Image Credit: Rose-Anne Atkinson

As soon as Canadian travellers were allowed to drive into the US again, they headed to the Oroville-Osoyoos Border Crossing in droves.

Non-essential traffic has been restricted since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 for a total of 20 months. The border reopened at  9 p.m. on Nov. 7 in Osoyoos to sync up with it reopening at midnight in the Eastern Time Zone.

“It was a tsunami of traffic for about 12 hours," Cameron Bissonnette, owner of the Osoyoos Duty Free, said Monday. “(Sunday) was a very unique day.”

He said traffic was lined up for a couple kilometres down the road and with vehicles and RVs that began parking on the shoulder on Saturday night, Nov. 6.

READ MORE: American lawyer takes hefty fine after trying to enter Canada with restricted firearms

Bissonnette’s family has been running the business since 1986 and he said there has never been a lineup like that in their time.

The store is usually closed on Sundays but Bissonnette came in around 8:30 p.m. He stayed for about three hours as a steady stream of traffic rolled into the US.

Bissonnette went home around 11:30 p.m. and when he returned to the store Monday at 6 a.m., he could only get there by driving along the backroads because of all the congestion along the highway. He said the bumper-to-bumper traffic started to ease up about 9:30 or 10 a.m.

The enormous lineup of traffic last night and this morning was in stark contrast to three months ago when Americans were allowed to drive into Canada again and only a few seemed eager to rush into B.C. as soon as possible.

The travellers who crowded the Canadian border over the weekend were not a rowdy bunch, Bissonnette said. He noticed it was generally older folks and saw some people walking their dogs but didn’t see any tailgate parties.

Seeing so much traffic along that stretch of the highway was a sight he sorely missed.

“It’s quite a relief, I can tell you that much."

Without the usual traffic crossing the border, Bissonnette said sales were down 97% over that 20-month period. He had to lay off the vast majority of staff and rely upon government assistance.

“We feel the weight lifting off our shoulders. We’re not out of the woods yet but headed in the right direction.”

READ MORE: Open U.S. land border could drain tourists southward, Canadian operators worry

However he would like to see the requirement that travellers provide a negative PCR test to prove they don’t have COVID, be lifted.

“Everyone who enters has to be double vaxxed anyway, we think that should be enough.”

That same message is being echoed by tourism associations around Canada. 

"Unless Canada changes that regulation or that order of not requiring a PCR test to re-enter the country, I don't think you're going to see large volumes of people heading into the United States," said Walt Judas, head of British Columbia's tourism association.

Canada's chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said earlier this week the policy on PCR testing is being looked at.

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