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Canada Urges Its Travelers to Stay Home as Trade War With U.S. Continues

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Canada Urges Its Travelers to Stay Home as Trade War With U.S. Continues

In a speech this month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, clearly annoyed by import tariffs levied by President Trump and his threats of making Canada “the 51st state,” suggested that Canadians might act individually to respond to the affronts.

“Now is also the time to choose Canada,” Mr. Trudeau said, adding, “It might mean changing your summer vacation plans to stay here in Canada and explore the many national and provincial parks, historical sites and tourist destinations our great country has to offer.”

In the weeks since, it appears that at least some Canadian citizens are taking his directive seriously.

“I’ve decided that I will no longer be traveling to the U.S. unless it’s absolutely necessary to go,” said Harold White, 72, who lives in Quebec.

Mr. White, a lawyer, said he had canceled an annual summer trip to Maine, one that he has made every year for 60 years. Over the decades, he made friends with local residents there, he said, whom he does not expect to see for the next four years. Instead, he and his wife plan to travel to Spain and in later years, make road trips across Canada.

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“It pains me to think that I’m not going to Maine or to Cape Cod or even to New York City for a vacation in the near term,” Mr. White said, noting that he continued to travel to the United States during President Trump’s first term. “But this time around, really, I feel like Canadians have been slapped across the face by Trump.”

According to the U.S. Travel Association, a nonprofit group that represents the U.S. travel industry, Canadians made 20.4 million visits to the United States last year and were responsible for $20.5 billion in spending. A 10 percent decline in Canadian visitors would amount to a $2.1 billion loss, the group said.

“We have seen that people are starting to pivot away and avoid the U.S.,” said Alexis von Hoensbroech, the chief executive of WestJet, the second-largest airline in Canada. “We see also an increase of bookings into Mexico, into the Caribbean, into other non-U.S. destinations.”

Mark Galardo, a vice president for Air Canada, the country’s largest airline, said that it would be adjusting its schedule from March onward in order to “derisk” the situation.

“We are anticipating proactively that there could be a slowdown,” he said in a statement.

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Florida, California, Nevada, New York and Texas are the most visited U.S. states by Canadians. Those states could experience declines in revenue in their retail and hospitality sectors from a Canadian travel boycott, according to U.S. Travel.

However, in a statement, Geoff Freeman, the group’s chief executive, said that the United States received the largest number of international visitors ever in 2018, in the middle of the first Trump Administration, and that what travelers say and what they do are often different.

“If we have a decline in travel from any specific destination, we will share that information where it needs to be shared and work with the administration to solve for that problem,” Mr. Freeman said. “We do want them coming to the United States. If that’s not happening, then we’ve got work to do.”

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Flight Center Travel Group, an international travel agency, said that the company has seen a “softening in cross-border travel bookings” from Canada to the United States — a shift that has been gaining momentum since November. The Canadian dollar is weak compared with the U.S. dollar, the statement said, and that existing reluctance was exacerbated by the announcement on import tariffs. (On Thursday, President Trump insisted that the tariffs would go into effect next week.)

Amra Durakovic, the spokeswoman, said that Canadians’ “desire for travel” remained strong, with many prioritizing other destinations over the United States so that travelers could “make the most of their journeys.”

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“Looking ahead, we remain hopeful that travel and trade between Canada and the U.S. will soon resume with the confidence and ease both countries have long enjoyed,” Ms. Durakovic said in the statement.

In the United States, state tourism boards are bracing for potential effects.

Sara Otte Coleman, the tourism and marketing director for North Dakota’s department of commerce, said that the state, which borders Canada, had paused its paid marketing in Canada until officials could “better understand the sentiment about traveling to North Dakota.”

Tim Chapman is the chief executive of the International Peace Garden, a park that extends across the border between the Canadian province of Manitoba and North Dakota.

He said he has been receiving emails from Canadian visitors who said they no longer planned to visit the tourist attraction, which usually draws around 150,000 visitors a year.

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In one exchange, Mr. Chapman said, a Canadian told him she could not visit because of the rhetoric out of Washington. He said that he explained that the garden was a nonprofit that needed support from visitors and that he felt she understood.

“The Peace Garden has always stood for and advocated for the peace and cooperation of our two countries,” Mr. Chapman said.

“Even though we don’t have a lot of control about what’s being said, we can still be a place where people can come together, because the vast majority of Americans and Canadians do really value that friendship and longstanding cooperation.”

Mr. von Hoensbroech, the WestJet executive, said that he did expect cross-border travel to pick back up at some point. He noted that this was common in the travel industry — short-term reactions to current events that ultimately return to general stability. Still, he said, the response was unique.

“I haven’t seen anything like this,” he said.

