ESTCOURT, Maine — Yes, this is the United States, but mostly it's Canadians around here. They speak French, spend Canadian dollars, watch French-Canadian TV and use phones with the 418 Quebec area code.
The American hamlet of Estcourt, pop. 4, is more like a neighborhood where the Quebec town of Pohenegamook, pop. 3,097, touches Maine's North Woods. Canadians pass into Estcourt to get to logging jobs in the woods, to pick fiddleheads or blueberries in season, to visit friends.
Doing so, they cross the all-but-invisible border dividing the United States from Canada.
For as long as anyone can remember, nobody gave much thought to the border -- but they're giving it a lot of thought now. And many are worried that life here may never be the same. Crossing the border now can turn your life upside-down, as it did Michel Jalbert's.
The border parallels Frontier Street, the only real road hereabouts, and cuts through people's bedrooms, kitchens and backyard gardens. It crosses the dirt driveway leading to Ouellet's Gaz Bar, a two-pump station where Canadians go for cheap fuel -- and where, last Oct. 11, two U.S. Border Patrol agents had set up surveillance.
That afternoon, Jalbert was heading home after a hard day's work clearing brush in the Canadian woods. He steered his green 1984 Jeep Cherokee under a railroad pass to Frontier Street, hung a right and then a left to the Gaz Bar.
He ignored a sign to check in at the U.S. Customs office, which was closed at the time.
A stream of vehicles with Canadian plates lined up for gas that is 20 to 30 cents a gallon cheaper than across the border. Jalbert pumped his, paid with $15 in Canadian money and told the attendant, "Merci." Then he headed out the station's driveway.
Ten feet of dirt separated Jalbert from Canada when he was stopped.
Border Patrol agents Christopher Cantrell and Pedro Hernandez had been watching from behind the gas station. To reach Ouellet's, they had driven over private dirt logging roads through the North Woods of Maine.
They stopped Jalbert apparently at random, then spotted the gun between the seats. It was partridge-hunting season in Canada, and Jalbert had a .20-gauge shotgun in hopes of bagging a bird. He didn't get one.
He said he was just a hunter. His pregnant wife and 5-year-old daughter were waiting at home, half a mile away in Pohenegamook.
But to the agents, he was an illegal alien in possession of a firearm.
