“We love you… but we won’t visit”: Trump’s tariff turns Canadian tourists away from US border town
Point Roberts, a tiny US town trapped below Canada, is facing economic collapse. Trump’s tariffs and insults toward Canada have scared off tourists and strained cross-border ties. Local businesses, from a tavern to a rubber duck museum, are shutting down. What was once a quirky destination is now a symbol of trade war fallout.
On a bike ride in Ocean Park, Surrey BC. The far left side of the peninsula is Point Roberts which is in the state of Washington even though it has no direct connection to the state.
“Who else is doing a landing?” asked the customs officer. Someone put their hand up as well as me. Someone else had just had their documents completed. Another person responded affirmatively to every single question asked, including the one about landing, because she was either confused or just wanted to beat the queue.
There wasn’t much of a queue to beat. The waiting room of the border crossing was the size of a living room. On the other side of a broad counter, half a dozen Canadian immigration officers sat around desks, quietly typing away as if they were doing any other job in the world.
* * *
A landing is a formal arrival in Canada. It marks your change of immigration status. Of course, to arrive in Canada, a person must first be outside of Canada. Fortunately, even though Canada is the second-largest country in the world, I was pretty near the edge of it.
I was near a very weird edge of it.
But before I tell you about Point Roberts, I should probably tell you about the corner of British Columbia called the Lower Mainland. Vancouver and its surrounding settlements are all within twenty miles of the United States, making a trip to a different country a very quick, even spontaneous affair. If you’re a Canadian, you can even cross this border without being photographed, fingerprinted or interviewed. Then, suddenly, you’re in the land of Different.
And the land of Different presents all sorts of possibilities, possibilities with substantial economic considerations. Gasoline is much cheaper. Electronics often are, too. International shipping and distribution are no longer relevant, as you become the importer of your own goods. And, in Washington State, firearms are readily available and long guns can be bought by American citizens without need of any permit, or by “non-immigrant aliens” if they spend a hundred and fifty dollars getting a state ID, a hunting license and an Alien Firearms License.
If I stayed in Washington State and got those documents could buy this Barratt rifle that takes bullets half an inch in diameter and which can hit targets almost two miles away. I just called the gun shop to check. They said yes.
The economic pull of the United States pulls Lower Mainlanders south a lot. They order packages to special shipping centers just across the border, then rush back with them. They fill up their cars. They head to shopping malls and department stores. They find everything that’s Different.
This can sometimes create weird problems for distribution. Why even bother to try to sell your product in the Lower Mainland when so many of the customers there are going to come to your country to get it? Why even ship it?
Americans are pulled the other way by the relative strength of their dollar. Right now, those dollars stretch 33% further. They drive up to eat, to camp, to study and to buy medications, including insulin. For someone in Seattle, it’s an easy day trip. For someone closer, it’s barely an afternoon.
As a European, I know that there’s a different version of this strange symbiosis in so many places. Scandinavia has its jokes about who is buying alcohol from which country. British travellers head to France for cheap wine and cigarettes. Italy and France... argue about fashion.
Weird things happen at borders. Weird things. It’s a weird thing to divide the world so arbitrarily and it creates weird behaviours. You walk a short distance and reality is suddenly different. Or you are different. Or both.
* * *
All this contributes to Point Roberts being a weird, weird corner of the world. History is geography, particularly if Britain is involved and, in a classically British move, the Oregon Treaty of 1846 drew a big and broad line across western North America at the 49th Parallel. It divided the continent between the UK and the US. Broad strokes are rarely wise and not only were there some subsequent arguments over who owned which islands (during which a pig was tragically killed), there was also the issue of a piece of land two miles long, jutting south out of Canada.
It’s ours, said the United States. We’re keeping it. They filled it up with soldiers and it became a stopping-off point for travellers headed elsewhere. It would be a little over fifty years before settlers had permission to make their homes there and then the 20th Century would see a gradual influx of immigrants from… Canada.
Point Roberts is full of Canadians. Not completely, but significantly. They own holiday homes. They own boats. They are visiting to collect packages. They are visiting to buy gasoline. They are visiting for the summer. Meanwhile, the Americans there have no hospital, no dentist, no public transport and no high school. They have a lighthouse. They have an airfield. They have a single border crossing through which all traffic must come and go. They assume you’ll have a car.
I walked across it, but not before a man on a bicycle beat me to it, pedalling off into the United States to never be seen again. A sign told pedestrians to follow little painted footprints up to an office door and a man inside asked why I was visiting his country. I had to tell him that I wasn’t and to kick me out.
* * *
Flagpoling is the act of leaving Canada and returning to validate a new visa or, in my case, Permanent Residence documents. I could, in theory, also book an appointment somewhere in Canada to validate my documents but the waiting time for this is long and if you want to be seen within sixty days you must classify as urgent.
