Machias Seal Island is the last piece of land officially contested between the United States and Canada

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The last piece of land officially contested between the United States and Canada, a rocky outcropping in the Bay of Fundy called Machias Seal Island, has popped up in the news this week, delighting us lovers of bizarre legal abstractions. New Brunswick Senator Jim Quinn, a retired Coast Guard sailor and a former boss of the port of Saint John, is raging and ranting over federal government inaction in the face of a grievous American offence against Canadian sovereignty.

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The disputed island is, for everyday purposes, under the control of the Canadian federal government, which operates it as a bird sanctuary. It might be the single best place in the Northern Hemisphere for ordinary folk to encounter puffins, and there is a 200-year-old lighthouse on the island that is still manned year-round by keepers as an assertion of Canadian sovereignty.

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