For more than a year and a half, Canada has kept its doors closed to most non-essential foreign travellers. But that will change on Monday when the federal government opens our border to fully vaccinated Americans.
The government will also loosen several travel restrictions that apply to Canadians returning home from abroad.
Here’s what travellers can expect at the Canadian border, starting Monday.
The Americans are coming
For more than a month, fully vaccinated Canadian travellers have been allowed to skip quarantine when returning home from abroad.
In a continuation of its phased reopening of the border, starting Monday, the government will allow fully vaccinated Americans to both enter Canada and skip the mandatory 14-day quarantine.
But before eager Americans pack their bags, they should make sure they meet all requirements, said Denis Vinette, vice-president of the Canada Border Services Agency’s COVID-19 border task force.
“People need to know what their obligations are,” he said.
The next step of easing border measures begins on August 9. All travellers eligible to enter Canada must enter travel details and proof of vaccination via <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/ArriveCAN?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#ArriveCAN</a>, if they’re fully vaccinated, before entering Canada. <a href=”https://t.co/nTgbEX6CYD”>https://t.co/nTgbEX6CYD</a> <a href=”https://t.co/WKCZaVuegO”>pic.twitter.com/WKCZaVuegO</a>
First, to be considered fully vaccinated, Americans must have received all required doses of a Health Canada-approved COVID-19 vaccine 14 days prior to entering Canada.
Second, only U.S. citizens and permanent residents residing in and travelling from the United States will be permitted entry.
And, just like Canadian travellers, Americans must submit their travel information — including vaccination documents — using the ArriveCAN app or by registering online within 72 hours before their arrival.
Travellers entering Canada on Monday, however, should wait until that day to submit their information, because the government is launching a new version of the app at 12:01 a.m. ET on Monday.
Testing requirements
Although they get to skip quarantine, all fully vaccinated travellers entering Canada must still provide proof of a negative COVID-19 molecular test taken within 72 hours of arrival.
However, come Monday, vaccinated travellers will get to skip the government-administered post-arrival COVID-19 test — unless they’re randomly selected to take it.
“It will be a mandatory random-testing regime,” said Vinette. “This surveillance program will allow us to be able to determine, based on the sampling of a pool size, what are the potential risks … in terms of travellers who’ve been vaccinated who may still be carrying COVID.”
Fully vaccinated travellers entering Canada will be able to skip the mandatory post-arrival COVID-19 test — unless they’re randomly selected to take it. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Fully vaccinated travellers who test positive for COVID-19, or who fail to meet Canada’s vaccination requirements, have two choices: They can either quarantine for 14 days or return to the country from which they departed.
“If you drove into Canada, [you can] drive back out of Canada, back into the United States,” Vinette said.
Travelling with children
Canada will also start allowing unvaccinated children under the age of 12 and travelling with fully vaccinated parents to skip quarantine as of Monday.
That rule will come as a relief to some families, because children under 12 currently can’t get vaccinated in either Canada or the U.S.
Unvaccinated children over the age of four will still be required to take a COVID-19 test upon arrival, plus another one eight days later. Both tests will be provided for free by the government.
WATCH | Canada to open border to vaccinated Americans by Aug. 9:
Effective Aug. 9, fully vaccinated Americans can travel to Canada without having to quarantine, rules which may extend to the rest of the world in early September. 2:32
Parents travelling with unvaccinated children are asked to make sure their children take the necessary health precautions, such as avoiding large crowds.
“They can accompany their parent or guardian out of the house to their destination, so long as they avoid group settings like summer camp, school or childcare for 14 days,” federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu said at a news conference last month.
American families travelling with unvaccinated children between the ages of 12 and 17 can still enter Canada, but the children must quarantine for 14 days.
More reopenings in September
The government plans to reopen Canada’s borders to fully vaccinated travellers from all other countries on Sept. 7, but that rule and others may change if Canada gets hit with a serious fourth wave of COVID-19.
This week, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam announced that the country’s COVID-19 infections are ticking upward. Vaccinated travellers are considered low risk, she said, but the government will continue to monitor the situation.
“We’re taking a precautionary, phased approach to the border reopening,” Tam said Thursday. “If we see any significant concerns, of course, we can adjust accordingly.”
Canadian travellers should also take note that the U.S. side of the Canada-U.S. land border remains closed to non-essential travellers until at least Aug. 21. However, Canadians have been able to fly to the U.S. since the start of the pandemic.
And all unvaccinated travellers entering Canada by air come Monday will no longer have to spend part of their quarantine in a government-designated hotel. However, they still must quarantine for 14 days upon arrival and take all the required COVID-19 tests.
Finally, some provinces have provincial travel rules and restrictions in place, so travellers should check if they need to meet any local requirements when entering Canada.
Since 90 per cent of Canada’s border agents are considered essential workers, they weren’t able to walk off the job. But the workers’ two unions had warned that travellers may experience long lineups at the border due to job action, which could include CBSA agents asking travellers more questions than usual.
On Friday, several land-border crossings had wait times of more than one hour. But now that a tentative deal is on the table, border wait times may return to normal.
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
