Why Are Canadians Avoiding the United States?
For the same reason tourists don't like visiting North Korea
The United States has some phenomenal natural landscapes.
From the East Coast to the West, you can see a wide range of ecosystems, from boreal forests and mountain ranges all the way to desert sands. The Grand Canyon, the Appalachian Trail, the beautiful open plains — you name it, the U.S. has got it.
And of course, there’s also the history! The U.S. has a spectacular set of fine historical destinations, such as the White House, the National Mall and the Smithsonian, the Boston Freedom Trail, the Mesa Verde National Park, and many many others.
I love New England. I’m from the Canadian side of the Appalachian mountains, so the autumnal mountain forests and old stone walls feel just like home. In early fall or the depths of winter, it’s gorgeous and cozy, and I miss it terribly.
The architecture alone makes it worth the visit!
I won’t be seeing it again for quite a while. If ever.
I am not alone; Canadians, as well as tourists from other countries around the globe, are avoiding the U.S. in favour of alternatives. Some are visiting us in the North, while others are making the trip to Europe to explore the vistas of Spain, the olive groves of Italy, and Greece.
While I see many U.S. tourist specialists and business owners listing a variety of causes for their dip in revenue — ranging from bad weather to the exchange rate — the simple fact is that they’re entirely out of touch.
The real reason is simple. We’re scared, and we’re angry.
Once upon a time, the United States was a relatively safe place to visit and explore.
There was the occasional mass shooting at a major event, but otherwise it was about the same degree of danger as you’d get visiting most major cities around the world.
You might be robbed if you were unlucky, or injured in an accident, but the government or law enforcement would largely be on your side as a visitor. You could reliably expect to be treated fairly and have a nice trip at any number of vacation spots around the country.
I certainly felt safe enough to travel alone, by bus, both at night and during the day. I did it several times a year and never had a problem.
But now, as a tourist, I wouldn’t dare. The risk of running into problems at the border might be small — since I’m a white, straight-passing cis Canadian woman — but the end result of those troubles could be dire.
I’ve heard one too many horror stories of people in ICE detainment being denied their medications while locked up. I can’t go weeks without my thyroid medication.
I’d get extremely sick. It could worsen my disease to go unmedicated that long.
The conditions inside ICE facilities are said to be inhumane, including a lack of medical treatment, poor food, and little chance of showering or maintaining personal hygiene.
ICE kidnappings are becoming more common by the day, with more and more reports of masked strangers with little identification showing up at random locations, grabbing people who aren’t white-passing and shoving them into the backs of vans.
The racial profiling is extreme, with many American citizens being snatched up just because they ‘look like immigrants’ and are therefore deemed appropriate targets for detainment.
They’re stuck there for however long it takes for them to prove their status. Assuming that ICE agents believe them and don’t just lose them in the system.
There have even been reports of ICE agents turning up at elementary schools, claiming to have the support of parents and guardians and permission to remove children from class.
They’ve graduated from snatching adults; now they’re looking to steal children while their parents are at work.
So, that’s part of what has so many of us scared to visit.
Now let’s talk about the anger.
Canadians in particular have many reasons to be royally pissed off at the United States government right now. Not so much the average American citizen, mind you — most of y’all are cool. But your government? Your President?
Big barrel of yikes.
Where do I even start? The 51st State rhetoric? The tariffs? The ‘Governor Trudeau’ comments? The threats of annexation via economic destruction? The insults, calling us ‘nasty’ and saying we’re not a viable country and we shouldn’t exist?
The repeated claims that the United States doesn’t need anything from us?
There is so much bullshit packed into all of these statements that I don’t have the energy to unravel it all. Suffice to say, our once-bulletproof relationship with our southern neighbour has been utterly shattered.
And it goes further than all of this. It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire Republican party.
Only recently, Maine’s Governor was here in the Maritimes begging us to come for a visit and provide money to her state’s struggling tourism economy. She repeatedly claimed she could keep us safe — a lie, as the border is under federal control, not hers — and that we would be welcomed.
