Passport? Check. Plane ticket? Check. What about your vaccination documents and COVID-19 test results? Thanks to the pandemic, returning home from a trip abroad now requires a lengthy checklist.
“You definitely have to be prepared and it’s not going to be the usual experience,” said Senka Dukovich of Toronto, who flew home from Croatia earlier this month.
Even domestic travellers may face challenges when entering certain provinces.
Here’s what you need to know about travelling to or within Canada, with the help of some Canadians who’ve already hit the road.
Before you return to Canada
Although fully vaccinated Canadians can now skip quarantine when returning to Canada, they still face other requirements.
Dukovich, her husband Ted Read, and their five-year-old granddaughter Ksenija Callaghan, travelled to Croatia in June to visit family. They had a two-day stopover in Paris before their final flight back to Canada on July 7.
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France requires travellers to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test upon arrival, but Dukovich and her husband got an exemption by showing proof of their COVID-19 vaccinations. Ksenija was also exempt because of her age.
“Countries’ rules can change,” said Dukovich. “I did a lot of research to choose my flight path.”
The trio, however, still had to take COVID-19 tests in Paris before boarding their final flight home.
Travellers to Canada — even those who are fully vaccinated — must provide proof of a negative COVID-19 molecular test taken within 72 hours of arrival. Air passengers need to take the test within 72 hours of the scheduled departure time of their final direct flight to Canada.
Dukovich was pleased to discover that — at the time — France provided free PCR tests.
“We got three COVID tests [for free] that would have cost at least $400,” she said. “No hassles, no waits, no appointment.”
Senka Dukovich, her husband Ted Read and granddaughter Ksenija Callaghan, travelled to home to Toronto on July 7 following a trip to Croatia. (Submitted by Senka Dukovich)
However, Canadians departing France now won’t be so lucky; on July 7, the country stopped providing free tests to tourists outside the EU.
Travellers to Canada must submit their travel information to the federal government using the ArriveCAN app or by registering online within 72 hours before their arrival.
“You had to upload documentation for both your first and second dose,” said Dukovich who submitted the family’s application from a hotel room in Paris. “We just had our phone, so you can imagine, trying to do this on the little phone.”
On arrival
When travellers finish inputting their information, they’re emailed a receipt to show a Canadian border officer upon arrival, along with their COVID-19 test results and any vaccination documents.
On July 9, Shawn Plancke, a Canadian who lives in Barcelona, flew to Halifax with his wife and three children. He advises travellers to pack hard copies of their documents before departing for Canada.
“I know this is going against society these days, but print it out,” he said. “I would not have wanted to be flipping through my phone [for documents].”
Both land and air travellers will be tested for COVID-19 upon arrival in Canada, or be given a home test kit. The federal government provides the tests for free and travellers can pre-register online to save time.
For eligible, fully vaccinated travellers entering by air mode, you may now have the option to take a test kit and complete your arrival test at home. This will help expedite processing at airports. More Info: <a href=”https://t.co/copXPIdBG6″>https://t.co/copXPIdBG6</a> <a href=”https://t.co/PSGuTTwLbD”>pic.twitter.com/PSGuTTwLbD</a>
Dukovich and her family landed in Montreal. She said they received home test kits instead of an on-site test, because they had a connecting flight to Toronto.
“On the way out, they just handed us kits like they were giving you a lunch box,” said Dukovich.
At home, she had to go online and be guided by a nurse via video conference who provided instructions including “counting down the seconds you have to have the swab in your nose,” said Dukovich.
That same day, Purolator picked up the tests.
Traveling with children
Fully vaccinated travellers don’t have to quarantine while waiting for their test results. But Dukovich thought that she and her husband were required to, because their five-year-old granddaughter — who’s staying with them — isn’t vaccinated.
Children under 12 are currently not allowed to get vaccinated in Canada.
It was only on day three of their quarantine that Dukovich learned from a quarantine officer that only her granddaughter had to quarantine.
“That was a relief,” said Dukovich. “My husband and I are free to go out.”
Unvaccinated travellers — or those who got a vaccine currently not recognized by the Canadian government — must quarantine for 14 days. Those entering by air must also spend up to three of those days in a quarantine hotel at their own expense.
However, unvaccinated children under 18 can head home with their vaccinated parents. But they must quarantine — even though their parents can leave the house.
Fully vaccinated Shawn Plancke and his wife, Samantha McGuinness were exempt from quarantine after entering Canada. But their three children were required to quarantine for 14 days. (Submitted by Shawn Plancke)
But that’s not the message Plancke said he got when he and his family landed in Halifax after taking a connecting flight in Montreal. Plancke and his wife are fully vaccinated, but their three children are not. Even so, he said a provincial representative at the Halifax airport insisted the entire family was exempt from quarantine.
