‘You’re just feeling so emotional’: Americans reunite with loved ones as the Canadian border reopens

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This article was published 08/08/2021 (1189 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON—Monday morning, Jackey Deschamps’s kids got to hug their grandparents for the first time in a year and a half.

Deschamps is an American who lives in Tonawanda, N.Y. — near Buffalo — and her husband is from Fort Erie, Ont., where his parents live. In pre-COVID times, the border was no obstacle for their family — they often visited each other more than once a week. But that stopped abruptly in March 2020 when COVID restrictions went into place. Monday, as the border reopened for fully vaccinated Americans to enter Canada, they were finally reunited.

The experience tugged at Deschamps’s heart even more than she expected. “You kind of just get used to life the way it is and then coming over, you’re just feeling so emotional,” Deschamps says. Waves of nostalgia went through their car as her teenage children asked their father to remind them of once-familiar landmarks. “And then, of course, tears as my mother-in-law opened the door, everyone was hugging and crying. It was exciting.”

The Deschamps family were part of what’s expected to be an influx of U.S. travellers coming over the border this week, now that restrictions on fully vaccinated Americans have been relaxed.

John Adams is another person who has been waiting a long time for this. Monday morning, he was at the airport in Tampa, Fla., on his way to his summer home on Vancouver Island. “It feels like a halfway victory,” he says

Adams and his wife had their vaccination records and COVID test results in hand, and their information loaded in the app for customs officers. “So far, everything is working wonderfully.”

An American citizen originally from Tennessee, Adams spends his winters in Florida and typically spends summers at the home he owns in British Columbia. As border restriction wore on this year, he grew increasingly impatient — and was outspoken about it. Through social media he connected with other Americans separated from their families, friends or properties by the border closure and began buying ads in Toronto, Vancouver and other media markets lobbying Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to allow them in.

As of Monday morning at midnight, their wish was finally granted. By Monday evening Adams expected to land in Canada. “I have a thank you ad that I’m going to run,” he says, “but I’m not going to call the TV stations and order it until I’m on the other side.”

There are lots of people similarly grateful this week. Bruce Heyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada, says that for many of the 500,000 Americans who live in Canada, the chance to have visitors from home is huge. “Psychologically, emotionally, many of these people have been separated since spring of 2020, disconnected from family and loved ones,” he says. “It’s an important day for many of those families.”

Deschamps says that when they arrived at the border crossing at the Peace Bridge Monday morning there were no cars ahead of them, and the process took about five minutes. “Oh my god, it was so easy. We were expecting the worst,” she said.

Reports shortly after midnight and through Monday morning were that the lineups at the border weren’t producing the kind of massive backlogs that might have been anticipated. In the initial influx, wait times at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo and the crossing in Lewiston were reported to be up to an hour — significantly longer than they have been through the pandemic, but not unusual in normal times. By late morning Monday wait times at the Maine/New Brunswick border were reported to be three hours, and at the Minnesota/Manitoba border it was up to seven hours. But most other crossings tracked on the Canadian government’s website, including those in Buffalo and Detroit, were reporting wait times of no more than 20-30 minutes.

A settlement reached this weekend in a labour dispute with Canadian border guards helped reduce potential backlogs. The network of Americans Adams connected to through his crusade reported smooth crossings.

“I got calls last night at 10 minutes after the border opened from two different people,” Adams says. One contact had crossed the border in Buffalo, one at the Peace Arch in Washington State. “I asked both, if you had to rate your border crossing experience on a scale of one to 10, how would you rate it? And both of them rated it a 10 out of 10.”

And while there are plenty of Americans crossing who’ve waited a long time to visit, the volume this week might still be expected to be a trickle compared with the number of tourists who typically flood over during the summer season. Jim Diodati, the mayor in Niagara Falls, Ont., told The Canadian Press Monday his town isn’t yet counting on the U.S. dollars that help fuel its economy. “I think it’s going to be gradual, like a dimmer switch, because for day trippers, it’s an awful lot of work and hoops to jump through in order to be able to cross that border,” he said. “So I’m not anticipating an influx of American tourists right off the hop.”

That type of tourism will likely have to wait until a later stage in the pandemic — possibly much later. Also waiting are Canadians hoping to cross into the U.S. at land borders — the U.S. government has so far not announced plans for a reciprocal reopening. (Adams, for his part, has shifted his advocacy to the Biden administration, which he says needs to be “shaken by its shoulders” to allow Canadians across land borders.)

But for many who’ve long waited for this day, the relatively smooth crossing and the relief of finally seeing those they love were reasons to celebrate. From her in-laws’ house in Ontario, Deschamps summed up the mood: “We’re just so super excited right now.”

Edward Keenan is the Star’s Washington Bureau chief. He covers U.S. politics and current affairs. Reach him via email: ekeenan@thestar.ca