If you follow the link, you will find that the Globe and Mail, as usual, delivers a facile and misleading gloss on the historical background (and I quote):

"Narva has been on the front line, off and on, since the 15th century, when the Teutonic Knights built up a white-walled fortress on what is now the Estonian side of the river, and Ivan The Great marked the edge of Russian territory with a brown-walled castle just an arrow’s flight away in what is now the town of Ivangorod."

The following is closer to the truth:

"Narva has sat on the northern-most demarcation point of the long border between east and west european civilizations -- Orthodox and Catholic churches, Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, etc., etc. -- since April 5, 1242 when the ice of Lake Peipus some 50 kilometres to the south gave way under the heavily armoured Teutonic Knights and delivered to Alexander Nevsky one of the first and still most significant military victories in all of Russian history."

It is difficult to overstate the historical importance of that "Battle on the Ice" - It is as important to the Russians as the Battle of Hastings is to the British and arguably a foundational fact of modern day "Europe." The Narva frontier has been repeatedly overrun by armies and empires and political dominions, but the spiritual, cultural and civilizational border persists to this day.