Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Minnesota: The Exclave with Raphi Nussbaum

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

In this episode, Sharon speaks with Raphi Nussbaum about Angle Inlet, Minnesota, a tiny community in North America’s Lake of the Woods. Angle Inlet is an exclave of American Territory that is entirely surrounded by water, Ontario, and Manitoba. Nestled in the Lake of the Woods, Angle Inlet is home to approximately 120 residents among 35 households. The exclave houses the last operating one-room schoolhouse in America, a post office, a customs office, and a humble cafe. Listen to learn more about how residents and tourists access this remote peninsula that shares no border with the contiguous United States. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my friends. I am delighted that you're here today. I have a fascinating story about my home state of Minnesota. I had to get a good story. Needed to tell all the Minnesotans something they probably didn't already know. So it was not going to be a story about, like, the Mall of America. Something that all Minnesotans know? No. Had to come up with something different. So I hope I shall meet your expectations. And I am joined by my friend who does not live in Minnesota. He lives in Jerusalem, Rafi Nussbaum. Rafi is a rabbi who grew up in Canada. He shares my affinity for cold weather and he ended up thinking this is a really cool story too. So let's dive in to the Northwest Angle. I'm Sharon McMahon and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.

Oh my goodness. Thank you for joining me all the way from Jerusalem, far across the world. It is amazing to be here. Tell everybody what you do. You have about six careers at this point. Right. That's basically accurate. First and foremost, I guess I would say husband and father. We live in Jerusalem, my wife and I, Dina, with five little kids. The youngest is two months old.

Aside from that, I teach full time. And my side hustle is photography. And it's quite a busy day. And it's like 1130 p.m. there. And you're like squeezing me in between your 16 jobs and sleeping. Right. Well, for Sharon, for you, you know, we'll make room. What do you teach?

So this is a little bit complicated. I don't know how many of the folks listening are familiar, but I teach Jewish studies. I'm a rabbi. So I teach Talmud Gemara in Hebrew. It's like full day intensive learning, studying. It's like the real deal, ultra-Orthodox, super Jewish Judaism. So that's what we do. Like super Jewish Judaism. Yeah. Yeah. Do you teach only boys? Yes. It's called the yeshiva, like an institution of higher learning. It's all boys. The staff is all men.

That's just the classic, you know, yeshiva system. That's how it's been set up for hundreds of years, and we're continuing the tradition. Is this the primary learning institution for the boys attending the school? Do they learn math and writing and Jewish studies? Is it a religious school that teaches all the subjects or do they attend the school only to learn about Judaism? So that's a great question. So all of the boys that come to us come from the United States. They've all finished high school. They're all basically, it's like, instead of, you know, taking a year to backpack around Europe and, you know, just travel.

So they take a year or two, sometimes even three to spend their time in Israel and Jerusalem to further their knowledge in Judaism and in Talmud and Gemara. See, in my mind, I was picturing like a bunch of 15 year olds. Yeah, they're all a bunch of young men. I mean, boys is sort of, you know, the wrong term. They're all 18, 19, some are turning 20. They are college age. Some are even doing online college while they're there, but the day-to-day schedule is all Jewish studies. Okay. And so most of them will return to the United States. Is that your experience? Yeah, for sure. Okay. You grew up in Canada. Yes, this is true. So I am curious about you and your wife who grew up in the United States. How did the two of you meet and move to Jerusalem?

So it's like one of those classic, you know, fiddle around the roof kind of stories. I grew up in Canada in Toronto and I lived there my whole life. I came to study in Israel in the classic matchmaking system. I had a friend and my friend, his wife knew my wife and they set us up. My wife was in Israel. She was actually sort of a dorm counselor in a girl's seminary, just like there's the yeshiva system. So there's the counterpart for girls that come to Israel also. And she was what they call a madricha in Hebrew, which means someone who helps the girls just, you know, find their way in Israel. It's sort of like a stand-in mom for the year. And we had mutual friends. They set us up. We dated in Israel. And then we came back to Canada and the U.S. to get engaged and get married. What are some perhaps misconceptions about ordinary life that you think maybe Canadians or North Americans might have about like, what's it like to live in a place like Jerusalem? Just, I'm not talking about like

geopolitical issues, just like perhaps a misconception or an interesting tidbit maybe you can share with us about what ordinary life in a place like Jerusalem is like. So it's a fascinating culture. There's like the hustle and bustle here is I think unmatched. I mean, you know, I've, I've been in Times Square. I've been in downtown Toronto, I don't see any other life where it's just so vibrant and alive. And it's just the energy in the city is pulsing all the time. When I think of misconceptions about, you know, life here and Judaism in general, there is, you know, the misconceptions over the inequality of women and how people are treated and the systems and the relations between Jews and Arabs here. Like there is so much to unpack and so much to go through.