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Video: LaGuardia Crash Survivors Recount Ordeal

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Video: LaGuardia Crash Survivors Recount Ordeal

“I just thought, please don’t let this be how my life ends. I’m not ready to die. When we landed, it was a very rough landing. Like we landed and the plane jolted back up, and that caught a lot of passengers off guard. Everyone kind of like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then you hear the pilot braking, and it was like just this grinding sound.” “Everybody was shocked everywhere. There was — there’s people screaming. The plane just veered off course. I mean, it was just — it all happened so quickly, but it all felt just like a very dire situation.” “Oh, God. Oh my goodness. That’s crazy.” “People were bleeding from their nose, cuts and scrapes. I saw black eyes, all different types of facial contusions, bruising and bleeding. I was sitting by the exit door, and I opened the exit door. There was a sense of camaraderie amongst the survivors. Nobody was pushing, shoving, ‘I got to get out first.’” “The plane actually tipped back as we were leaving, as people were getting off the plane. That was when the nose kind of fell off the front of the plane, and the whole plane kind of went up to what we’d seen in all the pictures of the plane’s nose in the air.” And there was no slide when we got out. A lot of us were jumping off of the airplane wing to get down. And when I got out and I saw that the front of the plane, how destroyed it was, I just was — I was in shock.” “It was only really when I was outside of the plane, looking back at the plane, and I had seen what had happened to the cockpit, and then just like this sense of dread overcame me, where I was just like, wow, a lot of people might have just been pretty badly hurt.” “I’m grateful to the pilots who were so courageous and brave, and acted swiftly, and they saved our lives. And if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to come home to my family. I’m forever indebted to them. They’re my heroes.”

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Video: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead

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Video: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead

new video loaded: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead

The two pilots of a Air Canada Express jet were killed after a collision with a Port Authority fire truck on Sunday at LaGuardia Airport in New York.

By Axel Boada and Monika Cvorak

March 23, 2026

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How a Family of 3 Lives on $500,000 on the Upper West Side

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How a Family of 3 Lives on 0,000 on the Upper West Side

How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.

We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?

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Rent is not the largest monthly expense for Anala Gossai and Brendon O’Leary, a couple who live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. That would be child care.

They spend $4,200 each month on day care for their 1-year-old son, Zeno.

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“We really liked the center,” Ms. Gossai, 37, said. “Neighbors in our building love it. It’s actually pretty middle of the road for cost. Some were even more expensive.”

The rent for their one-bedroom apartment is $3,900 per month. Space is tight, but the location is priceless.

“We’re right across from Central Park,” she said. “We can walk to the subway and the American Museum of Natural History.”

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‘Middle Class’ in Manhattan

Ms. Gossai, a data scientist, and her husband, 38, a software engineer, met in graduate school. Their household income is roughly $500,000 per year. While they make a good living, they try to be frugal and are saving money to buy an apartment.

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They moved into their roughly 800-square-foot rental eight years ago when it was just them and their dog, Peabody, a Maltese poodle. Now their son’s crib is steps away from their bed. They installed a curtain between the bed and the crib to keep the light out.

Like many couples, they have discussed leaving the city.

“When we talk about the possibility of moving to the suburbs, we both really dread it,” Mr. O’Leary said. “I don’t like to drive. Anala doesn’t drive. I feel like we’d be stuck. We really value being able to walk everywhere.”

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Ms. Gossai is from Toronto, and Mr. O’Leary is from Massachusetts. In New York City, wealth is often viewed in relation to your neighbors, and many of theirs make more money. The Upper West Side has the sixth-highest median income of any neighborhood in the city, according to the N.Y.U. Furman Center.

“I think we’re middle class for this area,” Mr. O’Leary said. “We’re doing OK.”

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The couple tries to save about $10,000 each month to put toward an apartment or for an emergency. They prioritize memberships to the Central Park Zoo at $160 per year and the American Museum of Natural History at $180 per year.

Their son likes the museum’s butterflies exhibit and the “Invisible Worlds” light show, which Mr. O’Leary said felt like a “baby rave.”

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Ordering Diapers Online

The cost of having a young child is their top expense. But they hope that relief is on the horizon and that Zeno can attend a free prekindergarten program when he turns 4.

For now, they rely on online shopping for all sorts of baby supplies. The family spent roughly $9,000 on purchases over the last year, including formula and diapers. That included about $730 for toys and games.

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Ms. Gossai said one of her favorite purchases was a pack of hundreds of cheap stickers.

“They are good bribes to get him into his stroller,” she said. “Six dollars for stickers was extremely worth it.”

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They splurge on some items like drop-off laundry service, which costs about $150 a month. It feels like a luxury instead of doing it themselves in the basement.

Keeping track of baby socks “completely broke my mind,” Ms. Gossai said.

Their grocery bills are about $900 per month, mostly spent at Trader Joe’s and Fairway. Mr. O’Leary is in charge of cooking and tries to make dinner at home twice a week.

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They spend about $500 per month on eating out and food delivery. A favorite is Jacob’s Pickles, a comfort food restaurant where they order the meatloaf and potatoes.

Saving on Vacations and Transportation

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Before Zeno, the couple spent thousands of dollars on vacations to Switzerland and Oregon. Now, trips are mainly to visit family.

Mr. O’Leary takes the subway to work at an entertainment company. Ms. Gossai mostly works from home for a health care company. They rarely spend money on taxis or car services.

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“I’ll only take an Uber when I’m going to LaGuardia Airport,” Mr. O’Leary said.

Care for their dog is about $370 per month, including doggie day care, grooming and veterinarian costs. Peabody is getting older and the basket under the family’s stroller doubles as a shuttle for him.

They love their neighborhood and the community of new parents they have met. Still, they dream of having a second bedroom for their son and a second bathroom.

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Their kitchen is cramped with no sunlight. So they put a grow light and plants above the refrigerator to brighten the room.

Since they share a room with their son, he often wakes them up around 5 a.m.

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“In the sweetest and most adorable way,” Ms. Gossai said.

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