The Canadians no longer visit down the shore — but why'd they come here in the first place?
Last week while in Avalon, I stopped at the Cape May County Habitat for Humanity to look for deck furniture. I didn't find any, but while looking through used books and sofa sectionals, I found a mug featuring a maple leaf. 'Eh?' it also read in an equally bold red.
A Canadian mug in a South Jersey Shore second-hand store might seem like an oddity, but it's becoming an artifact of another time and a signifier of the once-strong-but-now-fraying relationship between this part of New Jersey and Canada.
According to Statistics Canada, Canadian car trips into the United States this March are down almost 32% compared to March of last year. Things don't look better for the summer either. According to a New York Times analysis, summer plane ticket sales from Canada to the U.S. are down 21%.
If this winter's dip in Canadian snowbirds flying to Florida (and selling their Florida properties) is any indication, the Jersey Shore, particularly Cape May County, could see a similar drop.
But in all the 'will they or won't they' coverage I've seen about the issue this year, I noticed one thing left out: why Canadians — in particular French Canadians — came here in the first place. Like the drive from Quebec to Wildwood, it's a long and sometimes winding journey.
In the 1950s and 1960s, South Jersey Shore towns were in trouble.
Where they were once the only place people could go to escape stifling summer heat, the advent of air conditioning and swimming pools meant that relief could be found close to home instead — no long train or car ride required.
Atlantic City turned to gambling. Cape May County? French Canadians. In 1970, Quebec legislated a two-week holiday for all construction workers for the end of July, a move that rippled out beyond the industry, with many residents of the province also taking that block of time off for summer vacation. Les Quebecois were also, theoretically, one day's drive away, so starting in 1968, the county pitched them on better beaches, warmer water, and cheap accommodations in motels and rooming houses in Wildwood and in campgrounds that lined Route 9 just inland of beach towns like Sea Isle, Avalon, Stone Harbor, and the Wildwoods.
In 1970, Cape May County opened a tourism office in downtown Montreal to further bind the regions. In 1973, a tourism official told The New York Times that they spent 75% of its promotional budget to attract Canadians.
By the mid-1970s, the Canadians had taken over. Motels in the Wildwoods gave themselves names like Canadian and Quebec Motel, and venues booked Canadian stars like singer, radio, and television host Michel Louvain and Lousie-Marie Houde, a.k.a. Mademoiselle Quebec. In 1977, Atlantic City hosted Quebec Day to thank their Canadian visitors, with a flag raising, cocktail party, concert, and fashion show featuring Quebec-based artists.
'Two weeks after the Fourth of July, cars were backed out all the way to Route 9 to see if we had campsites,' said Lenny Catanoso, 74, who until last year owned Avalon Campground in Cape May Court House with his sister Marlene. Their parents opened the business in 1967, and they were teenagers working there when the influx of Canadians started coming in.
For part of July, 'every car in town was Canadian. I haven't seen anything like it,' said Larry Lillo, 77, Wildwood Historical Society secretary and owner of the Holly Beach Train Depot.
Lillo has also held a gamut of jobs during his lifetime in Wildwood, including ice cream salesman, lifeguard, and firefighter.
'It wasn't just the mother and father and the kids. It was the grandmother, aunts, and uncles. The whole gang would come down and stay in apartment houses here,' he said.
I saw it too, as a kid who spent all of her summers in the 1980s and 1990s in Avalon Campground. While my family's summer place is now in Avalon proper, we were there then for the same reasons as the Canadians: It was more affordable than on-island accommodations and offered more things to do for large family groups that might include parents and kids but also grandparents, cousins, and that guy who isn't really your uncle but that's what you call him.
For the last two weeks of July and the first two weeks of August, 75% of the campground's bookings were French Canadians, according to Lenny Cataonoso. You could see it — and hear it. The U.S., New Jersey, and Canadian flags all flew at the campground pools (where, yes, you could usually tell who was Canadian by their penchant for Speedo bathing suits). When it came time for me to pick a language to study in middle and then high school, I picked French, not because I had young girl dreams of Paris, but because I thought it would help me get a summer job down the shore when I was old enough to do so.
I never got the chance. By the time I was old enough to work, the Canadian dollar plummeted in value, and the parade of Quebec license plates coming down the shore just about stopped. Marlene Catanoso, 72, remembers her father working the phones, offering regular Canadian visitors half-price tent spots. The Cape May County Montreal office closed in 1995.
