MacLean’s goes deep with Restaino

(Editor’s note: MacLean’s is like the New Yorker or Atlantic in Canada. Here are the first 1,500 words of a longer piece in featuring the words of Katie Underwood and the photography of Wade Hudson. The remainder of the article hides behind a paywall.)

Robert Res­taino, the mayor of Niagara Falls, New York, wants to see Cana­dians back there real soon

IN A BYGONE ERA, upstate New York was a Cana­dian’s para­dise. We spent our slighter weaker dol­lar in its casi­nos and out­let malls, picked up fatty, for­eign del­ic­acies at Tar­get, trolled Amer­ic­ans at away games and drank in the majesty of Niagara Falls from a slightly dif­fer­ent angle. Then, well, we all know what happened: Trump tried to coerce Canada into sub­mis­sion with tar­iffs, tapped into our expertly sup­pressed national rage and cut off a steady sup­ply of south­bound tour­ists, jeop­ard­iz­ing the eco­nom­ies of sev­eral Amer­ican bor­der towns. Life comes at you fast.

Robert Res­taino, the mayor of Niagara Falls, New York, is so, so sorry—really. He’s watched as Cana­dian man­u­fac­tur­ers have scrapped con­tracts in his city, and as its hotels and bars have emp­tied of uber-polite pat­rons. (The num­ber of Cana­dians enter­ing New York state dropped by one-fifth in 2025.) Like other bor­der-adja­cent may­ors in Blaine, Wash­ing­ton, and Bur­l­ing­ton, Ver­mont, Res­taino now has his olive branch per­man­ently exten­ded, hop­ing that a new $200-mil­lion events centre will at least entice our sports fans back to his side of the Falls. An Amer­ica without Cana­dians isn’t one he wants to ima­gine.

Under­state­ment of the cen­tury: it’s a messy time to be a politi­cian in Amer­ica. Few are feel­ing the pain more than may­ors in bor­der towns. What new chal­lenges cropped up for you after the trade war kicked off?

As we were com­ing out of COVID, a bunch of Cana­dian light-man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pan­ies were inter­ested in set­ting up in Niagara County because of the renew­ableen­ergy incent­ives we offer. Many of them no longer feel com­fort­able plant­ing their flag here; some wor­ried there’d be dif­fi­culties get­ting employ­ees across the bor­der. Even so, my rela­tion­ships with elec­ted offi­cials in Ontario haven’t changed. The minute the trade flap star­ted in Wash­ing­ton, I made a point of reach­ing out to Mayor Jim Diod­ati in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

I’d love to have been a fly on the wall for those calls.

Dur­ing the Canada-u.s. hockey show­down at the Mil­ano-cor­tina Olympics, Jim and I made one of our friendly bets.

He typ­ic­ally wagers grade-a Cana­dian maple syrup, and I do chicken wings. As two cit­ies sep­ar­ated by a river, we wanted to show that none of the trade non­sense was going to affect our bond.

Tour­ist sea­son is well under­way. Does it feel like it on your side of the Falls?

As a mat­ter of fact, yes. The kick­off was great: we had higher hotel occu­pancy this April year over year. And, this past week­end, I drove past the out­let mall—you would’ve thought it was Christ­mas­time!

I have fond memor­ies of tak­ing sum­mer trips to your malls (and Apple­bee’s) as a teen. Every licence plate in the park­ing lot was from Ontario. That can’t be the norm now, right?

It would be inap­pro­pri­ate to sug­gest that there hasn’t been a vis­ible fall-off. My wife, Diana, and I make a point to get out in the com­munity. All of the lounges, bars and res­taur­ants used to have a bit of a crowd; that’s dif­fer­ent now. The Cana­dians who do come are typ­ic­ally from close by—less so from the Greater Toronto Area and places farther out. There is also this… abras­ive feel.

As in, Cana­dians and Amer­ic­ans don’t know how to act around each other any­more?

No one’s ready to throw fists, but there’s an awk­ward­ness that didn’t exist before. They say not to talk about cer­tain top­ics, like reli­gion and polit­ics, at hol­i­day din­ners. The rela­tion­ship between the U.S. and Canada has become one of those. And, look, I can’t be every­body’s father—there are things some Amer­ic­ans say that I wish they wouldn’t. But, in Niagara Falls, we’re going out of our way to show you we want you to keep vis­it­ing.

