Let's Write about bridges!

Delighted to see how my blog about the lights on the Franklin Delano Roosevelt International Bridge in Lubec, Maine, is receiving such an enthusiastic social media response.  Many thanks to Joel Ross for creating this visible symbol of international friendship!

Appreciation to Leslie Bowman for sharing this stunning picture of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge with lights. GLOW FROM THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS installed by Joel Ross across the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Bridge between Lubec and Campobello reflects off the waters of the Lubec Narrows.

Holiday lights decorate the Franklin Delano Roosevelt International Bridge.

Several helpful sources provided the information reported in this Holiday season news blog. Thank you to Joel Ross, a Lubec Maine resident, who led the international Franklin Delano Roosevelt bridge lighting, and The Quoddy Tides: The Most Easterly Published Newspaper in the US, editor Edward French and New Brunswick reporter Derwin Gowan, and Leslie Bowman and Loring Musson, who gave their permission to publish their pictures. (Be sure to read Gowan’s article, scroll below!)

LUBEC, Maine– A one of a kind American-Canadian national park on Campobello Island, in New Brunswick, Canada, was the summer home of the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his family, but the COVID international travel ban between Maine and Canada closed access to the island via the international “Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge”.

This international closure has created an emotional and economic impact on the Campobello Island citizens and on the people who live in the beautiful eastern Maine town of Lubec.

Lubec resident Joel Ross, 39, decided to act on idea he had. In fact, Ross quickly received community support and the okay from the Coast Guard, to string lights on the bridge across the Lubec Narrows. The project created visible friendship and showed support for the many family ties between the international communities.

“Honestly, support for the bridge lights came from the community,” said Ross during a phone interview. He was motivated to create attention to this crossing because his wife and her family are from Campobello Island. In fact, his wife, Lacey Phinney Ross, still has family living on Campobello Island. When her grandmother became ill, she was being cared for in Lubec, when the border closed because of COVID. During the closure, her grandmother died but, sadly, her remains could not be interred with her family on Campobello Island. She did not want to be cremated for religious reasons, so her remains were not able to be interred in Campobello Island. “Only cremated remains could be taken across the border,” he said.

Moreover, Ross said he knows many other families on both sides of the border who have experienced family disruptions as a result of the bridge being closed.

”I definitely wasn’t looking for attention, but I’m happy people are enjoying it,” Ross said. “We were just looking to brighten peoples’ day up a little bit, and show a unity between our communities. I’m really, really happy people enjoy it.”

Ross started the project with his own money but soon the community donated to finish the lights for both sides of the bridge. “Our communities are connected in so many ways and people support one another,” he said.

The decked steel beam bridge is named for Franklin D. Roosevelt, connects New Brunswick Route 774 to Maine State Route 189 and is Campobello Island’s only fixed connection to the mainland of North America; all of the island’s transportation connections to the rest of New Brunswick are by seasonal ferry.

Thanks to Loring Munson

A captivating two second exposure photo taken of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt International Bridge, by Lubec resident Loring Munson

This seasonal brightness created between Maine and Campobello Island in New Brunswick is a brilliant example to demonstrate how bridges are intended to unite people.

With his permission, the editor of the newspaper Quoddy Tides, Edward French gave me his permission to publish this article, reported by Derwin Gowan.

For what is believed to be the first time in the bridge’s history, it is adorned with Christmas lights thanks to Joel Ross, a Lubec man who put together fundraising efforts to buy the lights, and then strung nine-hundred feet worth along the bridge’s north rail.

He says the response from the community has been overwhelming.

”I definitely wasn’t looking for any notoriety or anything, but I’m glad people enjoy it,” Ross said. “We were just looking to brighten peoples day up a little bit, and show a little unity between us, y’know? I’m really, really happy people enjoy it.”

Yet, the window opened a crack in November, but then slammed shut just days before Christmas. Canada’s Health Minister Jean Yves Duclos announced in Ottawa that the exemption allowing residents of border communities to visit the United States for 72 hours without taking a PCR test for COVID 19 to return home would end starting on December 21.

Further, the government closed the loophole allowing people to get PCR tests in Canada, before leaving for the United States, provided they return within 72 hours. Now, even people making brief trips will need to get the test outside Canada.

The New Brunswick government added to this downer with an announcement that the province would shift to Level 2 of the COVID 19 Winter Plan at 11:59 p.m. on December 27. The province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Jennifer Russell, Health Minister Dorothy Shepherd and Premier Blaine Higgs say the province deliberately chose this day to tighten restrictions to allow families and friends to get together over Christmas but minimize the chances of a major outbreak from New Year’s Eve festivities.

Both federal and Canadian provincial officials say they took these measures in light of frightening numbers related to the omicron variant of COVID 19. New Brunswick has done better than neighboring Maine, Quebec and Nova Scotia thus far, but the provincial officials say that it is only a matter of time before the wave laps up on New Brunswick’s shores.

