BANGOR – Jonathan Daniels, president and CEO of Eastern Maine Development Corp., is not Canadian.

He was born and raised in upstate New York, growing up in the city of Geneva on Seneca Lake, and now lives in Bangor with his wife and children.

But not being Canadian hasn’t stopped Daniels from taking a keen interest in activities that take place north of the border. In fact, Daniels is so interested in what is happening in Canada that he has added a formal position with a Canadian business organization to his list of official duties.

Daniels, 37, recently became the first U.S. citizen to sit on the board of directors for the Atlantic Provinces Chambers of Commerce since the organization’s founding 110 years ago, and he is expected to become the board’s president within the next few years.

“So far, it’s been very good,” Daniels said last week while sitting at his desk in EMDC’s new office overlooking Kenduskeag Stream in downtown Bangor. “It can be a little interesting.”

Daniels, who majored in international politics at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., said serving on APCC’s board was not his idea, even though he has worked previously as Bangor’s director of business and economic development and as director of the Eastport Port Authority. The concept was the brainchild of Neville Gilfoy, president and publisher of Progress Communications Corp. in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

As an economic development official, however, Daniels is quick to heartily praise the idea. He said that as a U.S. member of APCC’s board, he can help business leaders on either side of the border learn about social and governmental practices on the other side. By promoting the greater region, a contiguous area sometimes called Atlantica that includes most of four U.S. states and five Canadian provinces, northern New England and the Maritimes can boost their position in the global economy.

“There needs to be a change in our mind-set for how we conduct business,” Daniels said. “Instead of looking at ourselves as the end of the road, we’re really the center of a larger marketing region.”

Jim Quigley, vice president of Bank of Montreal in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and current president of the APCC board, said last week that the idea of expanding APCC’s vision by inviting a U.S. citizen to sit on the board arose a few years ago. Quigley said he, Gilfoy and others saw that if the board was to promote the idea of Atlantica as a commercial region, they needed to have a U.S. citizen involved with APCC’s governance. Gilfoy is on a trip to Africa and could not be reached for this story.

“Whether there’s a border there or not really doesn’t matter,” Quigley said. “We all have the same kind of economy.”

Besides linking up businesses across the border, there are initiatives on either side to help facilitate trade between Canada and the United States. Officials in both countries are working on a plan to prescreen passengers in Halifax as they board planes bound for Bangor, so after the passengers land they can simply walk off the plane, claim their bags and head off to wherever they are going.

Canadian development officials firmly support the construction of an east-west, limited access highway that would link Calais to Watertown., N.Y., in part because of an anticipated increase in container ship traffic to and from Halifax, Canada’s busiest eastern port, according to Quigley. Many modern ships are too big to fit through the Panama Canal, he said, and Halifax currently is the only port in the eastern United States and Canada deep enough to handle these larger vessels.

“Halifax is getting busier,” Quigley said. “We need to make sure it continues and that transportation through Halifax grows.”

Eventually, officials with APCC would like to see it evolve into the Atlantica Chamber of Commerce, according to Quigley. The group now serves as a federation of approximately 130 provincial and local chambers of commerce and other trade organizations throughout Atlantic Canada.

“If you don’t start talking about it and putting it forward, it’s never going to happen,” he said.

Wade Merritt, director of Maine International Trade Center’s Bangor office and a specialist on trade with Canada, said last week that Daniels’ role with APCC makes sense in light of the rising amount of trade across the border.

In 1988 Maine exported $805 million worth of goods to the entire world, Merritt said. In 2004, the most recent year from which figures are available, Maine exported $825 million worth of goods to Canada alone.

Canada’s exports into Maine are worth much more – $4.7 billion in 2004 – because Canada includes all the oil and natural gas that is shipped into the United States through Maine in its export figures, according to Merritt. Maine itself consumes only a small part, maybe 15 percent, of those imported goods.