In another time, I’d hap­pily drive eight hours and sell my soul to see Oh, Mary! on Broad­way. But, as a journ­al­ist, am I going to risk cross­ing right now? Hell no.

I used to get together for break­fast and din­ner on a reg­u­lar basis with some guy friends from Hamilton and Niagaraon-the-lake. Lately, there are more calls about me going there.

It must be hard to get saddled with the con­sequences of your fed­eral gov­ern­ment’s choices when you don’t neces­sar­ily agree with all of them.

There were, per­haps, some inter­na­tional agree­ments—which have been in place for quite some time—that the U.S. needed to take a sharper look at, whether defence-related or eco­nomic. But to tar­get Canada? I wouldn’t per­son­ally poke the eye of my best friend. Dip­lomacy doesn’t have to become insult­ing. Nego­ti­ations are only cranky if you make them cranky.

Without nam­ing names, some people only have one speed, and that speed is cranky. Speak­ing of which, many lifelong Repub­lic­ans are com­pletely furi­ous about how Trump’s tar­iffs have boom­er­anged back on them. And Sen­ator Chuck Schu­mer called them “a dag­ger into the heart of upstate New York.” Niagara County typ­ic­ally goes red. Sens­ing any voter regret?

Last sum­mer, I was at an event with Sen­ator Schu­mer, where he talked about New York busi­nesses that used to buy sup­plies from Canada; tar­iffs have cre­ated a mess for them. Some small local busi­nesses have had to retool to avoid clos­ing.

Amer­ican tour­ism author­it­ies have handled Cana­dians’ travel boy­cotts in dif­fer­ent ways. In Gavin New­som’s Cali­for­nia, they’re suck­ing up with “Cali­for­nia Loves Canada” ads that claim the state wouldn’t be as beau­ti­ful and full-bod­ied (wine pun) without us. Des­tin­a­tion Niagara, on the other hand, has pivoted their pitch almost exclus­ively to other Amer­ic­ans. Which is the smarter approach?

I want to put a fine point on this: Des­tin­a­tion Niagara hasn’t neg­lected Canada. Your mar­ket used to be the lay-up; you’d see an imme­di­ate return on ad invest­ment. To sta­bil­ize this new unpre­dict­ab­il­ity, they carved out some of those dol­lars for the Great Lakes and mid-atlantic regions, along with our East­ern Coast. And fewer Cana­dians are spend­ing the week­end. So instead of try­ing to sell them on hotels, we’re try­ing to pitch spe­cific reas­ons to be here—not game rooms and fun­houses, but nature attrac­tions. On our side, stand­ing at Pro­spect Point, you can feel the power of the Falls in your chest. At the state park, we have a new vir­tual-real­ity “ride” that takes you over the Falls and under the river to see the fish.

Ah, scary fun. Can you at least still sell your Cana­dian rel­at­ives on week­end trips?

Our fam­ily cuts a large swath through the Gta—niagara, St. Cath­ar­ines, Wood­bridge. To the extent that I get to take vaca­tion, I love vis­it­ing them there. It’s fun to hear their met­ro­pol­itan per­spect­ives. Some are actu­ally Pres­id­ent Trump fans.

Give me their addresses.

Dur­ing the Trudeau era, it was sort of, “the heck with all these Lib­er­als.” They star­ted listen­ing to some of the pop­u­list mes­saging com­ing out of Wash­ing­ton. It’s “me first.” It’s MAGA—I don’t know what else to call it.

“Maple MAGA.”

It’s more a func­tion of them not agree­ing with what’s com­ing out of Ott­awa than “let’s all put on the red hats because Trump’s the best thing going.” I had to laugh at Doug Ford’s reac­tion to Trump. In his press con­fer­ences, Ford was just egging him on.

A lot of Cana­dians would prob­ably agree that they’re well-matched.

Ford under­stands the import­ance of the visual as much as the verbal. When I saw

“All of our lounges, bars and res­taur­ants used to have a bit of a crowd. That’s dif­fer­ent now. The Cana­dians who do come are typ­ic­ally from close by.there is also this... abras­ive feel.”