As seen on CBC-TV: Snapshots of cross-border life before COVID-19
Canada-U.S. border crossing normally involves an easy back-and-forth that is suspended for the moment
Due to the COVID-19 crisis, Canadians faced restrictions in their day-to-day lives that meant they could not go where they would normally go — including across the border to the United States.
This included any "non-essential" cross-border jaunts for shopping or travel, or to take a brief day trip to see how the other half of the U.S.-Canada border divide lives.
In September 2022, the federal government announced that as of Oct. 1, it would lift all border restrictions and drop all COVID-19 measures, meaning travellers would no longer need to provide proof of vaccination when entering Canada..
Before 2020, cross-border stories were frequently seen in the news and that has been the case on CBC for decades.
Different money, cigarettes up here
Like stories about the Americans who come north to go sightseeing, seen on CBC-TV as early as 1960.
"We've learned more since we've been here this day and a half than we had our entire life," said one man from Dayton, Ohio, when interviewed on CBC's Tabloid that year and asked about his knowledge of Canada prior to making his first trip north.
"Your money values and things like that, we've never even come into contact with anything like that before. And then I mean different prices of things, cigarettes, we never knew they had different cigarettes here like they do."
Another visitor interviewed on Tabloid talked about our "fresh air," an observation a future U.S. president similarly made about Canada decades later.
Not all visitors are so optimistic about what Canada has to offer, though — in some cases objecting to the taxes unfamiliar to them. (At least, that was the case when the GST came into effect, as seen on The National in 1991.)
Deals to be had, too
Then there's all the shopping Canadians do down south, as well as the deals that draw our American friends and neighbours across the border.
Cheaper cars, lower-priced fur coats — two examples of things Americans have made the drive north to purchase here in the past, depending on the economic circumstances at a given time.
In 1979, there was even a trend where some Americans living close to Canada were making an international trip to fill up their cars with gas, which was in short supply for them back home.
Depending on the dollar, there are always deals to be had for Canadians doing their shopping in the U.S., as well.
Not always great for businesses
But any flow of shoppers to the south tends to upset merchants at home, who don't want to see their business drive elsewhere.
That was the case 30 years ago, when reporter Steve Paikin visited Niagara Falls, Ont., to get a sense of how much of that business was indeed heading south of the border.
"Retailers in the Niagara peninsula say they're losing more than $100 million a year to the competition in New York [state]," he told viewers in a report that aired in October of 1990.