“My wife is like, ‘But realize we’re not just flying from Montreal, we’re flying from Spain. And she said, ‘Nope, nope, that doesn’t make any difference, all five of you are fine.'”
Plancke then called the federal government’s COVID-19 line and learned that his three children must quarantine.
Travelling within Canada
The rules can also be complex for domestic travellers.
Air passengers travelling within Canada don’t have to take a pre-arrival COVID-19 test.
The rules can vary depending on your vaccination status and/or where you’re travelling from. For example, most of the Atlantic provinces now allow travellers from within Atlantic Canada to enter, regardless of their vaccination status.
The rest of Canada can skip quarantine in the Atlantic provinces if fully vaccinated or, in the case of New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, have at least one dose. (To note: P.E.I.’s exemption for vaccinated travellers doesn’t kick in until Sunday.)
Fully vaccinated travellers can also skip quarantine in Manitoba and the territories.
Manitoba, Yukon and the Atlantic provinces also exempt from quarantine unvaccinated children under 12 — if all their vaccinated guardians meet the exemption requirement. In Nova Scotia, the rule applies to unvaccinated children ages 18 and younger.
(CBC News)
“It’s quite confusing,” said Plancke. But he said he understands why his kids, who travelled internationally, must follow the federal quarantine rules.
“The last thing we want to do is to pass on COVID due to our travels.”
The provinces and territories listed here may have further requirements for tourists, so travellers to those regions should check the rules online before packing their bags.
For example, the Atlantic provinces require certain visitors to pre-register, and travellers to Nunavut must first get authorization. Also, the Northwest Territories still bars most leisure travellers.
Have questions about this story? We’re answering as many as we can in the comments.
Nova Scotia RCMP say their investigation into two suspicious deaths earlier this month has concluded that one man died by homicide and the other by suicide.
The bodies of two men, aged 40 and 73, were found in a home in Windsor, N.S., on Sept. 3.
Police say the province’s medical examiner determined the 40-year-old man was killed and the 73-year-old man killed himself.
They say the two men were members of the same family.
No arrests or charges are anticipated, and the names of the deceased will not be released.
RCMP say they will not be releasing any further details out of respect for the family.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from its original location because members were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
Nemaska’s story illustrates the challenges Legault’s government faces as it looks to build new dams to meet the province’s power needs, which are anticipated to double by 2050. Legault has promised that any new projects will be developed in partnership with Indigenous people and have “social acceptability,” but experts say that’s easier said than done.
François Bouffard, an associate professor of electrical engineering at McGill University, said the earlier era of hydro projects were developed without any consideration for the Indigenous inhabitants living nearby.
“We live in a much different world now,” he said. “Any kind of hydro development, no matter where in Quebec, will require true consent and partnership from Indigenous communities.” Those groups likely want to be treated as stakeholders, he added.
Securing wider social acceptability for projects that significantly change the landscape — as hydro dams often do — is also “a big ask,” he said. The government, Bouchard added, will likely focus on boosting capacity in its existing dams, or building installations that run off river flow and don’t require flooding large swaths of land to create reservoirs.
Louis Beaumier, executive director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montreal, said Legault’s visit to Nemaska represents a desire for reconciliation with Indigenous people who were traumatized by the way earlier projects were carried about.
Any new projects will need the consent of local First Nations, Beaumier said, adding that its easier to get their blessing for wind power projects compared to dams, because they’re less destructive to the environment and easier around which to structure a partnership agreement.
Beaumier added that he believes it will be nearly impossible to get the public — Indigenous or not — to agree to “the destruction of a river” for a new dam, noting that in recent decades people have come to recognize rivers as the “unique, irreplaceable riches” that they are.
Legault’s visit to northern Quebec came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
The book, published in 2022 along with Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Nemaska community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault was in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro complex in honour of former premier Bernard Landry. At the event, Legault said he would follow the example of his late predecessor, who oversaw the signing of the historic “Paix des Braves” agreement between the Quebec government and the Cree in 2002.
He said there is “significant potential” in Eeyou Istchee James Bay, both in increasing the capacity of its large dams and in developing wind power projects.
“Obviously, we will do that with the Cree,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEMASKA – For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from their original location because they were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
The book, published in 2022 by Wapachee and Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Cree community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, 100 and 300 kilometres away, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Legault’s visit came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault had been in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro dam in honour of former premier Bernard Landry.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
