Valerie Mabey has lived on New Brunswick’s Campobello Island most of her life, but these days, it isn’t easy.
Islanders have become unwitting victims of U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to reshape the international trading system.
Cross-border relationships have frayed, and Canadians on this 14-kilometre-long outpost in the Bay of Fundy feel isolated and vulnerable.
“We don’t have a gas station here. We don’t have a bank here,” Mabey said. “We’re pretty isolated, and it’s hard to try to drive an hour to get to your own country.”
Because of geography, many of Campobello’s 1,000 or so residents rely heavily on crossing the bridge into the nearest town — Lubec, Maine — for gas, groceries and necessities.
But residents are now being charged 25 per cent in Canadian tariffs on the U.S. goods they bring back over the border. And they’re bracing for the impact of the U.S. tariffs slated to return April 2.
“I think we’re sort of left out to fend for ourselves,” Mabey said. “We are part of Canada, but nobody seems to recognize that.
“I don’t think they understand. You have to live here to understand it.”
Campobello Island residents caught in the middle of trade war
Island living means commuting to Maine for daily essentials and driving an hour through the state to cross into Canada at St. Stephen to get health care or other government services.
In the summer months, a ferry runs from Campobello Island to Deer Island and then to the mainland.
Campobello Mayor Harvey Matthews has asked Ottawa for an exemption from the tariffs for residents. So far, he hasn’t had any response.
“It’s a little disheartening that your own country would do that to you,” he said.
“Something needs to change because we’re retaliating with tariffs on our own people. It just doesn’t make sense. Not one bit. Not to me.”
Premier Susan Holt said her government has also tried to get “those exemptions carved out” for residents of Campobello but without success.
“We want to see an exemption put in place,” Holt said. “So we haven’t had success with the federal government yet to get that … enacted, but we haven’t stopped pushing them to do it.”
The federal Finance Department, which is responsible for Canadian tariffs, did not agree to a CBC request for an interview.
In the meantime, Praveen Chindaluri is seeing a lot of new faces where he works at Campobello Value Foods.
He said some people are “not willing to cross the border because of these tensions going on,” with border agents sometimes “checking each and every thing in the car” to impose tariffs on larger shopping runs.
The store is doing what it can to fill the gap, bringing in food and other products to help residents avoid some of their shopping trips to Maine, Chindaluri said.
“People are coming here, and they’re telling [us] new products, whatever they want.”
Customer Wendy Smart said she has cut back her crossings to just “two or three times” this month. The whole situation has her in a state of constant worry.
“You’re just kind of on the edge worrying about this, worrying about that, and hope and pray for the best.”
She’s crossing her fingers that it doesn’t get worse, but with more tariffs looming, “it’s not going to be good,” she said. “It’s how we live. These tariffs are going to affect so many people, so many different things.”
Meanwhile, the longtime leniency granted to island residents crossing from Campobello to Lubec has ended under the return of Trump.
Since 2009, Canadians have been required to present a passport, Nexus card or FAST (Free and Secure Trade) card while crossing the U.S. border by land or water. For air travel, that requirement was brought in during January 2007.
But according to Campobello residents, they were often waved through with a driver’s licence and a birth certificate.
Matthews said the recent change caught many people off guard because “a lot of people’s passports here had expired.”
That prompted the village to arrange a passport event earlier this month. A photographer was brought in from Saint Andrews who took photos of roughly 75 residents in need of a passport, and Service Canada officials followed to help with the paperwork.
Now Matthews thinks such events will be needed up to twice a year if the current political climate persists.
Ron Beckwith, whose house faces his “neighbours and friends across the water” in the U.S., said the recent friction at the border is adding fuel to the fight for a year-round ferry to mainland Canada.
“We need something that we can count on,” Beckwith said. “We need a government-sponsored ferry to connect us back to Canada.”
The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure operates several free ferries in the province, including one from mainland Letete to Deer Island.
But the ferry connecting Deer Island to Campobello Island runs only from June to September and costs $25 each way for a driver and vehicle.
Holt acknowledged “there’s a challenge there that needs to be addressed,” but she didn’t make any commitments.
Beckwith said residents “have a right to be connected to their own country without having to have the permission of Donald Trump or any other American president to get back to their own country.”
“That border could literally close. I see some distinct possibility, especially with this guy.”
Mabey said the hardest part about living on the island right now is the strain it’s putting on their relationships with their U.S. neighbours.
“As far as the president goes, I don’t care for him. As far as the American people, I love them. Half my family is in the States, my daughter and my son-in-law and my two grandsons, most of my cousins. You know, we live on a border. Families are split.”
She worries that with escalating tensions, things will continue to sour.
“I’m afraid that the Americans will start hating the Canadians and that the Canadians will start hating the Americans. And I think that’s… a shame. I really do.”
“We’ve always been friends, especially in border towns. I just don’t see his point. I don’t understand.”