It's tough to nail down one. But I would say that it's important for people to know that, you know, the culture and the people are happy and it's full of energy. It's very easy to look at a culture from the outside and automatically assume that things are backward or that people feel oppressed or that people are unhappy. And if you speak to the people that live within it, by and large, it's a very vibrant, modern cultured community. And it's a happy lifestyle. There's definitely an intensity of the culture here. It takes time to get used to it. Obviously, every area of the world has its own culture and

how you interact socially with everyone else. So like over here, I can say that it's much more intense. There's less personal space because people are packed in, in general. The population here is so dense compared to for sure rural America. So I know that Israelis sort of look at Americans as like being way too laid back, sort of pushovery, like unwilling to stand up for themselves. Because in Israel, like if you're in an encounter of anything, like in a store or with a taxi driver, or it doesn't matter where, it comes off as aggressive, but it's not really aggressiveness. It's more just their culture is more assertive. So they're much more willing to like speak up or to get in your face,

but they don't look at it like that. And when an American show up on the scene, you know, an American will be in a store and there's a line and they'll just end up waiting in the back of the line for 15 minutes when it could have been their turn 13 minutes before, because they don't understand that people are cutting them in line, but they don't mean it as I'm taking your turn. It's more like, if it was your turn, you would move up and you didn't. So it must not be your turn. It's just, it's a whole different world. It's a mindset difference of like, well, you didn't move up. So I guess it's not really your turn. You don't think it's your turn.

Exactly. And so neither do I. People are always very curious. How do we know each other? And the answer is we actually met on Instagram a number of years ago when I was actually planning a trip to Israel with one of my friends and my friend has lived in Israel before. And so she was doing most of the planning and just being curious. I was searching various hashtags on Instagram about like, well, what does it look like in Tel Aviv versus Jerusalem? You know, just curious about what the differences were. And I came across your pictures on Instagram and the rest is history. It was one of those, like, just kind of chance meetings where I was like, wow, your pictures are super cool because you do

have a very unique style of family photography that really showcases the architecture of the old city in Jerusalem. And it has a very painterly quality to it that people hire you for. It's not just like, oh, you guys are like throwing autumn leaves in a park, you know, like American family photography has a different vibe and a different style. You're working with a different geographical setting, different clientele, et cetera. Anyway, I just thought it was cool. I was like, that's really cool. I think I've been following you for a while. I found you when you were still, you know, primarily in photography. And I was like, oh my gosh, this lady is amazing. Like I have to follow her. And then however we started talking and then yeah, it's history. Well, I'm

happy to know you. And I have a story today that I wanted to share with you that is about the United States, but is also about Canada. So I was like, this is perfect. Sounds cool. You know what Minnesota looks like on a map. assume you know your u.s geography so this is lake superior you're familiar with that as a canadian like the typical this little piece that sticks up into canada you know what i'm talking about looks like a little chimney on the state of minnesota this is what we're going to talk about today okay day. Okay, let's do it. This little region right here, that is a piece of land that belongs to the United States, but is wholly ensconced within Canada. And it's called an exclave. Have you ever heard of Lake of the Woods, first of all? Cannot say I have. Okay, that's totally fine.

