Borderlands Update: Analyzing The 2nd Vermont Guide to Quebec

Parts of Quebec "may be among the most isolated places in North America. But for Vermonters, they are just right there.”

A year ago, the Vermont weekly newspaper Seven Days published “The Quebec Summer Issue,” a full issue dedicated not just to providing a tourist guide to Quebec specifically tailored to Vermonters, but also into exploring what had become of Vermonters’ attitudes toward Quebec and their own position as a borderland.  The general question the articles posed was “why don’t we come up here more often?” and suggested that the thickening of the Canada-U.S. border since the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, along with the border closures of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and Quebec tightening of its laws promoting and often requiring the use of French had made many Vermonters feel that Canada was too much of a hassle to visit (the need to obtain a passport to return from Canada turned large numbers of people off travel) and that Americans were not necessarily welcome in Quebec given the nationalistic mood.  There was a fair amount in the issue for the analyst of Canadian-American relations to consider, especially because writing considering the borderlands from the viewpoint of an American border state remains fairly uncommon.

That first attempt at a guide to Quebec for Vermont travelers was less a travel booklet and more a work of a piece of journalism, though it argued explicitly for Vermonters to rediscover Quebec and take a chance at crossing the border despite what for many is a palpable distrust of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Canadian Border Services Agency.  (The issue acknowledged the problems at the border, and among other things, concluded that the NEXUS program for frequent border crossers is not worth the long application process.  I disagree, though the U.S. border facilities at the Highgate Springs port of entry on Interstate 89 need to ensure their NEXUS lane is open consistently.)  This year’s edition is more obviously a tourist guide, focused less on getting Vermonters to consider cross-border travel and turning more to the details of what they might want to do on their trips.

For starters, Seven Days turned to Vermont-based travel writer Jen Rose Smith to edit the issue (in fact, an insert in a larger issue), and sought funding from Bonjour Quebec, part of the Government of Quebec's Ministry of Tourism.  It is significant to see the province acknowledge that Americans are less willing to cross the border post-pandemic, and that Vermont is a local place for promoting the province.  Likewise, a number of Quebec tourist attractions, including Montreal music festivals and multiple resorts in the Eastern Townships, have placed advertisements in the guide–as did a convenience store in the town of St. Albans, which is one of the last places to buy gasoline at lower Vermont prices before the border.  The first guide, assuming it was an accomplishment just to get Vermonters across the border, focused on border-adjacent sites such as Montreal, as well as the Eastern Townships and the greenhouses and markets along the border in the town of Lacolle. The second edition encourages longer trips further into Quebec, focusing on Quebec City and its cuisine, as well as whale-watching along the Saguenay and Upper St. Lawrence rivers.

It is noteworthy that the individual articles highlight attractions that are off the beaten track, suggesting that with time Vermonters can develop a deeper knowledge of and appreciation for Quebec.  They also steer travelers into more francophone regions away from Montreal.  There is little explicit discussion of Old Montreal and Old Quebec, places that are popular with Americans but very full of tourists and sometimes lacking in local atmosphere during the peak summer months.  Instead, there are discussions on mountain-biking in the Quebec City region aimed at those already familiar with the biking trails around Stowe, whale-watching sites run by the Wolastoqiyik Wahsipekuk First Nation, and a new UNESCO geopark on Anticosti Island.

For those looking for some consideration of cross-border economic ties, there is a guide to Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport, the second most-used airport by Vermonters after Burlington Patrick Leahy International Airport.  Leahy Airport is relatively small, and while it offers direct service to a number of large airports in the eastern United States, it has no international flights.  Therefore, per a study by the aggregation site Kayak, international itineraries beginning in Burlington cost 42% more than those originating in Montreal headed for the same destination.  Jen Rose Smith’s article does not sugar coat the difficulties that Trudeau airport has been experiencing, including increasing traffic jams around the entrances and increasing instances of car theft in the parking garages, and blithely calls crossing the Canada-U.S. border a ‘chaos factor,” and also refers to the lack of train service between Burlington and Montreal since 1995.  However, Trudeau Airport continues to be northern Vermont’s closest big-city airport, and given the attraction of low-cost flights to American destinations from Burlington for Quebec travelers, the differences between the airports are an important source of cross-border economic activity.

The slow recovery from pandemic disruptions is reviving the cross-border tourist industry in Vermont and Quebec, but things will likely never return to the way they were before 2001.  Although crossing the border is straightforward enough once someone obtains a passport, Vermonters have had close to a quarter century to conclude that crossing the Canadian border is something uncommon and not really done casually, and knowledge of the natural backyard across the border will continue to suffer.