Remote neighbours want more access
Residents of Stewart, B.C. and Hyder, Alaska, question strict COVID-19 border restrictions
Stewart is in B.C. and Hyder is in Alaska. But the two border towns are so close together, and so remote, that they’re basically one community.
Then came COVID-19 and suddenly crossing the border is a big deal.
Hyder has only 63 residents, and is so small it doesn’t have a grocery store or gas station. But Hyder resident Diana Simpson said Hyderites are allowed to go to Canada only once a week, to get “essentials” like groceries or fuel.
Meanwhile, Canadians who cross into Hyder have to quarantine for 14 days when they come back to Canada — unless they work at a gold mine that is accessible only by a road through Hyder before it swings back into Canada.
The situation is maddening to the two towns. So residents have formed a Hyder Stewart Action Committee, which is petitioning the federal, provincial and state governments in Canada and the U.S. to relax the rules and bring things back to normal, relatively speaking.
“We want the government to say Hyder and Stewart meet all the criteria to be officially recognized as an integrated transborder community,” said Carly Ackerman. “And that residents of Hyder and Stewart can travel over the border without the mandatory 14-day quarantine.”
Stewart has about 425 residents. It’s tucked away in the farthest flung reaches of northwestern B.C. at the head of the Portland Canal, 310 km northwest of Terrace, 330 km northwest of Smithers. You can drive to it by a branch of Highway 37 that turns west at Meziadin Junction.
Ackerman said there have been no cases of COVID-19 in either Stewart or Hyder, and with no tourism this year, there likely won’t be any. So she is somewhat mystified about why the Canadian border is being so tough on the neighbours.
“The border is incredibly strict with the Americans,” she said. “The local Canadians don’t really interact with many people from the rest of the world, we’re so remote, we’re so isolated. In Stewart, when you walk around, nobody’s wearing masks, there’s not that type of behaviour here.
“But those 63 people in America, just across the border, are breathing the same air, the kids (usually) play together no problem, same families. (But) the Canadian government is requiring them to wear a mask, even to approach the border, even though nobody can get into Hyder.”
The towns are so remote and tiny that the Canadian border is manned only eight hours a day. If you want to cross after hours, you phone the border station at Beaver
Creek, Yukon, — almost 1,500 road kilometres distant, to get clearance. The American side doesn’t even have a border station.
Ashley Lemire of the Canada Border Services Agency in Ottawa said that the current federal policy in Canada only allows travel into Canada from American border towns that is “essential for work and daily life.”
“Crossing the border for goods such as medication, groceries and other necessary goods has to be the only practical/realistic option for it to be considered a non-discretionary (essential) reason for travel,” she said in an email.
B.C.’s provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, sounded sympathetic to the Hyder and Stewart residents when asked about the petition at a news conference Tuesday. But she said ultimately it is a federal decision.
“It sounds like a reasonable plan,” she said. “My only concern is that we have started to see dramatic increases in cases in the last month in Alaska … Hopefully both of those communities will remain unscathed, but this is something that needs to be taken up with the federal government.”
Hyder is cut off from Alaska by mountains and water, so it doesn’t get many Alaskan visitors, aside from summer tourists who come in on the postal plane from Ketchikan, which is about 90 km away by air. Most of its tourists, and revenue, come from B.C.
Simpson said in summer Hyder normally has two bars, restaurants and hotels open. But everything’s shut this year, including a food truck/ restaurant called The Bus that she has operated for 22 years.
“I have no customer base without Canadian residents coming over,” she said.