Loved ones find ways to connect along closed U.S.-Canada border

Alec de Rham sat with his back against a stone obelisk marked “International Boundary” as he and his wife visited with a daughter they hadn’t seen in 10 weeks.

Hannah Smith took a bus and a bicycle from Vancouver, British Columbia, to the border park to meet her “main person,” Jabree Robinson of Bellingham, Washington.

And beside a large, white arch symbolizing U.S.-Canadian friendship, Lois England and Ian Hendon kissed giddily, reunited for a few hours after the longest separation of their three-year relationship.

Families, couples and friends — separated for weeks by the pandemic-fueled closing of the border between the U.S. and Canada — flocked to Peace Arch Park to reunite, and touch, and hug.

The park covers 42 acres of manicured lawn, flower beds, and cedar and alder trees, extending from Blaine, Washington, into Surrey, British Columbia, at the far western end of the border. As long as they stayed in the park, visitors could freely roam from the U.S. to the Canadian side, and vice versa, without showing so much as a passport.

It has been a frequent site of picnics and sometimes weddings, not to mention an area for travelers to stretch their legs when holiday traffic clogs the ports of entry. And for now it’s one of just a few areas along the along the entire border where those separated by the closure can meet.

The park has been reopened on both sides after its closure in mid-March. England of Sumas, Washington, said she cried when Hendon called to give her the news and they quickly made plans to meet.

England said she and Hendon have generally been careful about social distancing, but there was no thought of keeping 6 feet apart when they saw each other.

About a half-hour drive to the east, other families met where roads on either side closely parallel a small ditch marking the border. Visitors set up chairs across from each other and had long chats; there’s less freedom to touch there.

Before they tried it, Tim and Kris Browning thought it might be too hard to see each other without touching. Kris lives north of the border in Abbotsford, where she is a hospital cook, and Tim lives just south, where he works as an electrician. They married in 2014 after meeting online; the virus has delayed Tim’s application to move to Canada.

But chatting across the ditch and a rusty guard rail, or in a nearby raspberry field owned by Tim’s employer, has become a weekly highlight — much better than virtual, they said.

ELAINE THOMPSON / AP Kris Browning (left) stands in Canada and holds hands with her husband, Tim Browning, in the U.S., after posing for a photo at the border near Lynden, Washington. With the border closed to nonessential travel amid the global pandemic, families and couples across the continent have found themselves cut off from loved ones on the other side.