Border communities struggle with changes

Calais Mayor Marcia Rogers says that she and her friends will continue to cross the St. Croix River to St. Stephen – to eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken, Tim Horton's, Burger King or Pizza Delight, if for no other reason. She visits her horse living on a farm at Oak Hill and takes her grandchildren swimming at the Garcelon Civic Center.

"Canadians love to come over and go shopping at Marden's," she says, adding, "And gas. I still see a real ton of Canadians that come over and get gas."

She made these statements in the face of figures from Statistics Canada showing a pronounced drop in the number of Canadian residents returning home across bridges in the St. Croix/Quoddy region from both same‑day and overnight trips by automobile to the United States. Numbers from Statistics Canada show that the number of Canadian residents returning home across bridges at St. Stephen/Calais, Campobello/Lubec and St. Croix/Vanceboro dropped by about 35% in June and July compared to the same months last year. The drop was about 40% at the three crossings at St. Stephen/Calais. Canadians returning home over the St. Croix/Vanceboro bridge has dropped by half. The drop in the number of Canadian residents returning across the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Bridge to Campobello Island has been much more modest, about five percent in June and seven percent in July compared to the same months last year. This possibly reflects the fact that Campobello residents must cross the bridge to Lubec for most of the year even if they plan to drive to St. Stephen to do business in Canada.

The number of Americans crossing these same bridges to Canada has largely held up. American traffic to Campobello has actually increased by about three percent in June compared to the same month last year. In July, the number of Americans making same‑day trips by automobile to Campobello Island increased by about 31% to 3,266, according to Statistics Canada, although total American car traffic to the island dropped by about five percent compared to the same month last year.

Many people in the St. Croix Valley took heart when the parade made its way across the Ferry Point bridge from Calais to St. Stephen on the closing day of the International Homecoming Festival. St. Stephen Municipal District Council voted a few days before to suspend the parade in light of the low number of entries from the Canadian side. This near‑death experience apparently sparked people to make the parade happen, especially when community leaders on both sides of the river said that if the annual cross‑border tradition took a break for one year, it would likely never happen again since it would lose its "grandfathered" status with border authorities.

There are other examples showing a determination to not give up on the St. Croix Valley as one community despite an international border running through it. The St. Croix International Garden Club recently presented a $400 cheque to the Ganong Nature Park in St. Stephen and planned to give an equal amount to the Calais Downtown Revitalization Coalition. St. Stephen and Baileyville have entered a mutual aid agreement for fire protection. St. Stephen and Calais fire departments have responded to calls in each other's communities for a century or more.

However, if the numbers are right, fewer people, especially Canadians, are crossing the river these days.

"We heard from some people that it's politics, but we haven't actually picked up as much as we'd like to since COVID," says Rogers, referring to traffic across the river. "There's been definitely a drop since the tariffs, you know, the talk of the tariffs. That could definitely affect us, but there's no real, definitive data that tells us exactly what it is that's causing this other than what we can surmise," she adds.

"We can't do anything about politics except vote. We can't make a difference with what our president says or does and, again, I can't even tell you that that's solely what it is," Rogers says, adding, "I think, for Canadians, it's much more beneficial for them to be having their citizens staying home and spending money in their own towns. I'm sure they're being encouraged to do that."

"There are many reasons," says St. Stephen Mayor Allan MacEachern, speaking in an interview after the annual Hands Across the Border on the Ferry Point bridge starting the International Homecoming Festival. "Patriotism, I guess, being patriotic to their country," the St. Stephen mayor said, referring to the Canadian reaction to President Donald Trump's attitude towards Canada. However, he says, "The exchange rate is not great either; I mean, let's be honest about that, the exchange rate is not helping the cause."

"It would be interesting to know what it [cross‑border traffic] was pre‑COVID and then see how it has gone down," MacEachern says, but, "To be honest, we've still got to show our love [for Americans] but if they [Canadians] feel they need to get a message to the leader [Trump], and that's their only way of doing so," then many Canadians will stay on their own side of the river. MacEachern says he spoke about this to Rogers who, he believes, understands the political dynamic.

MacEachern says the strain on volunteers with society getting older might have been a factor in the near death of the International Homecoming Festival Parade, but he agrees that crossing the border is not as easy as it was before the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001.

Up till then, Calais and St. Stephen people went back and forth without showing passports or other identification. MacEachern recalled not so many years ago when children and adolescents walked across the Ferry Point bridge, hardly breaking stride as they nodded at the border officers in either country. He recalled walking to Calais in the 1980s to go to the movies and McDonald's Restaurant -- which Calais had years before St. Stephen got a Burger King.

St. Stephen has more fast‑food outlets now but, as Rogers noted, Canadians do like Marden's. She could have mentioned Walmart, Johnson's Hardware, Tractor Supply, the IGA and a few other stores, too.

"I want it to be back. I want all this to stop. I want to feel comfortable when I go over [to Calais]. I want to be able to get back to not worrying someone's going to see me [going to Calais]," MacEachern says, adding, "I just want to get back. I want us to be one community."

"We've a lot of Americans that play hockey over there [in St. Stephen], and there's a lot of Americans that play baseball over here [in Calais]," Rogers says. She plans to keep crossing the river for choices of fast‑food, to see her horse, to take her grandchildren swimming. Some of her friends go to Dooly's pool hall in St. Stephen. "I have many connections over there, and I'm not going to stop going over there," she says, adding, "You know, politics are politics, and let's put those aside and just stay doing the things we do every single day because we can't always control those things."