WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – Canadian travelers are making their first trips across the border in nearly 20 months.
Canadian license plates were once again common in Watertown Monday morning.
One couple from Ottawa who stopped at Watertown’s Starbucks said they are on their way south for about a month.
“We stopped at Starbucks, our first stop, to get a coffee, make sure we stay awake,” Maurice Pouirier said, “and we’re on our way to Florida, be there tomorrow evening, I think.”.
The couple said it feels great to be able to cross the border again.
“It only took about 15 minutes,” Pouirier said. “We went through Ogdensburg.”
They said they hope that by the time they return, Canada will have relaxed its requirement that anyone entering the country show a negative result from a recent PCR COVID test. To enter the U.S., travelers only have to show proof of vaccination.
Pouirier’s experience at the border was easy compared to Canadians entering via the Thousand Islands International Bridge.
“We had to wait, and wait, and wait,” said Paul Nantel, traveling from Montreal. Nantel said it took him and his wife a couple of hours to get through the boarder because of the traffic.
“With the trucks and all of the RVs and everything, and finally we made it,” he said.
Nantel said he’s on his way to his winter home in Texas with his wife. They didn’t want to wait another day.
“No way we were going to even go tomorrow,” he said.
Mariam Waldman and Sandra Howard were planning out a six-month long cross-country trip. They left British Columbia in September and weren’t able to cross the border until Monday.
“We’ve been waiting. We thought it would open on the 23rd, and it didn’t. So, we had to wait around,” said Howard.
Waldman said they had to wait a couple hours at the border, too.
Thousand Islands International Tourism Council Director Corey Fram said he got to the Collins Landing welcome center at 7:30 Monday morning and the parking lot was packed with RVs and campers.
“Folks who had tried to get themselves in line right at midnight on the Canadian side, and due to the overwhelming demand, they had a slow cross,” said Fram.
A slow cross indeed. The border wait times website showed people waited an average of three hours at 5 a.m. That caused a steady stream of travelers entering the welcome center Monday morning.
“Probably triple the amount of people we had in recent months. But it’s more comparable to 2019, so we’re just happy to see it coming back,” said Michael Myers, manager, Taste New York.
The border has been closed to nonessential traffic into the U.S. since March 2020. Canada opened its border to fully vaccinated Americans on August 9.
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