Getting across before window closes: The window did open for a few days, allowing 92 year old Charlotte Gowan in St. Stephen to finally get over to Calais to visit her 90 year old sister Sally Smith for the first time since March 2020. Gowan’s daughter in law Jennifer downloaded the ArriveCAN app, filled in the required information and accompanied her mother in law. The two and one half hour trip went well, and they got back home with no mishaps. Asked if the trip was necessary, Gowan replies, “I thought I had to, well, considering our age and the fact that she had that awful sick spell, and I wanted to see her.” Smith caught and recovered from COVID 19 despite having two doses of vaccine and is recovering from a fall in her kitchen in September in which she broke her hip.

“Well, my goodness, I looked up and there was my beloved sister walking in the door. Wasn’t that amazing?” Smith says. “We knew that she might come and so she just appeared, and I was very happy to see her,” she says. Her sons John and Joseph got to see their aunt, too. Smith hopes to get over to St. Stephen if she can navigate the rules for entering Canada.

The federal decision to close the window allowing short visits without PCR tests disappoints New Brunswick Southwest MP John Williamson. “What’s going to happen as of Tuesday is the traffic between the two countries is going to dry up again,” he says. “My view is we have to learn to live with COVID 19. We have to be smart; we have to protect ourselves … but the idea that we are going to close the border and go into lockdown, suddenly, without warning, I think is starting to have some really hard consequences elsewhere, whether it’s mental health, whether it’s other medical procedures and whether it’s just the ability for someone to run a business,” he says.

Canadians can still winter in Florida and go to the United States to work “but this new testing requirement at land crossings is going to stop cross border commutes dead in their tracks,” he says.

Calais, Maine helps Canadians get home

The changing rules might affect traffic at certain Calais,Maine businesses and public services where staff have developed expertise at helping Canadians download ArriveCAN and comply with other rules, so they can get back home after short trips “over the river.”

At least 40 desperate Canadians showed up at the Calais Free Library looking for help in the days following November 30, after border agents told them they had to present completed ArriveCAN forms, says librarian Joyce Garland. Library staff already had some experience following an influx of people wanting to go home after Canada lifted restrictions on nonessential travel in August. People taking longer trips made up the August influx. After November 30, the library saw more local people from Charlotte County making short trips.

“They didn’t realize they even had to have ArriveCAN done, then, they couldn’t get back home. They were sent to the library by Canadian border agents”, Garland says. Some people did not have email addresses or could not remember passwords. Some were not computer literate, so staff would either set the people up with email or download the app, punch in the required information, then provide a printout or screen shot with the required code the border agent could enter to allow the person to go home without isolating or paying a fine.

Due to COVID 19 spacing rules, the library has only two computers available for public use, and Calais patrons sometimes had to wait in line, to use a computer or check out a book, while staff tried to help Canadians trying to get home, Garland says. She eventually called City Manager Michael Ellis, who spoke to the Canada Border Services Agency, she says.

“It’s not that we didn’t want to help people, but we didn’t have the manpower and, I mean, we were helping people, but we had to end it somehow,” she says.

Calais Maine Free Library

Garland sent some people up the street to the Maine Visitor Information Center, where manager Vicki Farrell confirms that staff have helped quite a few people. The center actually started helping American residents wanting to visit Canada after the restrictions eased in August — and extended the service to Canadians wanting to go home.

“We try to assist. We can scan their vaccination cards so they can upload them to their devices. If they don’t have a device, we can do it on a computer and print it out, or take a picture of the screen so they have their code when they arrive at the border crossing,” she says.

The center only has one computer it can use for this service. It can take 20 minutes “if all goes well,” she says, “but if you can’t get into your email to get the code that they send you, then there lies the rub. We’ve had some challenges, but I think we’ve helped a good deal of people.”

The new rule requiring people to get their PCR tests outside Canada will be a problem because the only place in Calais to get the tests is at the city’s recreation department, on Mondays and Tuesdays from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. when the Center for Disease Control comes to town, she says.

One Calais business started helping desperate Canadians get home “by accident,” according to manager Sue Provencher at C&E Feeds. After staff helped one customer download the app, CBSA called and asked if the business would offer this as a service to customers. “So we went out and bought two tablets, and we offer it as a service. They can pay for it, whatever they can, $1 or $2, it doesn’t matter, if they want to make a donation,” she says.

C&E Feeds has close to 8,000 Canadian customers, who use the company’s parcel service — providing mailboxes allowing Canadians to order things in the United States with an American address to send them to be picked up.

“We were pretty sad to hear that they were going to require the PCR testing and kind of close it down again,” Provencher says. C&E Feeds stayed open till 7 p.m. in the final days before the window closed again — hoping Canadians could get over to pick up their parcels, some there since the early days of the pandemic.

Provencher’s “best chum” since childhood, Heidi Hamilton Bradford, now lives on the Canadian side of the border. They have not seen each other since the pandemic began.

Garland — the former Joyce Baxter — grew up in St. Stephen where her mother and other family members still live. She has not seen most of them since the start of the pandemic, although her sister Laurie recently came over to visit. She has a niece and nephew, born since the pandemic began, whom she has yet to see. “I’m going to try to get over for Christmas,” she says.

(Derwin Gowan is Charlotte Gowan’s son and Sally Smith’s nephew).

Obviously, the border closing has separated innumerable numbers of Maine and Canadian families. This separation will undoubtedly have a regressive impact on shared cross border cultures and also for those who speak French as their first language.