From Vancouver on the West Coast to St. John’s on the East, Canadians are canceling vacations across the border and boycotting American-made products. But this is a little tricky to pull off for the 950 residents of Canada’s Campobello Island, whose only physical link to the mainland is a bridge originating in Lubec, Maine.
“I can’t boycott a country that is my only access,” says Dianna Parker, a Campobello town councillor and manager of a local restaurant. “What choice do I have?”
Campobello was once Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s summer vacation spot of choice. Today, Roosevelt Campobello International Park, which houses F.D.R.’s summer retreat—a 34-room Dutch Colonial “cottage” built in shingle style, a hallmark of Gilded Age New England summer homes—is the island’s main attraction, luring more than 150,000 tourists a year. Jointly administered by the United States and Canada, it is the only international park in the world, but this “symbol of cooperation between the U.S. and Canada,” as its Web site claims, has been strained amid a full-blown trade war.
On February 1, 2025, the Trump administration lobbed 25 percent tariffs at Canada, causing Ottawa to reciprocate with a 25 percent tariff of its own on March 4. The tax was especially burdensome for Campobello residents. “Twenty or thirty dollars extra for groceries doesn’t seem like a lot, but for low-income people, that eats into their income,” says Harvey Matthews, Campobello’s mayor. (Last week, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney announced the removal of many tariffs on U.S. goods beginning September 1.)
The islanders’ situation is a sticky one. The only route from Campobello to Canada is a seasonal ferry to Deer Island, another Canadian island in the Bay of Fundy, from which travelers must then catch one more ferry to reach the mainland. For most residents, though, the simplest option is to cross into Lubec to buy essentials unavailable on the island.
But after tariffs were introduced, every grocery trip became an ordeal. Residents had to show their receipts to border-patrol agents, who calculated the tariff like a toll fee. Payment was required on the spot. Most crossings went smoothly, though there was once a dispute between an agent and an islander over whether Canadian goods brought into the U.S. should be charged a tariff again on their way back.
On April 9, due to intense lobbying by local officials, Campobello was exempted from U.S. tariffs. No other community in Canada enjoys such a carve-out.
This is far from Campobello’s first time getting caught in cross-border conflicts. The island has long served as a hot spot for smugglers, bootleggers, and those caught betwixt and between. After betraying the American forces and defecting to the British in the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold moved to Campobello to set up shop as a fish smuggler. In 1866, the island was briefly the center of a military scuffle when members of the Fenian Brotherhood—an Irish-American paramilitary group—attempted to seize Campobello from then British-ruled Canada.
It was in the 1880s that Campobello began attracting another group of Americans: WASP elites looking to flee the big cities during the summer, including the Roosevelts. After F.D.R.’s death, in 1945, his home was bought by the billionaire oil magnate Armand Hammer, who later donated it to the U.S. and Canadian governments as the centerpiece of the international park.
Islanders feared the current trade tensions might discourage tourists from visiting, and up until the start of summer the park had not received the majority of its funding from the U.S. government, forcing it to operate with fewer staff. But according to Jon Southern, the park’s superintendent, visits are higher now than they were pre-pandemic, largely due to an upsurge in Canadian “staycationers,” and by late July the U.S. funds had finally arrived.
The park’s staff, which is one-third American and two-thirds Canadian, also seem to be getting on just fine. “There is some apologizing by some of the Americans that live over here,” says Southern, “apologizing to Canadian friends for the way that they feel they’re being treated.”
For Campobello residents, it’s impossible to hold grudges. Seventy-two percent of them are dual American-Canadian citizens—many were born at the hospital in Lubec. “In Campobello and Lubec, you’ve got brothers and sisters living on opposite sides of the border,” says Matthews. “We’re not just friends, we’re family…. We’ve got to keep that relationship going.”
Sage Lattman is a New York City–based writer
