In Point Roberts, lives are upended as politics repel Canadian tourists

In return, their patronage almost exclusively supported the few local eateries, gas stations, parcel posts and the grocery market in Point Roberts that now struggle to stay solvent.

“They are the end of the line; no one’s coming through there to go anywhere else,” says Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University.

At a cozy cafe near the Bellingham campus, Trautman adds, “They have this unique borderland economy, unique borderland social structure, where they depend on that border, whether it’s to see people on the other side or the economics coming in.”