None of this is a quiz. Okay, so Lake of the Woods spans part of northern Minnesota and a big chunk of Ontario and Manitoba. It is a very large lake that is bigger than the state of Rhode Island. Inside of the lake are over 14,000 islands. And so just the shoreline of the lake, because there are so many islands, just the shoreline makes it one of the largest bodies of water in North America, of course, outside of some of the bigger Great Lakes. One of the reasons I'm interested in talking about this is because this lake has 65,000 miles of shoreline, 14,000 islands, and only 23 of the islands are inside the United States. And this one little teeny chunk of land is completely surrounded by water, Manitoba and Ontario. And it is mostly

uninhabited. There is not like a condo or a cappuccino in sight. Not at all like Jerusalem. And it's called the Northwest Angle. That's what it's called. This little teeny exclave surrounded by Canada, surrounded by water. But around 120 people live on this little teeny piece of land. And as one can imagine, it is a tourist destination because it is in the middle of the woods and it is in the middle of an incredible fishing lake. Lake of the Woods is so big that it can grow big fish. And there are so many islands. I would assume you don't do a lot of fishing in Jerusalem. No, no, I have fished. I mean, when, when I, when I did live in Ontario, then I fished on the lakes over there, but you can fish on the Mediterranean here, which is like an hour and a half drive from Jerusalem.

Sure. Fishing here is not a thing. No fishing here is a thing, but I don't enjoy it. And you know, that's great. If other people enjoy fishing, who am I to stop you? Go ahead and enjoy fishing all day long, right? It's just not, it's just not my jam. One of the reasons this community has continued to exist and thrive is because of the incredible fishing on these islands. And apparently the islands provide structure for fish. Certain kinds of fish like to live alongside the shoreline of things and whatever. And I'm like, that makes absolutely no sense, but okay. Yeah. You got to fish on the banks. Yeah, for sure. There's plenty of banks to fish on. A little town, by the way, is called Angle Inlet. And it's on this little piece of land called Northwest Angle. If you are a family with children, your children must board the school bus,

cross out of the United States and into Canada, drive through Canada, cross the United States border again in order to get to school in the morning. And then they have to do the same on the way home. They're crossing the border six, eight times a day just to attend school. Let me clarify. These are secondary school students. Elementary school students attend a one-room schoolhouse. Still today in 2021, there's a one-room schoolhouse still today in 2021, there's a one room schoolhouse that teaches kindergarten through fifth grade. Just one teacher teaches the approximately 10 students. I will tell you more about that in a minute, but if you are at sixth through 12th grade, the school bus driver

gets up, begins his journey at three 45 in the morning from the United States, from a town on the border called War Road, crosses the border into Canada. The road eventually turns to a dirt road, drives along until he gets to the border crossing, which is not one of those big fancy border crossings where it's like, here's our $40 million complex. You know what I mean? No, the border crossing is called like Jim's corner. It's literally called Jim's corner. And it involves a pay phone of sorts where you pick up the phone and there are two buttons on the phone, one with an American flag and one with a Canadian flag. And if you're going to be crossing into Canada, you press the Canadian flag and it will connect you to Canadian customs. And you speak to them and you're like,

Hey, I'm here at Jim's corner. It's Rafi. I'm taking my kids. And then you have to tell them like, okay, it's my wife and all 17 of our kids. We're crossing back into Canada. Okay, thanks. And if you want it crossing the United States, you press the U.S. flag button and it connects you to at Jim's Corner. We should have that at every border crossing. That is fantastic. I'm like, Jim's Corner. That's what it's called. Like that is hilarious to me.

And now they're trying to be fancy and now they've developed systems that have iPads and there's a Canadian system called can pass. And there's a U S system called, you know, scan or whatever they're trying to update it. But I personally like the Jim's corner method of pressing a button at a payphone. In fact, payphones are still very much in use there because it's so remote and it's in the middle of Canada. And so which cell carrier is going to be serving the 120 people that actually are inside Canada? You know what I mean? So it's payphones. people that actually are inside Canada. You know what I mean? So it's pay phones, pay phones. It is so the schoolhouse, the one room schoolhouse has been taught at by the same teacher who has been there since the early 1980s. She's done interviews for time, the New York times, et cetera, et cetera. And she has been teaching literally generations of the same

families. All the kids get to school in the morning. Most of them take snowmobiles in the wintertime because the roads are not great and the areas are so remote. She herself lives on an island off of the coast of the town of angle inlet so in the morning in the summer and when it's ice out do you guys know the terms ice in and ice out in canada i don't think so probably have different words for it maybe not in toronto i bet they do in Manitoba. Right. And like Winnipeg where there's like six feet of snow all the time. Yep. In fact, Winnipeg is really the biggest large city.

