To cross the boundary, Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger passed through the clearcut swath that quite literally separates Montana from its Canadian neighbor to the north. Like an arrow-straight power-line easement, the strip cleaves through the heart of a wild ecosystem that resolutely fails to recognize political boundaries.
"But perhaps someday," Bohlinger said, "that strip will not be cut, allowing trees, shrubs, grasses and wildflowers to erase all boundary markers within the International Peace Park."
But the Rotarians were thinking substance as well as symbol when they hatched the peace park notion. Creating a multinational park with "dual citizenship" meant that many day-to-day activities could be coordinated - firefighting, for instance, as well as research, visitor tours, wildlife management, law enforcement and long-range planning.
Bohlinger, a Rotarian himself, traveled north to deliver a Saturday night address at the group's 73rd annual meeting, looking not only back at their successes but also ahead to new challenges.
"One could not ask for a more pristine setting," Bohlinger told the Rotary members. "I believe God himself spent a little more time when creating the majesty of Waterton-Glacier."
The Rotarians recognized the splendor of the landscape long ago, and worked toward the world's first peace park not only to promote good will, "but also to underscore the internationalism of wilderness and the cooperation required between nation states for its protection," he said.
The two parks, joined by the Peace Park designation, straddle the Continental Divide, where the Pacific Northwest meets the Great Plains meets the Northern Rockies meets the Southern Rockies. That confluence, Bohlinger said, "provides Waterton-Glacier with exceptionally rich biodiversity. Plant and animal species from prairie, forest, alpine and glacier ecosystems all reside within the parks' borders."
The flora and fauna that call the parks home, he said, care nothing of international lines - nor do the pollution and development pressures that now threaten the parks.
That fact, Rotarians say, was critical in their decision to create the Peace Park in the first place, enabling public land agencies to better manage transboundary resources.
In recent months, though, proposals have emerged to mine gold and coal, to drill oil and gas, and to capture coalbed methane from the Canadian Flathead. That river drainage lies just west of Waterton, and flows south to form Glacier's western boundary. Bohlinger's boss, Gov. Brian Schweitzer, has repeatedly expressed his concern regarding those developments, and recently met with British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell to begin talks on the matter.
It was against that backdrop that Bohlinger delivered his remarks Saturday evening, keying on transboundary agreements that, to date, have afforded a measure of cooperation in managing the region and its resources.
"And we share the future of this crown jewel together," Bohlinger said. "I want to thank Rotarians on both sides of the border, both those among us here today and those who have passed on, for the creation and support of the Peace Park.
"Our role as Rotarian ambassadors is to 'cement harmonious relations between old allies while providing a model for peace for nations around the world.' "
And cement they have.
Since the landmark 1932 Glacier-Waterton designation, peace parks have popped up all along the 49th parallel - Peace Arch, spanning Washington and British Columbia; International Peace Garden, growing between North Dakota and Manitoba; Campobello, blurring the line between New Brunswick and Maine. Farther north, Gold Rush International Park has created a boom between Alaska and the Yukon.
Rotarians have been busy along the southern border as well, at Big Bend and Maderas del Carmen and Canon de Santa Elenta. Their work there was supported by none other than the likes of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who once said, "I do not believe that this undertaking in the Big Bend will be complete until the entire park area in this region on both sides of the Rio Grande forms one great international park."
Rotarians have even established peace parks on borders where peace is not well known, on disputed borders between Costa Rica and Panama, and Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Even the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan provides for joint protection of coral reefs that sprawl across the two countries' border.
Similar solutions have been proposed for such unlikely places as the Golan Heights and the demilitarized zone between the Koreas, and peace parks have succeeded surprisingly well throughout war-torn Africa.
Given those achievements, Bohlinger sees an obvious place for Rotarians in the current debate regarding Montana's shared watershed with Canada.
"Once again," he said, "Rotarians from both sides of the border must work together to help build a new vision - one for the Crown of the Continent."
The Flathead River system sparkles brightly in that crown, he said, and "we need to protect this heartland from resource developments such as mining. Once this primitive basin is disturbed, the impacts to both parks could be significant."
Neither Bohlinger nor his Rotarian ancestors were the first to contemplate such things. Waterton's first superintendent, a man named John "Kootenai" Brown, once said of the Canadian wilderness preserve that "it seems advisable to greatly enlarge this park ... it might be well to have a preserve and breeding grounds in conjunction with the United States Glacier Park."
Perhaps that idea has finally come of age, with current proposals on the table to enlarge Waterton westward, into the Flathead, to finally match Glacier's breadth.
The combined parks, Bohlinger said, remain "a shared resource that we must preserve in its entirety, not only in the present but also for the future of our countries and citizens.
"We are international neighbors bound by the principles of friendship, fellowship and concern for one another.
"Let us nurture the peace and harmony between our two nations."
Reach reporter Michael Jamison at 1-800-366-7186 or at mjamison@missoulian.com
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