TOWNSHIP 12 RANGE 17 – When Camille Beaulieu, 87, turned off the electricity to his remote Maine home, he couldn’t legally check to see that the electricity actually was turned off.

That’s because the electricity box is in Canada, while his house is in Maine.

“My father shut the power off, but to be legal, he couldn’t [walk across the border to] see if the electricity was literally off,” Beaulieu’s son, Barry Beaulieu, 47, said recently.

“You’d have to drive 60 miles all the way around to see if the lights were off, or have two people, one on the U.S. side and one on the Canadian side, to check it out.

“But one person would still have to drive 60 miles to get back home, instead of walking a couple hundred yards,” he said.

Camille and Barry Beaulieu, both U.S. citizens, stopped living in their Maine home last year, when increased security along the Maine-Quebec border reached their town.

The Beaulieus and other residents who live along the border say all they want to do is live normal lives.

That, however, has become increasingly difficult since the U.S. government tightened security along the border after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Department of Homeland Security is implementing a system that meets a 1986 law requiring people enter the U.S. only through staffed and open border ports and stations, according to a department official.

Cement barricades have been placed on the road between Lake Frontier and Township 12 Range 17 to block the unmanned port of entry.

Local residents have appealed to U.S. Sen. Susan Collins for aid, but there has been no change in the border status since November, according to her office on Thursday.

When the Beaulieus still lived in the house, they typically crossed the border several times a day for food and other necessities, church services and social events. Canadian residents crossed the border into the unorganized township to provide personal care services in the Beaulieus’ home.

Now, because of the barricades, whenever they leave Lake Frontier for their home, the father and son have to drive 60 miles over poorly maintained woods roads instead of the 500 yards from the border to their home.

Canadians who provide personal care services would face the same drive if the Beaulieus still resided in the Maine residence.

Barry Beaulieu, who became a paraplegic five years ago when he was injured in a logging accident, said the house has been in the family for many years and that he and his father are having a hard time maintaining it.

“The thing is, the house is getting old, and we can’t make any repairs because it’s not convenient to drive back and forth,” he said. “And we can’t easily bring someone over that can do the work either.”

The father and son now live in a Lake Frontier apartment during the summer because of the accessibility issues related to their Maine home.

The two men, who are wintering in Bingham with family, said that the government needs to make an exception for them and other residents who live along the United States-Canada border.

Officials with the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection were unable to respond to questions about the border issue by press time.

Last November, however, an official said the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection had reached its limit in terms of any resources that could be expended for the Maine-Quebec border towns.

For a few months last year, the Beaulieus were cut off completely from access to their home.

The house lies between the port of entry, on the Canadian side, and, on the Maine side, a gate controlled by a Canadian lumber company that no longer is used.

With cement barricades on one side of their house and a locked gate on the other side, the father and son had no way to get to their home.

The Beaulieus have proposed moving the cement blocks in front of the gate so that they can cross the border, but so that no one else can get more than 500 yards within the United States.

Barry Beaulieu said even if the proposal isn’t the right answer, the situation requires an exception and solution.

“Anything you want to do, as soon as you go out of your yard, it’s Quebec,” he said. “There has to be an exception with us. It’s the only way we can live.”