So it's like a couple hours away from Winnipeg, if that helps you orient yourself. Sure. But like Iced Inn is where all the lakes freeze solid with ice and you can begin driving on them. And Iced Out is when it starts to break up and it becomes unsafe to drive on them. Both those times are challenging because let's say it's broken up at ice out. It's not like you can take your small boat and just like crash into all of these icebergs and be fine. You know what I mean? So sometimes ice out might last a couple of days. Sometimes ice out might last six weeks in which if you live on an Island, you might be trapped on the Island that you live on until enough of the ice has melted that your boat can safely navigate to shore. I want to move there. Like this sounds

awesome. Clearly needs some more people. I don't know how to convince any of the students to come, but I'm in. The teacher sometimes, especially when travel is the most difficult in spring and fall, before ice in and ice out, she will sometimes sleep at the school. She said there have been times where she has slept at the school for a month because it was just unsafe to try to get home to her house on this island. But in the wintertime, the travel is the easiest. They will plow a significant ice road on the lake itself where you can just drive your vehicle. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office

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You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. The area is a big fishing tourism region. And so they have these little cabins or what they say in Canada, cottages. They have these little cottages on the different islands that people can come stay at. Anyway, she normally will get up really early in the morning, six o'clock in the morning and ride her snowmobile to the school in Angle Inlet. Her name is Linda

Lemie, by the way. I find her very interesting. I would love to chat with her someday. But one of the things that I found interesting is that they did not get electricity until 1974. Wow. Isn't that crazy? Like that's how remote it is. Yeah. So definitely no cell phone service. Yeah. That's crazy. No. Marine band radio, which is, you know, how boats talk to each other. They have that. If you have something you want the whole town to know, you can say it over a marine band radio. Like I just made some cinnamon rolls. If anyone wants to stop by and the whole town will hear you, but sometimes you might not want to talk to the whole town, but people will listen in any way because that is how you could communicate with everybody there.

I love that. So that is awesome. is how you could communicate with everybody there. I love that. So that is awesome. The bus driver said he gets up at three 45 in the morning. By the time he has driven from Minnesota to angle inlet and back, he is dropping the kids off at school at around eight o'clock in the morning. That is how long his round trip voyage takes to drive three or four kids to school. That is serious devotion right there. No kidding. In blizzards, you know, like it's not like these roads are in super great condition with

a school bus and then he has to do it again. Return them all home after school ends. Crazy. Yes. Does he drive a regular school bus or it's like a humvee or something no a regular size school bus i've watched footage of him you know where he's given interviews he's like yeah get up 3 45 it's an older guy and the community loves him everybody knows him um get up 3 3 30 i'm usually on the road by like 3 45 and i'm usually dropping the kids off by around eight o'clock like dang wow that is

that's real commitment yes and that's also a significant commitment on the part of the students to ride over an hour and cross the border that many times just to attend school I can understand why things like homeschooling would be preferred, preferred, or would seem appealing, but there are still a number of students who go to school in the United States. Sometimes it gets so cold there. And of course, you know, I love cold weather. I would not survive in a climate like Jerusalem year round, I could visit and then I'd be like, peace out homies. Like, where is my snow at? As a Canadian, I totally hear that. Like I tell my wife, if not for like the religious and spiritual significance, I would be living in Alaska.

Like I'm a Trantonian through and through and anything over 67 Fahrenheit. I'm like, okay, let's get the AC on. Like, like I can't. Yeah. I don't find being sweaty, like a pleasant experience. You know what I mean? Why is it pleasant? I'd rather be chilly sitting by my fire, drinking my tea with my lap blanket and like a dog ears to scratch. I'll take being cold any day. It's so cold there. Sometimes it can get to be between minus 40 and minus 50 Fahrenheit, which is around minus 40 Celsius, that the propane, which is the fuel that they use to heat their homes, et cetera. Sometimes it is so cold that the propane is not even in the liquid form that it needs to be, to be able to be burned by their furnaces.

And they will have to light a charcoal fire underneath the propane tank to warm it up enough to be able to have heat in their house. Like heat the heat before you have heat. Right. Like cook the propane so you can use it yes that's crazy that's amazing i love it the more i studied this the more appealing it became the more i'm like that absolutely sounds like a great idea yeah i mean the post office is approximately the size of a shed you would have in your yard, like in suburban Toronto. You know what I mean? Where people are like, this is where I keep my lawnmower. That is the size of the post office. And so those are kind of the businesses they have.

