How quickly a friendly frontier can become a barrier

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/04/2025 (348 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I’m sitting in a small room with my best friend, watching through a one-way window as American border officers search our car and belongings. My over-excited best friend had appeared manic enough to arouse suspicion and landed us in this little room. We were 21 years old and on our way to First Avenue, the fabled Minneapolis venue that is as much a theatre as it is a site of pilgrimage for Winnipeg music fans.

In a lot of ways, the border was where we shrugged off our youth and stepped naively into adulthood. Mile by mile, we gained the skills, independence and ingenuity needed to roam without the safety net of family and community. We got lost, got found and made lifelong friends. We were young, yes, but we also came of age in a period of remarkable stability. We were ignorant to the changing world, the encroaching influence of the internet, the political dust still settling from 9/11 and the slow creep of the U.S. toward a more suspicious view of outsiders.

I’d never really been a fan of the Tragically Hip, but my bestie was a mega-fan, and at that particular point in my 20s, I had an American friend who could get us onto the guest list of just about any concert in the U.S. Midwest. Those frequent trips rewarded us with friendships and stories we still share. I was back and forth along the I-29 and the I-94 countless times over those years. This one was for the Hip, but there had been many others.

Fargo, Bemidji, Minneapolis, Chicago, Ohio, Indianapolis. We saw the Weakerthans, Blue Rodeo, Hayden, Sloan and others: those Canadian bands that would play to packed houses at the Walker (now the Burt) or Le Rendez-Vous, would perform for rather smaller crowds in the U.S., where our cringey young selves fangirled like only Canadian girls can. The Tragically Hip show at First Avenue, packed with Canadian pilgrims like us, was electric.

This Canadian-ness, this “boutique” country where our little passions and dreams, our music and celebrities, rarely get appreciated beyond our borders, feels drawn closer together than ever right now. Many of us are angry, but a good deal of us are also grieving. We didn’t know those days of friendly visits would end, we didn’t realize our last trip across the border might be our final time. The 49th parallel stands like that one-way window I peered through with my friend. We can see across but can’t intervene as they sift through our belongings and decide our fate.

So many things seem to happen slowly, and then so suddenly they shock us. Years fly by, friendships change and world leaders come and go, and our eyes are opened to how much it all impacts our little lives. My road trips to the U.S. changed from concert pilgrimages to family trips and weddings of our American friends, and sadly, this summer, a funeral. I couldn’t have known I wouldn’t see that friend again, and now, I don’t know if that was the last time I’ll have crossed the border to see any of the others.

I’m giving myself a break from being angry about what’s going on south of the border. I’m trying to go easy on myself and allow the grief to take shape, even within the anger. America’s people and nation have been such good companions and fellow adventurers for my entire adult life, both a launch pad for my adulthood and a familiar landing pad in middle age. I grieve the trust and sense of safety I once felt, and the sense of freedom the border brought. But I’m also wrapping myself up in the incredible support and encouragement from the community and across Canada, and in faith that good Americans are grieving too, and figuring out their own next steps to get back to friendlier relations.

I don’t know when I’ll be crossing that border again, but I know it will feel different for a very long time, perhaps forever. For now, our friendship with our neighbour must remain in quiet contemplation instead of the free-wheeling joy we’d come to expect. I’ll continue to have faith, armed with determination and grace, too.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca