The southbound lanes on the road to North America's post-pandemic recovery will finally reopen Monday as the United States ends nearly 20 months of controversial COVID-19 exile and allows fully vaccinated travellers to cross the Canada-U.S. land border.
As of midnight, non-essential traffic will resume moving in both directions for the first time since March 2020, when both countries imposed sweeping but selective restrictions in hopes of slowing the spread of the virus -- the first widespread border closure since the 9/11 terrorist attacks 20 years ago.
All told, Patchett figures they've spent $6,000 on trips that would normally only have set them back $320. Before COVID-19, Joelle Deslippe, who lives in Windsor, Ont., bought a vacation property in Michigan as a midway gathering place so she wouldn't have to make the full five-hour drive when she wanted to visit her family in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
Patchett and Deslippe are both members of "Families are Essential," one of several grassroots activist groups that erupted on social media over the course of the pandemic as it became clear that the land-border restrictions weren't going away anytime soon. As soon as the U.S. announced fully vaccinated travellers would be allowed back across the land border with only proof of vaccination to accompany their passports, the focus shifted again -- this time to the molecular COVID-19 test that Canada still requires, which runs $150-$300 per swab.
"The friction has essentially meant that the gains that the Canadian tourism sector were hoping to achieve when Canada opened the borders to people coming north just never materialized," he said.
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