A New Brunswick woman is getting a great deal of support from her community after learning she may not be a Canadian citizen.

Doris McKay was born 61 years ago in a hospital across the border in Maine, because it was the closest hospital to her family’s Saint-Leonard home, and returned to New Brunswick the following day.

“I have lived here all my life. I have worked here. I have children here. I married here, and I was only in the States to be born and left that next day,” Doris McKay told CTV on Friday.

McKay, who runs a hair salon in the basement of her Petitcodiac home, recently learned she may not be a Canadian citizen after applying for a passport.

Despite having a social insurance and medicare card, she was told she did not have proper proof of Canadian citizenship.

McKay says there are details required on the citizenship application that she doesn’t have, such as information about her grandparents, and there is no one in her family still living that can fill in the blanks.

She says her situation should be a cautionary tale.

“I am feeling that, there is going to be more like me here soon, because of the baby boomers that are going to go through the same red tape,” she told CTV News on Sunday.

Friends and community members who have known McKay for years say they are shocked the government wouldn’t consider her to be a Canadian citizen.

“I just can’t believe it,” says friend Pauline Howatt. “She has all the proof that she is Canadian through and through.”

“I mean, this is stupid, is what I think,” says friend Michael McCully. “But that’s the government for ya.”

McKay says she is speaking out about the issue because it could affect others who may not know it yet.

“To start right now, to investigate it, because when it comes Canada Pension time, Old Age Pension, they will not qualify,” she warns.

“I think that’s awful,” says friend Charlene McCully, who has known McKay for 30 years. “Just because she was born across the line, across the river, and came home the next day, it doesn’t make her an American citizen.”

But the U.S. government doesn’t consider McKay to be an American citizen either. A work Visa application for McKay’s children was denied in 2002 on the grounds that she isn’t a U.S. citizen.

That leaves McKay’s citizenship as ‘undefined.’ She plans to investigate her legal options soon.

With files from CTV Atlantic's David Bell