The six-hour drive from Ontario to New Hampshire is a familiar one for Brad Norrad.
He has passed through the eastern townships of Quebec, crossed into the U.S. in Canaan, Vermont, and across the Connecticut River to reach New Hampshire almost every year since 1972, when his family first happened upon Jefferson Valley.
There, they stopped by a stream, and he showed his kids how to fish.
“We caught this beautiful 10-inch speckled trout,” he recalled in an interview earlier this summer. “I always said I was the one that got hooked, because I’ve been going back to that valley ever since.”
No more, Norrad said, at least not while President Donald Trump is in office.
Not only does he find Trump’s comments and actions toward Canada offensive — think tariffs and the “51st state” rhetoric — but Norrad said he and other Canadians fear crossing the border and the possibility of being detained.
After 50 years of retreating to one of his favorite places, Norrad is boycotting the U.S., both by canceling his usual vacation and pledging not to buy U.S.-made products. It almost feels like breaking up with a friend, he said.
“The anger is so deep that we know it’s going to hurt us, too, but we’re prepared for it,” Norrad said. “This is similar to a war, but it’s the fact that one of our best friends has insulted us and cut us to the bone with the envelope, and now, we really don’t like you and we may never come back.”
Norrad is far from the only Canadian to forgo his trip to New England this year.
July saw 267,000 arrivals from Canada through entry ports in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s 105,000 fewer than last July, a 28% decrease. The federal government has not yet released August border crossing data.
Northern New England typically sees the most Canadian visitors in July and August, and current travel still exceeds post-pandemic levels. However, to meet last year’s threshold of 3.2 million arrivals from Canada, there would need to be one million more Canadians travelling to the U.S. over the next two months.
As Canadians stay home, New Hampshire pays the price
As typically loyal visitors like Norrad stayed home this summer, New Hampshire businesses and attractions felt the heat.
Charlie St. Clair knew it from the get-go: Thousands fewer Canadians attended Laconia Motorcycle Week this year than usual. The rally holds a firm place in the hearts of its loyal and tight-knit base, but this June, St. Clair estimated 75-80% fewer leather-clad Canadians joined compared to previous years.
“We really took a bad hit from our Canadian visitors not being here,” said St. Clair, who heads up the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association. He also represents Laconia as a Democrat in the state House of Representatives.
The nine-day event draws in roughly $100 million in revenue for New Hampshire through taxes on lodging, meals, fuel and highway tolls.
Every time a Canadian exits that equation, he said, “that’s a financial hit.”
Even so, St. Clair doesn’t blame them for staying away.
“The reality is, if the shoe were on the other foot, we’d be doing the same thing. Of course we would,” St. Clair said. “If the leader of Canada was bad-mouthing our government and other things, we would react the same way, right?”
Businesses in the North Country hoped Canadian holidays earlier this summer to serve as an indicator of how many tourists they could expect later in the year. By all appearances, Canadians were leery of visiting New Hampshire — and it seems that trend continued through the summer.
At Wakeda Campground in Exeter, Amanda Allen tells a similar tale. The grounds are exceptionally popular with Canadian campers in July and August, she said, and during those two months, Canadians comprise about a quarter of her business.
In June, Allen was unsure how her summer season would go. At that point in the summer, most weekends had been gray and rainy.
The weather turned around. Canadians didn’t.
“It panned out pretty much as we expected,” Allen said, with an estimated 90% of Wakeda’s usual Canadian population staying away. “We still had some of our Canadian friends with us, but it was a dramatic decrease over typical years.”
Those who did visit, she said, seemed to just be taking their usual vacation as an outlet to “forget a little bit” about their troubles.
Courting Canada
As businesses work on persuading Canadians to come back, New Hampshire lawmakers hope to capitalize on diplomatic relations with their neighbors to the north.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte returned Thursday from a trade mission, where she and other New Hampshire government and business leaders met with their Canadian counterparts. Her first international travel as governor included trips to Halifax and Montreal in hopes of highlighting existing partnerships and strengthening ties between New Hampshire and Canada.
Canada has always been one of New Hampshire’s top trade partners. In 2023, New Hampshire exported $1.4 billion worth of goods there, mostly in the aerospace, fabricated metal, business and technology sectors. Last year, the Granite State also imported $1.7 billion from Canada, which is a large supplier of New Hampshire’s fuel oil, building materials, seafood and machinery.
The New Hampshire Canadian Trade Council, led by state Sen. Tim McGough, joined Ayotte on her trip.
The goal was to increase trade opportunities, strengthen relationships with Canada, highlight the state’s tax structure and regulatory environment and “make sure that Canadian businesses understand that New Hampshire is wide open and a very friendly, easy place to do business,” McGough said.
Whether that messaging will work remains to be seen.
Charyl Reardon, who heads up the White Mountains Attraction Association, said their website traffic from Canadians is drastically down, as it has been all summer.
As Canadian visitors dropped off, visitors from elsewhere picked up the slack. Many of the businesses she works with in the White Mountains region experienced a mixed bag of tourism this summer — some kept pace with previous years while others saw small ups and downs.
In addition to tensions with Canada, people are generally cautious with their spending right now, Reardon noted, and New Hampshire saw some wet weekends early in the summer.
Tourism as a whole, though, rebounded in August, which was an especially dry month and the state’s busiest for tourists.
Now, Reardon is looking ahead to foliage season, which attracted 1.1 million visitors last year and contributed $320 million to the state’s economy.
“There’s some positive momentum coming into fall and the expectation, hopefully, that that trend will continue through the fall,” she said. “We’re very fortunate that we’re a popular destination for fall foliage and visitors.”
Businesses still hope to woo their “Canadian friends” back to New Hampshire, but as long as Trump is in office, Norrad said he and some others plan to hold fast.
St. Clair, who runs bike week, hears their concerns loud and clear.
“We’re certainly putting the word out that they’re all welcome,” St. Clair said, “but the reality is, is that unless things change in Washington — and we certainly don’t expect that to happen in the near future — we’re probably going to be living with this for a while.”