The esteemed Canadian geographer Ron Rees is fond of observing that rivers unite, they do not divide, communities. Professor Rees bases much of his perspective on the communities along the St. Croix River where it opens into Passamaquoddy Bay. The boundary between the United States and Canada runs down the middle of this river and bay, yet the communities on opposite sides have much more in common with each other than they do with neighboring communities in the nearby interior of either nation. The river gave those communities common commercial interests, built around fishing, shipbuilding, and maritime trade. The river also gave the communities a means of connection -- travel by boat – that made commerce across the water, and across the international border, much easier than commerce along bad roads to the interior of either nation. Even today, in a world of superhighways and airports, the physical geography of the Passamaquoddy Bay area still impedes road travel among coastal communities, as short distances across the water can only be accomplished on land with long drives to the head of a bay and equally long drives down the other side.

The maps and stories that follow a built on Rees’s thesis about the power of rivers to unite communities. In each location, a critical confluence of waterbodies can be seen to connect communities, both across the river and along its length, even while those same rivers are often used as political or administrative boundaries.