Blaine businesses react to increased Canadian traffic

Traffic at the Peace Arch border crossing, vehicles with B.C. license plates filling up at gas stations and parcels being retrieved are signs of returning normalcy to Blaine in the past week. But businesses reliant on Canadian customers say they’re unsure what the future holds as the number of Canadian travelers remains lower than before the border closed to nonessential traffic in March 2020. 

Brant Baron, owner of Mail Boxes International, said he was delighted to see packages that waited over 1.5 years on his store’s shelves to be taken home. 

“It’s all somewhat of a blur,” he said. “It’s like being reunited with an old friend or family member.”

Baron said last week was the first time the parcel store has had more packages leaving the store than being delivered since the border closed to nonessential travel March 2020, thanks to the Canadian government’s decision to drop the Covid-19 test requirement on November 30 for fully vaccinated Canadians traveling into the U.S. for fewer than 72 hours. 

Numbers still aren’t near where they would be during a typical holiday season, but Baron said this is OK for right now. Baron said he’s only added back Saturday hours and still closes his store early on weekdays because he has been unable to find staff.

“You have the tension of wanting to do everything to help your members get their packages out the door with the reality that we won’t be able to stretch our workers,” he said of employees currently working 50-60-hour weeks. 

Although there’s been a dramatic increase in packages picked up, Baron said there’s still a lot of trepidation as to whether the U.S./Canada border will remain open with the new Omicron variant and people are still adjusting to using the ArriveCAN app needed to cross the border.

“We still have a long way to go until we get the volume back up,” Baron said. “And who knows if it ever will.”

Kelle Hagen, co-owner of Hagen’s of Blaine, has had similar experiences with her parcel store on Peace Portal Drive. Instead of a line out the door as she expected, it’s been a trickle of customers to pick up over 10,000 packages. 

“It’s been busier than we’ve seen it in the past two years, however it’s not as busy as we expected,” she said. “People have a lot of packages here and we still have a lot to get rid of.”

The store was able to hire back a few of its former employees fulltime to help with approximately 100 customers they’re helping a day, but is unable to expand hours and open on the weekend. Eventually, the store will need to create a deadline for packages that aren’t collected, Hagen said.

According to the Cascade Gateway Data, passenger vehicles traveling into the U.S. from the Peace Arch port of entry went from about 1,500 to 2,500 daily after November 8, when the U.S. border opened to fully vaccinated Canadians but they were still required to have a negative Covid-19 test to return. That number has increased to over 4,000 vehicles crossing the border daily since November 30. So far, Friday, December 3 had the most travelers with 10,754 passenger vehicles crossing into Whatcom County.

Gury Gill, owner of the D Street Shell gas station, said he’s starting to see a lot of regular customers return, but it’s nowhere near how it used to be. 

“We’re starting to see a little boost but nothing close to 2019 yet,” he said. “Maybe people slowly will start feeling comfortable coming.”

Canadians are mostly coming down for fuel, Gill said, whose gas station also sells milk and offers a small parcel holding service. Previously, the gas station sold 100-200 gallons of milk per day, now it’s about 10 gallons. The gas station is selling triple the amount of gas it did during the border closure at about 1,500 gallons per day now, he said, but in normal times that would have been 7,000 gallons daily.

Like Baron, Gill said he believes the ArriveCAN app, which can take a few minutes to fill out, is causing hesitation for some travelers. Gill also hopes Covid-19 variants won’t back track border restrictions.

“It’s about time,” Gill said. “Whatcom County, especially Blaine, relies on Canadian business so it felt good we were able to finally see Canadian traffic. I think everyone was happy that business finally picked up.”

Laurie Trautman, director of Western Washington University’s Border Policy Research Institute, said travel into and out of Whatcom County since November 30 was 40 percent of the same week in 2019, while that week in 2020 was only 5 percent of 2019 traffic.

“It signals that Whatcom County is still a draw for Canadian shoppers,” Trautman said. “I think most people are eager to get back to the stores they haven’t accessed.” 

Trautman said she isn’t sure yet if the 40-percent increase is a good or bad sign, but expects it will take a while for Canadian traffic to return to pre-pandemic levels, just as traffic took a while to resume normally after the border briefly closed during 9/11.

“It’s not been easy, but we’ve made it this far so hopefully the worst is over,” Hagen said. “Knock on wood.”