. Critics, however, questioned whether friendship could survive economic restructuring and labour dislocation. They understood that economic integration is not expressively neutral; it reshapes communities and redistributes risk.

In moments of strain, the language of friendship becomes even more visible. During disputes over softwood lumber, border security after 9/11, or steel and aluminum tariffs, leaders repeatedly reassured one another—and their domestic audiences—that disagreements were “between friends.” The phrase implied a boundary: conflict, yes; rupture, no. Consider the events surrounding the 2020 U.S. election and the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. For many Canadians, the spectacle prompted reflection on democratic fragility south of the border. Yet Canadian institutions have faced their own tests—from convoy protests to provincial–federal tensions. The mirror cuts both ways.

The history of cross-border activism suggests that “entre amis” has never been confined to official diplomacy. During the civil rights era, Canadian activists looked to figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. for inspiration, while also grappling with racism at home. Feminist, environmental, and labour movements have long operated continentally, building solidarities that bypass formal state channels. In these cases, friendship was not a slogan but a practice—sometimes uneasy, often critical. Indeed, friendship can entail critique. Throughout the twentieth century, Canadians publicly condemned U.S. segregation, war policy, and interventionism. Americans, in turn, have criticized Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples and its immigration policies, and its embrace of supply-side management. Such exchanges complicate the comforting myth of seamless harmony. Polarization heightens these tensions. And yet, the infrastructure of interdependence remains dense. The world’s longest undefended border still facilitates extraordinary flows of people and goods. Families straddle it. Supply chains depend on it. Shared waters—from the Great Lakes to the Arctic—require cooperative environmental and infrastructure stewardship. In practical terms, disengagement is not an option.

Borders, of course, are as much real as they are imaginary, as much virtual as they are material.[iv] Perhaps this is where history offers a sober lesson, even if the images of Between Friends/entre amis demonstrate otherwise. Canada–U.S. friendship has never meant the absence of conflict. It has meant the management of conflict within an accepted framework of mutual recognition. That framework has endured wars in Vietnam and Iraq, trade battles, and divergent approaches to social policy. Its durability stems less from sentiment than from habit and institutionalization. The danger in an age of polarization is not disagreement itself but the erosion of trust in democratic norms. If friendship once implied shared liberal democratic commitments, we must now ask how secure those commitments are—and how they are defended. Diplomatic language cannot substitute for democratic practice.

Although the “friendly” border is certainly a key focal point of the book, the fact that the book is divided into regions aligns with journalist Joel Garreau’s idea that the Canada-U.S. border may not matter as much as regional distinctions. [v]  Many of Garreau’s proposed “regions” straddle the border, connecting Canadian and American elements on both sides, rather than separating them. Richard Harris applied this form of regionalism to his work on North American cities, noting that Seattle and Vancouver share more cultural and physiogeographic similarities than differences, but are indeed different than their central or eastern North American counterparts.[vi] So, too, does Between Friends support the idea that the border connects, rather than divides…at least it did in 1976.

As we consider the book in the context of 2026, references by the White House to Canada’s potential as a “51^st State” beg the question: is the Canada-U.S. border still a line “between friends”? Revisiting Between Friends/entre amis reminds us that the phrase has always been aspirational. It gestures toward an ideal relationship, one rooted in proximity, shared history, and overlapping political cultures. But aspiration requires maintenance. It demands civic engagement, cross-border dialogue, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. In this sense, the future of Canada–U.S. friendship may depend less on summits and more on citizens. Historians, educators, journalists, and activists all play a role in sustaining critical yet constructive engagement across the border. Friendship, after all, is not the denial of difference. It is the commitment to work through it.

As polarization reshapes North American politics, the question is not whether Canada and the United States remain “between friends.” It is whether they are prepared to practice the kind of friendship that democracy requires: honest, resilient, and capable of self-reflection.

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[i] Lorraine Monk, ed., Between Friends/Entre Amis (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1976).

[ii] Between Friends/Entre Amis, p. 111.

[iii] Jody Mason, Books for Development: Canada in the Late Twentieth-Century World (Montréal & Kingston: MQUP, 2026); Janice Cavell, ”Canadiana Abroad: The Department of External Affairs’ Book Presentation Programmes, 1949-1963.” American Review of Canadian Studies 39, no. 2 (June 2009): 81-93.

[iv] Scott Mackenzie, “A line in the snow: Visualizing borders both imaginary and real,” Public 16 (1996): 57-64.

[v] Joel Garreau, The Nine Nations of North America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981).

[vi] Richard Harris, “Canadian Cities in a North American Context,” in Thomas McIlwraith and Edward Muller, eds. North America: The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent (Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 1987): 445-462.

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Stephanie Bangarth is Professor of History at Kings University College at Western University and has been a member of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States since 1999.

Sara Beth Keough is Professor of Geography at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan and President of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States.