Canadians once flocked to the East Burke Market during biking season — before the pandemic.
“If they’re spending the weekend, they usually come to the store and do their grocery shopping,” co-owner Kellie Greer said. “It’s a healthy stream.”
As both countries move closer to a pandemic recovery, those cross-border visits could soon return.
Greer and others around the Northeast Kingdom — and the rest of Vermont — hope the northern border with Canada will fully reopen soon, after more than a yearlong shutdown.
Sixty Canadian businesses employ some 2,700 people in Vermont. But it’s more than economics. Lots of Vermont property is owned by residents of Quebec, who enjoy skiing and summer recreation in Vermont. Those outdoor activities, which tend to build camaraderie and friendships, have been on hiatus for 15 months. And families with a foot in each country have been separated during the border closure, missing birthdays, graduations and births.
No full-scale border reopening is expected immediately. Politico reported last week that Canadian officials hope to loosen restrictions June 22, and Reuters reported Monday that leaders from both nations would meet this week to discuss lifting the pandemic-induced closure.
Last week, Vermont’s congressional delegation sent a letter to President Joe Biden, urging an expansion of essential cross-border travel.
The economic upshot from a reopening could be substantial.
“In a normal year, we see about 700,000 Canadian visits, and that represents about 5% of the economic impact of tourism,” said Heather Pelham, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing.
That equates to about $150 million, or 15% of the estimated $1 billion in visitor spending that Vermont lost during the pandemic, Pelham said.
Reopening the border could boost traffic in places such as Burke, where Greer’s store is located and home to part of the Kingdom Trails network.
“Last year, in the middle of the pandemic, we were off our membership revenue by 40%” compared to 2018, said Abby Long, executive director of the Kingdom Trail Association. That drop was calculated by sales between November 2019 and October 2020.
The trail network, commonly known as Kingdom Trails, attracts lots of Canadian visitors, who represent 38% of its user base.
“We were missing our neighbors to the north,” Long said.
Long said her trail organization also collaborates with a sister network in Quebec, Vallée Bras-du-Nord, and she looks forward to working together again on projects such as sign translations.
So far this fiscal year, membership is off about one-third from 2018, she said. If the border reopens, she hopes that gap will shrink significantly.
“If the Canadian border is to open, I wonder, will they be excited to get down here? My hunch is probably,” Long said. “I think a lot of folks in the world are itching to travel. If we were looking at past trends, that means that 38% of our trail users would be coming to visit.”
Renewed Canadian tourism would make a big difference in the bottom line of Greer’s store, she said, and allow her and co-owner Burton Hinton to hire more employees.
Some residents of border communities also look forward to restoring cultural bonds temporarily ruptured by the pandemic.
State Rep. Brian Smith, R-Derby, said people in his Orleans County border town are eager to be “one great big community again.”
Smith, who’s on the Derby Selectboard, said he and friends used to take regular fishing trips in Quebec. “I hope it doesn’t go another month,” he said.
But reopening could have downsides.
Tourist traffic has been a longstanding issue in Burke, Long said, and animosity could develop if Canadian visitors suddenly flooded the community.
Greer has the same concern.
“I don’t want to see us go back to everybody being angry at the mountain bikers,” she said.
Pelham, the state tourism commissioner, said it’s hard to say how quickly Vermont will be able to return to its typical visitation trends that some communities might be overburdened.
For instance, a busy summer with an open border could exacerbate workplace shortages in the hospitality industry.
“That could continue to be a pain point for some of our businesses,” she said.
Still, she said, state officials are looking to bring those visitors back. Her department is launching a $2.5 million advertising campaign this summer to tell people “as loudly and clearly as we can that Vermont is open.”
Right now, the campaign is focused on domestic markets, but when the border reopens, Vermont will be advertising in Canada, too, the commissioner said.
Officials see the state as particularly well positioned to snag tourists eager to travel after a year of pandemic lockdowns.
“Folks are looking at destinations just a little differently,” Pelham said. “They are looking to see, ‘How many people might I come across? How much space am I going to have? How safe does this destination feel?’”
To relieve the potential pressure hotspot towns might feel, the state aims to promote destinations that people may not have visited in the past and spread out tourist interest through the campaign, the commissioner said.
