Northern Minnesota worried recent dip in Canadian visitors portends slow summer

GRAND MARAIS, MINN. – On the Saturday before Memorial Day, bicyclists in neon jackets packed a starting line near the breakwaters slicing up the blue of Lake Superior. Then they shoved off in the morning cool for the first race of the summer.

In past years, Le Grand Du Nord, a popular gravel ride in northeastern Minnesota that boomerangs riders out from Grand Marais into the woods and back, has drawn around 50 Canadians. Race organizer Jeremy Kershaw joked he doesn’t want to perpetuate a Canadian stereotype, but the riders tend to be “very pleasant, very strong riders.”

“They come down meaning business,” Kershaw said.

But this year, amid animosity between Canada and the U.S., only 33 Canadian riders came down. It’s a race, Kershaw said, that typically draws 600 competitors. The missing Canadians, in other words, won’t decimate the ranks. But the absences are noticed. And the informal boycott, Kershaw said, is just another regrettable tension between these closest of allies that is felt most sharply along the U.S.-Canadian border.

“One guy wrote to me and told me he loves coming across the border and supporting events like mine,” Kershaw said, “But he’s, in principle, holding his ground this year.”

Canadians are not happy with President Donald Trump. He has upped bellicose rhetoric between the U.S. and Canada from nil to level 100. He calls their country a state and says he wants to annex it. Then, there’s his on-again, off-again tariffs on Canadian goods.

And it appears from anecdotal evidence that Canadians are showing their displeasure with their wallets. Fewer are choosing to travel to the U.S., including to northern Minnesota.

“Personally,” Kershaw said, “I’d be doing the same thing. There are no hard feelings.”

The question is how long the absences will last and how much they will hurt.

Cook County is a north country oasis of lakes and forests, resorts and moose-themed coffee shops on Lake Superior at the point of Minnesota’s Arrowhead region. Part Maine, part Midwest, the county is almost entirely rural and depends on tourism for 80% of its economy.

“When you think of Minnesota, you think of three border crossings in the entire state,” said Linda Jurek, executive director of Visit Cook County. “We are the most remote.”

Translation: Canadians taking this scenic road to Minnesota often come to paddle and pedal.

But this year, tourism officials say Canadians are choosing domestic spots such as Saskatchewan instead, or skipping over the U.S. to Mexico.

Nationwide in April, land travel into the U.S. from Canada fell by 35%. Air travel dropped nearly 20%, too.

Grand Marais businesses first reported fewer visitors in March and April.

But Jurek said the real test will be the summer, when bike races, wooden boat rides, art and music festivals swell the streets of the old fishing and logging village.

For his event, Kershaw offered Canadians what he called a “reverse tariff” — a 25% discount — as a show of solidarity.

“I’m definitely coming back after that,” said Steven Anderson, referring to the reverse tariff. He traveled from Thunder Bay and finished third in the 50-mile race.

On May 24, Grand Marais teemed with foot and bike traffic. Visitors spread across the beach or waited in a long line at World’s Best Donuts. Others crowded into Drury Lane Books.

A bumper sticker on a window outside one shop read: “We Love Canadians.” At an art supply store, a sticker with a maple leaf and “welcome neighbors” was stuck next to the cash register.

For many of the Canadians who made the trip that weekend to Grand Marais, just 35 miles from the border, the visit felt right. It’s a blue city within a politically friendly state — and the Du Nord is the biggest race of its kind.

Tim Hoover of Winnipeg, who finished 10th in the 50-mile race, said he respected his countrymates who chose to stay home. But he thought it would be worse to “let politics get in the way of what I want to do.”

More than 20 million Canadians visited the U.S. in 2024, more than from any other country.

Even a 10% drop in tourism from the north could threaten $2.1 billion in spending, said the U.S. Travel Association.

And the wounds go well beyond tourism. Trump’s 25% tariff on foreign autos has alarmed Canada’s car industry. The nearly 12-day detainment in March of Canadian actor Jasmine Mooney in a San Diego immigration facility spurred fears of traveling in the U.S.

Earlier this month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose come-from-behind win represented a rebuke of U.S. political leadership, paid a visit to the White House to strengthen ties between the allies.

Goldy Hyder, president of the Business Council of Canada and a chief of staff to former Prime Minister Joe Clark, said the delegation sought to remind Americans that everything from farm fertilizer to the fuel for nuclear power plants largely come from Canada. Hyder shrugged off Trump’s talk of a “51st state.”

“We’ve chosen just to ignore it,” he said.

But while the government has made overtures, not all residents feel the same.

Hyder credited Trump in one way.

“You’ve woken us up in Canada” to becoming too dependent on a single economy, Hyder said. “In some ways, the president has done us a favor.”

While Canada is America’s second biggest customer, disagreements remain on trade. Minnesota dairy farmers, for example, complain about protectionism north of the border. Iron Range workers compete fiercely with Canadian steel.

But largely the relationship between the North American neighbors has been marked by comity, from trade to foreign affairs to hockey.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar recently joined a delegation of U.S. senators — including fellow Democrats Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Vermont’s Peter Welch, as well as North Dakota Republican Kevin Cramer — to Ottawa to visit with Carney and do a “reset” on what she said was a “trillion dollars of business” every two years.

“The bike ride is one example of what’s happening all across this partnership,” Klobuchar said. “This is not a sustainable thing to be at odds with our best partner.”

Any dips in tourism dollars add to woes in other northern Minnesota industries like mining. In March, two Iron Range taconite mines were idled, laying off over 600 workers.

The area also is battling wildfires again this year.

But officials are worried about the noticeable decline in Canadian visitors. At International Falls City Council meetings this year, residents and local officials have noted seeing fewer cars with Canadian license plates in parking lots around the border city.

“Is the lack of Canadian customers going to be a new normal for those businesses? We certainly hope that things can normalize, but we’re just waiting to see what happens,” said Mayor Drake Dill in an April interview.

Back in Grand Marais, an area where the economy hums with the clipping of bike shoes or the crunching of hiking boots up the Gunflint Trail, the Canadians who did come down know some who didn’t.

A crew from Thunder Bay said one of their cycling mates didn’t come because he didn’t want to support the U.S. economy. A Winnipeg group had a friend opt out because he has a transgender child and couldn’t justify the travel.

After his race, with the midday temperatures reaching toward a pleasant 60 degrees, David Leibl of Winnipeg stood at the finish line near Voyageurs Brewing.

“We would never guess the U.S. would threaten the sovereignty of allies and friends,” Leibl said. “It’s with mixed feelings that we’re here.”

Kim Hyatt of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.