They have a post office. They do have a cafe. I'm sure the food is not delicious by Jerusalem standards. Right, or kosher. Or kosher, no. There's probably plenty of pork products. It's like a cafe, a post office, some kind of Jim's Corner customs off, a school. And then like a bunch of fishing cottages slash cabins. That's what there is. That is awesome. I love it. It sounds very appealing to me and it's freezing cold. Yeah. Okay. So why is this like even a thing? Why isn't it part of Canada when it is so clearly part of Canada?

You could, by the way, if you wanted to stay in the U S waters, you could take a boat from the Southern border of Lake of the woods to the little community of angle inlet. You could do that. That is not popular though, because it is a 40 mile journey. The lake is so large and it's so windy that it produces significantly rough waters. And so people's small fishing vessels cannot easily traverse that portion of the lake. You need a big boat and there are no ferries. service. And it costs about $150 to take a water taxi from quote unquote, mainland United States to this little teeny piece of land, which by the way, is the most Northern part of the contiguous United States. Obviously Alaska is farther North because it's just attached to Canada, but it is farther North than anything in Maine or Washington or anywhere else. Doesn't always look that way because of the Mercator projection of the map. You know what I

mean? But it is, it is the only portion of the contiguous United States that is above the 49th parallel. So that is super cool. Isn't that interesting? This is why it is not part of Canada. So when the United States decided it was done with the British and it was going to fight a war to be done with them. After they won the war, they signed the Treaty of Paris in the 1700s, 1783. And the Treaty of Paris is in part what negotiated the boundary lines of the United States and Canada. Of course, Canada continued to belong to Britain. And they were using a map that was made by somebody who had not accurately plotted that portion of North America.

by a cartographer who depicted Lake of the Woods as being just like a little oval shaped lake and did not account for any actual solid land masses inside the lake. Like he counted for some little islands, but nothing that was, you know, like a large area of land. And so when they decided to draw the boundary, they drew the boundary in such a way that it did not account for that little tiny piece of land, that that piece of land was going to remain part of the United States, but yet it made no sense because it was actually in the middle of a lake that should be in Canada. Well, after they went through a variety of discussions. And when I say discussions, I mean arguments where Britain was like, actually, that should definitely be ours. The United States was not interested in ceding any of its territory to Britain. You know what I mean? They were like, hard pass. It's ours

and it's ours forever. They were not in the mood. Not in the mood to give back any of the land, even though it was a very small piece of land that had very, very small significance. You know what I mean? Eventually in 1824, when they got a better plotting of the actual shoreline of the Lake of the Woods, they were like, dang, that is a problem, isn't it? Okay. And so then in 1842, another treaty finalized the boundary of the United States and Canada. It's called the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. And it still did not take into consideration the Northwest Angle. It still belonged to the United States.

The Webster-Ashford Treaty dropped the border of the United States and Canada to the 49th parallel, with the exception of this one little chunk of land that looks like a chimney at the top of Minnesota. In fact, when you look at Minnesota on a map, that little chimney that sticks up, it looks like it's solid land on a map of the United States, but it's not. It's mostly water with a little teeny chunk of land up at the top. And I was going to say, lesson is get yourself a competent cartographer. That's right. Before you sign a treaty, this is like the precursor to don't sign a contract without an attorney, right? Like don't sign a treaty without a cartographer.

A very, very applicable advice to many people today. Don't sign any treaties without a cartographer. You definitely should get one on staff. The other things that I found very interesting about this region is that it was initially explored by French voyagers who were there to trade with native populations. And they were actually looking for what they believed, what they hoped would be a Northwest passage that bisected North America. They wanted it to connect the Atlantic and the Pacific because the British were controlling Hudson Bay and the French wanted

the ability to transport the goods that they had been trading with the indigenous people to Europe. Fur was a big deal, right? Like you needed to get your beaver pelts out of Canada and the United States and into the European markets where people could make them into all of the luxurious items they wanted to make out of them. One of the French explorers who was looking for this Northwest Passage that they hoped would bisect North America, formed a variety of trading forts in this region. And there actually was a fort on one of these tiny little islands in Lake of the Woods. And the fort was built in the early 1700s by Pierre Lavendray,

