North Portal, Sask. and Portal, N.D. are really only two separate towns on paper. Face-to-face, the border communities move, play, gather, debate and work as one, friendships stronger than politics.

You can’t tell the difference.

Looking south while sitting on Township Road 10, a grid road running along the 49th Parallel dividing Canada and the United States, you can’t tell the difference between the neighbouring countries.

But they exist.

There’s nothing to delineate which country is which, other than the names of respective federal departments on the sides of large buildings along the border check stop in Portal, North Dakota and North Portal, Saskatchewan.

Outside the town, small obelisks denote which side is which, but spanning both sides — with no regard to a line on a map or the

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