Looking east for opportunities makes sense for Maine’s many small businesses because they would face more intense competition from bigger firms in the larger Boston market, Merritt said. The metropolitan areas of Saint John, New Brunswick, and Bangor each have populations of roughly 150,000 people, he said, and so make for good entry points for small local companies looking to expand across the international boundary between the two cities, which are only 31/2 hours apart by car.

Daniels’ role with APCC adds to the level of interaction between Maine and New Brunswick officials, according to Merritt. There also is increasing cooperation between the Bangor and Saint John municipal governments, between Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise Saint John, and between Saint John Board of Trade and Eastern Maine Development Corp.

“It’s definitely valuable to have him in that position,” Merritt said.

Daniels said he represents both the U.S. perspective in general and more specifically four Maine groups that are members of APCC. Besides EMDC, Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce, Bangor International Airport and Ellsworth Area Chamber of Commerce all have joined the Maritime organization.

“I’m there representing Maine’s interest and our members’ interests,” he said. “Selfishly, we expect to get something out of it.”

Daniels acknowledged that during his first trip to Canada as an APCC board member, he found it slightly odd to be the only U.S. citizen in the room.

“You get a little bit of ribbing,” he said of being the board’s only non-Canadian. “I take a lot of humor in it.”

Not all the interaction is jovial. Daniels said he sometimes finds himself playing the role of ambassador when a fellow APCC member, frustrated with U.S. policy or cultural differences, turns to him for an explanation.

“We’re close, we share a border, but there are differences,” Daniels said. “[APCC] took a leap of faith by bringing in an American on board. We knew there were going to be some bumpy times.”

Quigley also acknowledged the cultural differences on either side of the border, but said APCC’s Canadian board members did not need to be convinced to give a U.S. citizen a seat at their table. Business people tend to have broad visions when it comes to promoting commerce and trade, he said.

“I’m sure if I dug deep enough out there I’d find a naysayer,” he said.

For a U.S. citizen who has never lived in Canada, Daniels has an “absolutely wonderful” understanding of Canadian cultural and business issues, according to Quigley. He said the APCC board plans to have Daniels eventually rise through the regular progression of the board to become its president but likely will have to amend the organization’s bylaws and regulations to make it permissible.

“Our plan is for now to have that happen,” Quigley said.

According to Daniels, one aspect about America he has had to explain to some of his Canadian counterparts is how U.S. tax systems function.

Another is the U.S. federal election cycle. Unlike Canada, the United States cannot sporadically hold federal elections when certain parliamentary conditions are met, but instead is required to hold them at regularly timed intervals.

Daniels said that in return he has learned a lot about Canada from other members of APCC.

“I’m learning more about how their political system works,” he said. “I learn something every time I go up there. I’m into Canada on a pretty regular basis.”

Still, despite these differences there also are many similarities on each side of the border, Daniels and other officials have said. Southeastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, northern New York and the northern New England states share similar climates, similar histories, and have access to the same type of natural resources, such as ocean fisheries and forests. Many residents, especially those who live near the border, have close relatives who live on the other side.

Besides the networking between Maine and Canadian officials, there are other publicized examples in Maine of cross-border exchanges with Canada.

Residents of Gouldsboro have fashioned an expensive replica of a ship’s bell the town has owned more than 130 years but is said to have played a role in negotiations that led to the founding of Canada in 1867. As a goodwill gesture to their northern neighbors, the town is deciding whether to donate the original or the near-perfect copy to Canadian authorities.

In Eastport, members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been known to march in the local Fourth of July parade. This is despite the fact that officers in Canada’s national police force are required to take an oath of loyalty to the Queen of England, the nominal monarch of Canada, and that the parade commemorates the United States’ bellicose Declaration of Independence from England in 1776.

Daniels pointed out that in the middle of Bangor, across Harlow Street from the new EMDC office, there is a lower-key but just as significant symbol of ongoing cross-border cooperation in the region.

“You have a U.S. flag, a Maine flag, and a Canadian flag flying right outside City Hall,” he said.