who I don't know if he is somebody that you would have learned about in Canadian history, but he worked for King Louis XIV and was exploring this entire region. It was him and his sons and nephews who actually are some of the first recorded Europeans into the interior of the United States, like North Dakota, Wyoming, et cetera. So he built this trading fort, Fort St. Charles in 1732. And his son and a Catholic priest and 19 voyagers met an untimely end on an island that is still called Massacre Island, where all of them were killed by a Native American tribe. And when Pierre heard about this, he wanted his son and the priest and all of the voyagers, he wanted them brought back to the island where the fort was. And then over

time, as the area was kind of abandoned by the French, the location of the fort was kind of lost to history. And the location of the graves of these people kind of lost to history. But then in the early 1900s, the descendants, like the family members of the priest, found this like treasure trove of letters. It seemed to give some kind of indication about where the priest was buried, and that he was buried in this old fort on an island in Lake of the Woods. And maybe they might be able to find him there. And so in the early 1900s, there became this big effort to locate Fort St. Charles again, to see if they could sort of find the bodies of these people, rebuild the fort. Wouldn't it be cool to have this fort rebuilt they did find them they found the

graves of pierre's son the priest that was with him and they found the skulls of 19 of the voyagers that were with them they had been beheaded and only the skulls had been buried on this island. So now you can go visit. They rebuilt the fort of what it looked like in the early 1730s. And it is literally on an island in the middle of Lake of the Woods in what should be Canada. But because of an inept cartographer, it belongs to the United States. And it's the only one-room schoolhouse remaining in Minnesota. And you have to cross the border at Jim's Corner to be able to get back into the United States.

Isn't that interesting? That is super interesting. It is crazy how much, like the amount of history and like a little piece of land that you would never know 100 like wow like a fort and like a mass massacre island beheaded voyagers and the british are trying to block those in bay and just trying to get these beaver pelts over to Europe where they will buy them. Okay. It's totally fine. Just let me go past. There are ancient petroglyphs on some of the cliff faces in this lake. And they estimate that the petroglyphs are over a thousand years old, you know, like cave paintings,

you know what I'm talking about? One of the things that is almost inexplicable is how are they still there when they have been subjected to the most incredibly challenging elements you can throw at them? Constant wave action, like the constant freezing and thawing and the wind etc how is anything still on these rocks a thousand years later you know what i mean like if you took some paint and you were like rafi was here how long would it take for that to be like at least mostly gone probably like four days yeah four days one winter rafi was not here it's like ice in ice out bye bye great but the fact that these are there a thousand years later like what kind of substance were you using explain it science does not have an explanation yet but i find that kind of stuff super interesting they're also abandoned gold mines because they found rocks that were gold bearing.

And so they started thinking this could be like a gold mining area. And they did some sort of light exploration where they were like, let's poke around over here. Let's poke around over here. But it never turned into like a production mine where they found like a huge deposit of gold like they did out in Colorado or California or other places. What an interesting place. The nearest grocery store is 65 miles away from where this town is. Wow. So how do they get supplied?

Like how do they get things shipped in? Suffice it to say, COVID significantly impacted this community because Canada was not allowing any kind of non-essential travel from inside the United States. You could go for work, but you could not go for any other reason except for work. And so, especially during COVID, they were either hiring this dude that has the big boat to be the water taxi, or once the ice road froze, they could drive the 40 miles across the ice into the United States without crossing into Canada, or they would get somebody who worked in Canada or had to cross Canada for work. They would get them to pick supplies up for them during COVID, but under

normal circumstances, non COVID closure times, they travel by boat into the United States. They go the 65 miles into war road, Minnesota, which is still a very small town, or if they want to go somewhere bigger, like they want to eat at a Thai restaurant or, you know, whatever, you just want to go somewhere that's not a small town. Then you're going to be driving the two and a half hours to Winnipeg. Wow. What a unique community. That is amazing. That is like, that's so cool. I find it so interesting that like, they haven't been like drawn into moving somewhere that's like, you know, more glamorous and less isolated and cut off from the whole world. Like I find that that's like, you know, more glamorous and less isolated and cut off

from the whole world. Like I find that that's so cool just to stick with that lifestyle. Yeah. Like I've been here, I grew up here. I love it here. I love the people who live there obviously absolutely love the wilderness. Otherwise you wouldn't live there. There's nothing in it for you. If you don't absolutely love the lifestyle, if you don't absolutely love the wilderness living aspect of it. And if you don't love your community, you wouldn't stay there. Right. I feel like it's just one big family, probably like, I don't know if everyone gets along, but it's probably such a, like a tight knit community. It's like 35 households. So it's about a hundred ish people, 110 people, 35 households. So you wouldn't 1000% know every single person that lives there.

