Between neighbours: What the International Peace Garden reminds us about Canada

The Peace Garden was born during the Great Depression. It was dedicated in 1932 by Canadians and Americans who gathered on dusty roads and hard benches to witness a radical promise: “We will not take up arms against one another.” The idea was as bold as it was romantic. Instead of fencing along their edges, these two countries planted begonias. The garden’s stone cairn straddles the border, as do its walkways, flower beds, and Peace Chapel. The latter is a quiet sanctuary etched with quotations about human dignity and global harmony. Here, the political boundary becomes a line in a shared landscape.

Recent years have made the mirror harder to look into. Tensions that once felt distant now land closer to home: trade wars, tariffs on steel and lumber, the destabilizing rhetoric of American populism. When President Trump mused about “absorbing” Canada, it may have been a throwaway line, but it rattled. It exposed how thin the veil of friendliness can be when power politics surface. Suddenly, the vision of eternal peace between neighbours felt more nostalgic than prophetic.

Security, too, has reshaped the border. Before 9/11, Canadians crossed the border with little more than a nod. Today, passport checks, biometric scans, and long lines are the norm. The Peace Garden still permits entry without official paperwork, but only on the way in. On the way out, visitors must report to customs. A technicality, yes, but one that signals the underlying shift: even the most idyllic symbols of openness are now flanked by procedure and precaution. Just this summer, a CBC story told of American officials blocking Canadian access to a road long travelled in southern Alberta. A quiet reminder that even well-worn paths between neighbours can be closed without warning.

In 2019, something shifted at the Peace Garden. The flag of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa was raised for the first time, and a quotation from Chief Red Thunder was engraved inside the Peace Chapel — the first Indigenous voice to appear there since its construction. These are not cosmetic changes. They acknowledge that this borderland has always been Indigenous land, and that the 49th parallel cuts across older geographies of kinship, trade and belonging. The garden, for all its aspirations, was built atop that story, not alongside it.

To recognize this is not to diminish the Peace Garden’s message, but to deepen it. The garden has always told a story about who Canadians want to be. The inclusion of Indigenous voices broadens that story. It forces us to ask: Can peace be celebrated without truth? Can we honour friendship without first accounting for fracture?

The Peace Garden can evolve, just as the nation it reflects will evolve.

What might a 21st-century Peace Garden look like?

Perhaps it becomes a space not just for commemorating past peace, but for imagining new forms of cooperation, on topics like climate, health, Indigenous sovereignty, and cross-border solidarity. As wildfires rage and watersheds grow more fragile, the two nations that planted this garden will need to work together not just to preserve friendship, but to preserve life. The garden’s conservatory already houses global plant life. Peace now demands interdependence in the face of shared precarity.

The truth is, the Peace Garden was always a kind of utopia. Not in the naive sense, but in the aspirational one. It asked us to imagine a world where borders did not have to wound, where the line between countries could become a seam. It is a reminder that peace is not a fixed condition. Rather, it is a verb. It is the act of tending to soil, to story, and to memory.

Recently, I watched two families — one Canadian, one American — standing near the floral clock in the heart of the Peace Garden. Their kids played together on the grass, unbothered by geopolitics. When one family offered to take a photo for the other, there was no hesitation. Just a smile. A hand-off. A thank you.

It was a fleeting moment. But it encapsulated what this garden still offers: a space where connection can feel effortless, where the border is present but not policed, and where the idea of neighbourliness retains its meaning. Not performative, but human.

Canada, at its best, is that. Curious. Cooperative. Not just proud of being peaceful, but committed to the work that peace requires.

In this way, the Peace Garden remains relevant. Not as a monument to a perfect past, but as a challenge to the present. A prompt. A provocation. Can we still live up to the ideals etched into that cairn?