President Donald Trump’s recent threats to start a trade war with Canada and to turn it into the 51st U.S. state have not landed well with the populace of the sovereign nation to Alaska’s east.
Canadian sports fans have hurled boos at the U.S. anthem at recent hockey and basketball games. Leaders of border towns like Windsor, Ontario, long-integrated with Detroit, have protested by pulling funds for cross-border bus service and event sponsorships.
But in the far north, the historically tight bond between Alaskans and Yukoners has remained intact amid the fraught federal politics — at least for now.
If anything, the recent belligerence at the national level has inspired local pleas for pacifism. Alaska border-town officials have penned effusive letters to their Canadian counterparts, reinforcing commitments to traditions that have long united people on both sides of the remote, 1,500-mile border.
“This whole business with Trump and the tariffs and potential annexation that he’s throwing out there — it has upset a lot of Canadians. But we also recognize that our friends and family and neighbors across the border, we can’t paint them with that same paint brush,” said Diane Strand, mayor of Haines Junction, a small Yukon Territory outpost about a three-hour drive north of the Southeast Alaska town of Haines.
Strand recently received a letter from Haines Mayor Tom Morphet, saying that “as northerners, we sometimes have as much in common with our Canadian neighbors as we do with our own countrymen in the southern latitudes.”
In a phone interview last week, Morphet said he has worried that President Trump’s rhetoric about annexation and tariffs could make Canadians more hesitant to visit Haines, and he fears the town could see a drop in tourism as a result.
Strand, the Haines Junction mayor, said she has heard some constituents say they are now leery of traveling to Anchorage and Fairbanks — where they fear they’d no longer feel welcomed. But they’re still open to going to the small, nearby towns of Haines and Skagway where they know more people, she added.
Efforts to maintain the cross-border bond could face a test at the upcoming Kluane Chilkat International Bike Relay, an annual bike race in June that runs from Haines Junction to Haines.
A Haines member of the relay’s board, a mix of Canadians and Americans, described some “animosity” at a recent meeting, according to KHNS, Haines’ public radio station.
But event planners told Northern Journal that they’re fully committed to holding the race, in spite of the deteriorating national relations.
“We just want people to have a good time,” said Monika Kozlerova, a Whitehorse resident who coordinates the event. “We are trying to stay away from any politics.”
Another yearly event that brings together hundreds of people from both Alaska and the Yukon, the Buckwheat International Ski Classic, is also still expected to happen, according to event organizers.
That race, organized by a group mostly of Alaskans, is held on the Canadian side of White Pass, which is 45 minutes by car from the Southeast Alaska town of Skagway.
“I’ve heard nothing but interest in the Buckwheat,” said Jon Hillis, a Skagway resident who helps plan the race, which is scheduled for March 15. “I think we’re relatively on pace in sign-ups. So, I don’t see a lot of impact so far.”
Hillis added, though, that Trump’s proposed 25% tariffs on Canadian goods could affect not only Yukoners but also people from Skagway.
Many Skagway residents frequently drive two hours north to shop at big box stores in Whitehorse.
“If those tariffs came into place, they would hurt a lot. I go up to Whitehorse at least monthly,” said Hillis, who buys supplies for his cleaning business there. “We’re all kind of holding our breath.”
Morphet added, “We like Canada the way it is. We like that they have great ice rinks. We like that they have great parks.”
Morphet also gave shout-outs to the country’s health care system and the veterinarians, winter apparel shops and ice-skate sharpeners of the Yukon — all of which have, at one point or another, served the Alaskans of Haines and Skagway.
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