And I would imagine most people get along pretty well or you wouldn't stay. You know what I mean? In the 90s, they did threaten to secede. I was going to ask that. I was like, are they like Texas? Can they secede? That American obsession with secession, it's an annoyance to me. I know. That's why I'm mentioning it. I know it's like every three days, it's like whales,

bunny rabbits, and then Texas cannot secede. Right. So they threatened to secede and join Manitoba. And mostly it was a publicity stunt. And the reason they were threatening to secede and join Manitoba. And mostly it was a publicity stunt. And the reason they were threatening to secede, I would argue that none of them actually want to be Canadian. They like the fact that they are Americans enduring incredible hardship to live there. You know what I mean? Like that's part of their identity. But it was a publicity stunt because the government of Ontario had enacted policies that allowed people who were staying at resorts on the Canadian side of Lake of the Woods to fish and to take their catch and to eat it, etc. But it prohibited anybody who was staying at one of the U.S. resorts from fishing in Canadian waters and keeping their catch. And the Canadian side is where all the good fishing is. That's where the 14,000 islands are, where all

fish like to hide among the structures. Right. So most of the people who stay there want to cross over into Canadian waters. Technically, it's easy to do. You don't have to do a border crossing to cross into Canadian waters and that it is permitted to fish there, but Canada did not permit you to keep your catch. If you were staying in an American resort, this was labeled the walleye wars. Walleye are delicious fish and they are only in parts of the United States and Canada. And they're very like what they refer to in Minnesota as good eating fish. It's good eating. Hey, oh, those walleyes are such good eating. They're very like buttery, mild flavored fish that people love to eat. So anyway, they dubbed that conflict, the walleye wars. And one of the representatives from Minnesota that represented that portion of the state introduced a bill in front of Congress to allow them to secede to Canada.

And the native tribes who control most of the land there are like, excuse us, you did not consult us about whether we would like to give away our land to Canada. Just proof positive that humans will find anything to fight about. Right. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill. I mean, that's like. Humans will literally invent a war about fish. Fish, isn't it? It is good eating. I mean, you know, it's delicious. It's absolutely worth going to war over. No, it obviously wasn't an armed conflict, but it just amused me that like, we have nothing else to do. So I guess we'll invent a conflict

that we want to get a lot of media attention for. The congressperson was like, well, you know, I didn't really mean it. It wasn't like a real bill. It was just to like, try to get Canada to change their policies because it's not fair to the U.S. resorts. So Canada did change their policies. Canada lost the walleye war. Yeah. Canada, I was going to say, you know, Canada was not going to win that war anyway, no matter which way it went, but okay. Canada probably apologized. Canada got, God bless Canada. I love Canada, but speaking of apologizing, I just have to jump back

for one second. One of the cultural things in Canada, I don't know if they have this in Minnesota, but in Canada, I found if you're like in a grocery store, and you walk too close to someone, you apologize. Like that's in America. I walked by someone in a store. I was like, oh, sorry. And they looked back at me and they're like, but you didn't do anything. I was like, oh. I invaded your space. Oh, right. So then after living here for a while, I was back in Toronto a few years ago and I was walking in the supermarket and I walked by a lady and our carts were like six inches away from each other.

And she's walking by me and she goes, oh, sorry. And like reflexively, I'm just like, you, you didn't do anything. Like, why are we apologizing? So Canada probably apologized after they lost. I'm sure they did. I've no doubt that Canada apologized. One of my very good friends is from London, Ontario, and she absolutely does say sorry. And she absolutely does say sorry. And one of the other language differences I noticed is that you go to university, you do not go to college. Right. And you would also go visit somebody in hospital.

