Armstrong hoping for Minnesota help on waterway issue

Local resident Harold “Bo” Armstrong is in Minneapolis today in hopes of bringing the state of Minnesota on his side in the fight over boundary waters.
Armstrong, along with Rainer resident Carl Brown, were charged in the summer of 1996 for taking a group of people on a scheduled boat tour through waters within Voyageurs National Park.
The Pride of the Rainy Lake is the only boat licensed to operate tours in park waters.
The pair were convicted and filed an appeal, which also was turned down. But Armstrong said yesterday there’s sure to be a second appeal, only this time he hopes to have the state on their side.
“We’re having a meeting with the attorney general, I guess, of the State of Minnesota,” he noted. “And the State of Minnesota claimed they never gave up any water rights to the park–that they still control the water.”
While there is no guarantee Minnesota will join the fight, Armstrong was fairly optimistic they would.
“I don’t see how they can’t get involved,” he said. “It seems to me that [Brown’s] been fighting the state’s battle for them. And now that he’s out of it, then the state is going to have to take over the battle themselves.”
Meanwhile, Ottawa hasn’t stepped in yet on Armstrong’s behalf, either. He said he was the told the federal government wouldn’t get involved as long as the case was in the U.S. court system.
Armstrong implied if the next appeal doesn’t go well, then the Canadian government might step in. But until then, he will keep fighting the park on what he feels is an important principle.
“I have no intention of taking any [more] tours,” he said. “The only tour I ever ran was the one where we challenged the park.
“That was the first and last one, and the only reason I did it was somebody told the park I was running tours and they threatened to seize my boat.
“So I came back to Canada after a meeting with them, and I looked into the treaties and found out that according to the treaties, they didn’t have any right to even question my right [to boat] along the park in border waters,” he argued.
“What the park is doing is not right according to the treaties and according to the State of Minnesota,” he concluded.