Boycotting U.S. travel; this is no time to stay home
People have funny reactions. When crack-smoking Rob Ford was mayor, tourists didn’t stop flocking to Toronto. When Rene Levesque became premier of Quebec with the goal of separation, there were no cries about boycotting La Belle Province. Cuba, under Fidel Castro, became one of the top winter destinations for Canadians.
Yet with Donald Trump in the White House, social media comes alive with pleas to stop visiting the United States under the hashtag #boycottUSAtourism. The sentiment has reached famous levels, with noted author Linwood Barclay cancelling a book tour in Arizona.
Still, no word on whether Justin Bieber, Neil Young, or Wayne Gretzky are moving home.
My point is that’s it’s wrong to disengage and build a wall. It helps no one and solves nothing.
As odious as we may find Trump, Canadians shouldn’t give up on the U.S. because they are angry or afraid of him.
“It’s worth stepping back and taking some deep breaths to get a better perspective on things,” a travel industry contact based in Florida wrote me in an email. “I suppose if Americans start leaving the U.S. as refugees, it will be time to be worried. But, as people elsewhere in the world say, Americans generally overstate things, both good and bad.”
Perhaps few people have travelled in the U.S. as much as I have during the past five years, so much so that a border agent at the Detroit Windsor Tunnel recently questioned why.
My destinations have not always been those which are top of mind with Canadians — no New York City, Florida and the like for me. Mine have been the heartland, the smaller cities and rural routes.
It’s there where you’ll find a beautiful nation, populated by interesting, patriotic people who (insert big sigh here) voted for Trump.
Visit places like Apostle Islands, Wis., hip North Little Rock, Ark., or Burnet County, Texas, and you’ll hear why. It starts with feeling ignored and I suspect ends with buyer’s remorse. That’s the America that Canadians should be seeing and engaging. It’s not the time to be staying home or cocooning in the usual destinations.
“No matter what you read in the papers or hear on television, Americans are waiting to see but they’re not frightened,” my Florida friend writes. “There is no evidence that Trump is Hitler or even that he’s Nixon. It remains to be seen if he is merely a buffoon like Rob Ford or if, as he says, his public persona is simply a reflection of his style of doing business.”
He continues: “Americans love Canadians. They like to go to Canada. They like Canadians to come to America. Of all the people in the world, even people from Britain and Australia and New Zealand, Canadians are most like us, and they make us feel comfortable.
“But, we are different. For a while, the pendulum swung more in the direction of being more like Canadians. Now it’s swinging in the direction of being different. America has always done this: alternated between more or less conservative poles. And, we’re always caught in some crisis of deciding who we are.”
That’s where we can help. Let’s pay grassroots America a visit and remind them who the world needs them to be. Now’s not the time to stay at home.