Really? I'm going to go visit him in hospital. So I've heard people say that also. I think in Toronto they say in the hospital, but I think more like when you go more west they say in hospital. So I've heard people say that also. I think in Toronto, they say in the hospital, but I think more like when you go more West, they say in hospital. In hospital. He's going to university, like to university, not to the university or not to college, to university, which for sure, it's just a, it's just a difference between the styles of English, but that and all the extraneous vowels. Yes. All the use in color. And also one of the times that my husband and I were traveling through Canada, we were listening to the radio in the car we were in. And it was like, you're listening to Z105. It's like, what in the heck is Z? Nobody ever taught me when I was growing up in Minnesota that the last letter of

the alphabet is Z in Canada and I was like what that is ridiculous yeah it's a point of contention definitely Americans Americans are not fond of it no no why is it Z there's absolutely no reason for that I don't know but i think i think in the uk also they say zed oh they do yeah absolutely and the reason we don't is because of no webster but that's a different story for another podcast but zed 105 i was like what is happening anyway i like to tease my canadian friend that i'm going to open a restaurant called Zed's house of flavorful poutine. And it's going to, it's going to have a bunch of extraneous vowels in the name. Poutine is also not a dish that is popular in the United States.

No, I know. I, you know, it only became popular. I think, I think it originated in Quebec. I mean, hence the name poutine, which sounds like French. I think I only heard about it when I was like maybe 10, 11, 12 years old. Like it's, it wasn't like a staple. It's not like a cultural food that like it has become like all of a sudden it's everywhere. Suddenly all Canadians love poutine, just like all Americans love craft beer, except not really, but that's like the stereotype. Right. Right. Oh my goodness. Anyway, sorry, Canada. Sorry that we have this piece of land

that's attached to Manitoba. Sorry that your attachment to the British meant that you had a bad cartographer. You have to put up with Angle Inlet, Minnesota. See, I think we say in Minnesota is, I'm going to sneak by you. Did they say that in Toronto? Like you're like, oh, I'm i'm gonna sneak by you did they say that in toronto like you're like oh i'm just gonna sneak by you here oh i think we say maybe my my dad is like born

and bred like real torontonian like like my grandmother was actually born in toronto her parents came over after world war one um they lived in poland and then the way that they say it over is like they came back, you know, from the war missing limbs. So they were like, well, time to leave. So they moved to Canada. My grandmother was born there right after the first World War.

And then my father is like, you know, one of the old time in the Jewish community. It's like he's one of the old time Torontonians. So he says stuff like that, like all those language differences. Like he says a bunch of weird things like pasta and like, yeah, he says pasta. He says a lot of these like, uh, anyway, so he might say that like sneak by. That's the thing he might say. If you go to a wedding and you're like,

you know how the chairs are always real close together and you gotta go get up and you gotta scoot by the chairs, you know, like you're trying to like slip into these small spaces or you're like in a seat at a stadium and you have to like get by all the other people. You know what I mean? Where they have to stand up for you or whatever you would say like, Oh, sorry, just got to sneak by you here. And that is standard that to this day, you have to sneak by. I'm going to sneak by you. So when I noticed, yeah, I am sneaking by. Don't pay any attention to me. I have snuck past. I can't tell you how many times as a wedding photographer, I have said to wedding guests, where I'm trying to like dart in and out of all the different tables, whatever. Oh,

I'm just going to sneak by here. I'm just going to sneak past. Don't worry about me. I'm just going to sneak by you. Completely unnoticed. I'm six feet tall and I have snuck past. You did not even notice my presence. I love it. Okay. Anyway. Yes. Uh, ankle inlet in the northwest angle trying to sneak by canada unnoticed but now we've called them out now everybody else knows about the approximately 110 americans living in an exclave in the middle of a lake near manitoba and ontario so cool i don't know it's a new word because I think exclave is a new one. I like that word. There are a number of exclaves in between the United States and Canada. There's like five or six of them. One in Vermont, one in Washington state, a couple in Alaska,

Minnesota. Exclaves. Not an enclave, an exclave. Right. Well, tell everybody where they can find you so that they can look at your super beautiful family portraits like I did. Sure. So I'm not on Facebook. I am not on TikTok. I am strictly Instagram. And I'm old school. Like I don't do reels and video. It's all stills, believe it or not. But you can find me on Instagram at the Shuttery, T-H-E underscore, Shuttery, S-H-U-T-T-E-R-Y. Come on over and check it out. I'm glad to have met you. And thank you so much for sitting with me until midnight.

Yeah, yeah. Always a pleasure. Definitely. Thanks, Raffi. Super awesome. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if

you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast, or maybe leave me a rating or review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.