"that would see Northeastern American states like Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont split from the United States and form a confederacy with the Atlantic provinces in Canada." There are actually quite a few people in Quebec --or atleast Montreal-- who think Vermont should secede from the U.S. and form a new country with an independent Quebec. I've always been fond of the idea, but I've also wondered whether contemporary North America has managed to avoid many of the conflicts Europe has lived through over the centuries, by virtue of having so few countries. Look at a map of the world, [we] are something of an anomaly.