Minnesota’s Northwest Angle: Time to give it to Canada?

Minnesota, do we really need the Northwest Angle?  In the spirit of the season, can we just give it to Canada?

The Angle, for those of you who’ve not studied maps of Minnesota, is a spit of land in Lake of the Woods County that is north of the line that generally defines the U.S. border and belongs to the United States. It is — other than Alaska — the only U.S. territory north of the 49th parallel — i.e. the border.

You can get to it without crossing the border only by boat on Lake of the Woods.

“To understand the Northwest Angle, you have to understand fish,” former MPR reporter Amy Radil once said.

It is, historically speaking, a freak of bad surveying and good fishing.

Now, there’s an online campaign to give it to Canada. It’s part of the We the People website that requires 100,000 signatures to even get a sniff from the White House.

So far, 32 people have signed it since it was created on Sunday, the CBC reports. It will fail anyway; much of the land is in the trust of the Red Lake band of Ojibwe.

Change comes slowly to The Angle.

(h/t: Paul Tosto)