A few months later, a Republican Senator from Maine apparently decided to send his own message to Canada: a rambling, degrading, ridiculously offensive letter extending an ‘invitation’ for our western provinces to join the ‘last great hope for the world.’
It reads like a cultist’s fanatical religious ramblings. It takes for granted that our people want to join the U.S., and lists a frankly outrageous set of conditions — as if any of us asked what it would take!
Thankfully, a Conservative MLA who got a copy of the letter spoke for all of us when he extended a heartfelt, slightly more diplomatic middle finger than I would have given.
Suffice to say, Canadians do not want to join the United States. We are not yearning to lose our healthcare, our quality of life, our education standards nor our robust democracy and voting rights.
We don’t want to lose our reproductive choices, or our right to live freely and authentically as we are — and we don’t want our LGBTQ+ community to suffer injustice and discrimination at the hands of a tyrant.
We certainly don’t want ICE roaming our streets, stealing our neighbours and threatening our communities.
We’re happy as an independent, sovereign nation. We would rather stay away from a country ruled by people who want to make us their enemy, and keep our money going to our own people, or our allies who actually treat us like genuine friends.
Tourists aren’t coming to the U.S. because the U.S. is no longer what it used to be.
It’s a nation in decline. A nation on the verge of collapsing under its own weight as it demonizes and targets its own citizens, attacks its former allies and makes a mockery of all of the virtues it once claimed to hold dear.
The magical promise of freedom, the American dream, that majestic shining city on a hill, is over.
It vanished when hatred supplanted love for thy neighbour.
You can’t spell ‘hatred’ without a red hat.
I love New England. I love the gorgeous ocean views of Massachusetts. I love the old stone walls, the steep hills and mountain vistas, the deep woods and the fine historic towns.
I love Connecticut, with its simplicity and its sights and sounds, grown familiar and dear to me after years of visiting my partner’s family there.
I love Washington D.C., with its incredible history and astonishing monuments. I love the Smithsonian — or what it used to be, without the pressure of a government obsessed with obliterating the reality of the past in favour of a sanitized fiction.
I love it all.
But I will likely never see any of it again.
So, if any American business owners are confused about why tourism is fading, why their revenue is down and why they aren’t seeing as many foreign visitors, let me give it to you straight.
It isn’t the weather. It isn’t the exchange rate — that’s actually better for Canadians this year than before, not worse — or the tariffs. It isn’t the cost of living or a desire to save cash.
It’s because of Donald Trump.
When he and his Republican cronies are gone, and your country recovers and spends a few years making up for the damage they caused, then maybe we’ll have something to talk about.
Until then, as our actual allies and friends to the south would say, adiós.
Solidarity wins.
Reasons……
As a former Maine resident with family still living there, I know what some of them are going through right now. All along the seacoast, tourism has been heavily dependent on Canadian tourists for decades. Now that's all gone.
As for the rest of Maine, I will only talk about the areas I know about. In the north, west, and south east, the fishermen, loggers and farmers are celebrating that the Canadians have been shut out. They think that now, without Canadians competing "unfairly" in the U.S. markets, that they will be able to sell more of their logs, potatoes and other agricultural products to American consumers.
Once they finally figure out that the main reason they couldn't compete in the first place was because of inferior products and higher prices, and they still aren't selling to the American consumers any more than they were before, they will go back to crying "Woe is me", as they have been doing for decades.
They will become even poorer without the Canadian markets and a lot more people will lose their companies and their jobs. Maine has always had a high unemployment percentage compared to the rest of the country and this will only make things worse.
People like my brother, and a lot of the rural people that I used to know up in the remote counties like Aroostook and Somerset, rage against the government all of the time. They don't want anyone telling them how to live their lives but the fishermen, farmers and loggers have no problem standing in line for those government subsidies. Well, those subsidies are mostly gone now, along with the government health care and food assistance.
My brother is enjoying his retirement now, living on a local government retirement pension and his social security. My sister in-law is still working, I think, as she is a couple years younger than him. I wonder what's going to happen if his local government pension money dries up and/or his wife loses her job? They are just one example of what the future is going to be like for the MAGA cultists in Maine and around the rest of the country in the ensuing months ahead.