A veteran concert promoter in upstate New York has abandoned efforts to woo Canadian audiences for the remainder of his amphitheatre’s season, as renewed trade hostilities between Washington and Ottawa threaten to deepen a tourism slump already punishing businesses along the border.
Dave Wedekindt, who leads the non-profit organisation behind Artpark in Lewiston, N.Y., told The Globe and Mail that a recent social media campaign aimed at luring Southern Ontario residents to a Roger Daltrey concert fell flat almost immediately. Scores of Canadian users responded with a polite but firm refusal.
“They said, ‘No, we’re not coming to the United States,'” Mr. Wedekindt recounted. “We had a tremendous amount of those.”
His surrender came just as bilateral trade negotiations collapsed in Washington last Friday, reigniting a tariff dispute that has cast a chill over cross-border commerce for more than a year.
A Tourism Lifeline Dries Up
Canadians have long been a financial pillar for Artpark, a 52-year-old outdoor venue perched on the American side of Niagara Falls. In years past, north-of-the-border patrons accounted for as much as 15 per cent of the venue’s revenue. That share fell by half when transatlantic tensions spiked last year and has remained stubbornly low ever since.
Mr. Wedekindt estimates the venue lost roughly US$300,000 in its last fiscal year to diminished foot traffic. The promoter has since redirected his marketing toward audiences within upstate New York, though he acknowledged the pivot has been difficult against a backdrop of rising costs for American consumers.
“Older audiences are a little more dug in and don’t want to come over or won’t come over,” he said.
The broader picture, according to several operators who spoke to The Globe and Mail, suggests American businesses are bracing for further pain even as official data hints at a fragile recovery in Canadian travel. Statistics Canada reported that trips returning from the United States rose 5 per cent year-over-year in June, the third consecutive monthly increase following 15 straight months of decline. Yet the figure remained nearly 25 per cent below the level recorded in June 2024, before President Donald Trump returned to office and began publicly musing about absorbing Canada as the “51st state.”
Border Crossings Signal Fresh Unease
Early indicators from this week suggest the modest rebound may already be stalling.
Cascade Gateway, which tracks crossing volumes at four border points between British Columbia’s Lower Mainland and Washington’s Whatcom County, recorded a measurable dip in crossings on Tuesday and Wednesday. Aggregate figures for August 2025 are also running well behind the same month the previous year, before the trade dispute’s opening volleys.
Mary Lou Steward, mayor of Blaine, Wash., a magnet for British Columbian shoppers, said her community absorbed a 40-per-cent decline in cross-border traffic when the first wave of tariffs and political rhetoric landed last year. She expects that pattern to repeat, and worsen.
“With the new tariffs, I anticipate a significant drop in Canadians visiting the U.S.,” Ms. Steward wrote in an e-mail.
The political mood is hardening. This week, British Columbia Premier David Eby urged Canadians to forgo American holidays, framing travel choices as leverage in Ottawa’s trade strategy. Such calls are likely to discourage families planning autumn getaways to U.S. destinations.
A Region on Edge
The Aquarium of Niagara, home to rescued harbour seals, Humboldt penguins and California sea lions, has not been spared. President and chief executive Chad Fifer said Canadian visitors were cut in half last year, pushing total attendance to a 20-year low.
“The overall sentiment for the past year and a half has been tough, mostly because we’ve been bracing for continued decline,” he said.
Eight kilometres south of the Canadian border, Jay Peak Resort in Vermont has issued its second public appeal in as many years reminding Canadian skiers and conference-goers that they remain welcome. General manager Steve Wright said Canadians typically make up half of the resort’s annual visitors, many of them driving up from Montreal.
While Jay Peak has yet to log significant cancellations, some larger Canadian clients with conferences and ski packages on the books have begun asking pointed questions about whether crossing the border still feels safe or sensible.
“We’ve been through this enough with this administration so that when the narrative starts to escalate relative to the Canadians and Canadian sovereignty, we tend to start to see this, and understandably so,” Mr. Wright said.
“The border might feel different right now,” he added. “We do not.”
Why it Matters
The human cost of a trade war rarely announces itself with tariffs alone; it seeps quietly into the small economies of border towns, concert venues, ski resorts and family-run shops that have depended for generations on the easy flow of Canadian visitors. For communities stretching from Whatcom County to the cliffs of Niagara, the latest collapse in cross-border travel threatens more than quarterly balance sheets. It imperils the cultural and commercial connective tissue that has defined the U.S.-Canada relationship for decades, transforming neighbourly bridges into barriers and turning routine weekend trips into acts of quiet political protest. If the slide deepens, the ripple effects will reach well beyond tourism, fuelling inflation, hollowing out local economies and eroding the goodwill that no trade negotiation can easily rebuild.