People flagpole at the US border all the time. They flagpole at Peace Arch, the fancy monument between British Columbia and Washington. They flagpole at Niagara Falls. They flagpole at Lewiston, Ontario or Sault Ste Marie.
The thing is, all those border crossings are busy. They’re full of tourists and travellers and guards and security. In Point Roberts, one bored man in an office stamped my passport, gave it back to me and told me to walk back around the small building he worked in to the other small building that the Canadians worked in. His colleagues talked about a party that was happening later.
I looked south. A long, bare road ran all the way down to the sea. There were no barriers anywhere. I could just… walk off. The man continued to be bored. Do you need to escort me, I asked him?
“Do you need to be escorted?” he asked. “Are you a danger?”
I walked out. I was in the United States and there was nothing between me and the rest of it. There was, I guess, a chance for the bored man to pursue me if I dashed south. There was also only two miles of land for me to flee too. The range of a high caliber rifle round.
There were hardly any cars. There were hardly any people. There was hardly any anything, just like there never has been.
* * *
I re-entered the United States later that day and I can tell you that Point Roberts has a thousand residents, three places to eat, a couple of gas stations, no sidewalks and a shitty fisherman statue that looks like a budget Gandalf. Most license plates I saw were Canadian. The most developed and impressive structure is a marina. There were hardly any shops. There were hardly any facilities. There was hardly any anything, not even that cyclist, just roads leading into trees and quiet, sleeping houses.
A few more of those are being built. I bet they’ll be sold to Canadians.
While I was there, the sun went down. It plunged into the Pacific and the sky was all dark grey clouds and the distant yellow mottling of tankers, ferries and island towns. I saw a working lighthouse, which I have never before seen in my life, and I discovered it was little more than scaffolding and a lamp. I didn’t care. I’d never seen a lighthouse in person before.
I’d been sick that morning. I hadn’t slept much because I had been expecting to go to Point Roberts, which I’d never done before, to flagpole, which I’d never done before, then hopefully complete my Permanent Residence process, which I’d never done before. When I’d started that process, I was told it might take as little as six to nine months. It had been more than two years and I had received two rejection letters, as well as an email from my lawyer saying this was a big mistake.
My mind had turned everything over and then my stomach had decided to do that, too.
* * *
But as I had crossed straight back into Canada after that flagpoling, nothing at all was happening. Everyone, everywhere was bored. A Canadian border guard asked my why I was entering his country. He scribbled “PR” on a slip of yellow paper that was mostly full of questions about what firearms I might have, maybe which states they were from or what licenses I held.
British Columbia is weird not only because of its ongoing economic symbiosis with Washington State, nor because of the curious exclave of Point Roberts, but also because it cuts off Alaska from the rest of the US. A lot of people like to hunt in Alaska. A lot of people try to bring their guns from other parts of the United States into Alaska through British Columbia. British Columbia doesn’t really like this but it does allow it if those guns and their method of transport fit very, very specific criteria.
It’s the complete opposite to asking for ninety days residence and a twenty dollar hunting license.
Once again, I could apparently have just walked off, back into Canada, but instead I ended up in that living room-sized waiting area. A family sat to my left. Someone who did nothing but read a book the entire time sat to my right. A picture of the Queen of England was mounted dead ahead. That probably wasn’t necessary.
The officer asking who else was landing left the room and she was replaced by a grumpy man who called me up. I showed him what documents I had and he asked me what visa I had with me. I listed the items I’d been posted.
“I can see what you have,” he said. “I don’t need you to tell me what I can already see.” But I didn’t have anything else. Nobody had issued me anything the last time I’d entered Canada and nobody had really cared after hearing that I was waiting for these Permanent Residence documents to arrive, the ones I was laying out now.
The grumpy man made me sign and initial my papers, stating that I hadn’t suddenly committed crimes and forgotten to tell them or got married and forgotten to tell them or had children and forgotten to tell them and yes yes everything was spelled correctly. He took the papers away and joined the other people who were typing quietly at their desks.
A balding man walking in and asked everyone in the room if they’d been seen by an officer. Everyone said yes. “You’re all waiting so patiently?” He asked. “Thank you!”
He walked out.
For some reason, I took a picture of myself. I took it to see if I was suddenly different, but found no signs of this. The Queen stared at me. I sat there in silence. There was no noise and no smell and no movement. I played Peggle nervously on my phone, because at the US border they don’t like you to have your phone out. Nobody here gave a damn. A large TV showed soundless sports recaps.
The grumpy man called my name. He had stapled one of my documents into my passport on what was the shonkiest, most ramshackle way. It was infinitely folded. He had signed and dated it. I will never forget his name.
He gave me a piece of paper with numbers to call to register for health care and social security. My Permanent Resident card would be mailed to me and reach me hopefully two to three weeks after my landing date of September 21st, 2019.