The relationship hasn't entirely died out, though. Gen X and Millenial Canadians come back so their kids can have the same kind of magical Jersey Shore experience they had when they were younger. Cape May County still has a French language website and Facebook and Instagram accounts, and the county tourism department has a public relations consultant focusing on Quebec and the Toronto region of Ottawa. Before the pandemic, about 8% of Cape May County visitors were from Quebec.
Marlene Catanoso said that older Canadian visitors stopped coming to their campground during the first Trump term, but COVID had a much bigger impact.
'For two years, we had a campground that was half empty,' she said.
It wasn't just that the Canadian border was closed, but accommodations in the area shifted to attract locals who didn't want to travel either. To cope, Avalon Campground converted sites that once had bare-bones amenities with tent campers in mind and upgraded them with sewer, water, and better power, in order to accommodate RVs, campers, and mobile homes — and charging for it.
Diane Weiland of Cape May County's tourism department insisted that other factors, like the value of the Canadian dollar and a stagnant Canadian economy, are playing a bigger role in keeping the Canadians up north this summer than political discontent (though she did note that the Canadian Automobile Association has declined to run their ads; and Canadian news outlets won't be covering U.S. destinations this year). But she believes the region will be OK, as local business owners have said that American travelers have been picking up Canadian cancellations.
So, as the unofficial opening of the summer begins, and more restaurants, bakeries, bike shops, and arcades open for the season, we don't know what will happen. But it's hard to see how this more than half-century relationship can repaired, at least during this administration, when the president insists that Canada is going to be the 51st state, pushes punitive tariffs on Canadian goods at who knows what whim, and eggs on the imprisonment of foreign travelers for things like a visa mix up, translation mistake or having tattoo equipment. If I were Canadian, I wouldn't come here. Heck, I'm an American with a beach house and don't know if I want to be here this summer. I guess we'll see, eh?
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


American Press
2 hours ago
- American Press
Louisiana spotlight: Nungesser keeping state top of mind for those ready to explore
Traveling has been significantly increasing since the decline during the COVID-19 pandemic — and Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser and his team are working hard to keep Louisiana top of mind for those ready to explore. Last year, Nungesser said his office used a U.S. Commerce Department grant to increase awareness of Louisiana as a travel destination in Mumbai and New Delhi, India; Madrid, Spain; and Milan, Italy. In a few months, the team will spend a week in Canada promoting the Bayou State and its French heritage. Canada 'is about 33 percent of our international market,' Nungesser told members of the Rotary Club of Lake Charles Wednesday afternoon. 'Those Canadians love them some Louisiana.' In Paris, the Louisiana Office of Tourism also wrapped taxi cabs serving as rolling billboards to inspire travel to the state and it sponsored the London Jazz Festival last year. Nungesser said Louisiana welcomed 43 million domestic and international visitors in 2023, the most recent data available. Those visitors spent a total of $18.1 billion, an increase of 5.4 percent over 2022. International visitation showed the most significant gain, he said, increasing 16.9 percent in 2023 with spending reaching $1.7 billion. Louisiana has also been on the national stage in recent months with an alligator-themed float that crawled the streets of Pasadena, Calif., for the 136th annual Rose Parade and again as host to the Super Bowl at the Superdome in New Orleans. 'Somebody asked me what do we do better than anyone else and I said Mardi Gras,' Nungesser said. 'So we found out what parades we could go to. We were in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for three years and now we're in the Rose Parade.' Though the floats are professionally designed, they are decorated by volunteers days before the parade. Every float is covered in flowers, leaves, seeds, bark and other natural materials to honor the Rose Parade's history. Nungesser said volunteers from Louisiana are flown to California and are shuttled between the warehouse where the float is being built to their accommodations. A New Orleans native who now resides in California brings her beignets-only food truck each day to feed the volunteers during their shifts and the best of Louisiana cuisine is served each night. 'It's a trip everybody should make,' he said. For more on volunteering, visit Nungesser said participation in the parade 'allows us to drive awareness about our state as a vacation destination to a broad number of attendees, as well as viewers watching from home,' Nungesser said. 'The return on investment for the Rose Parade has been incredible.' Nungesser said the Rose Parade media coverage — thanks to a plethora of morning show interviews aired across the nation as the float is being built — for the past four years reached an estimated 10.4 billion people and was worth $144.9 million. State Parks When Nungesser took office nearly a decade ago, seven state parks were under the threat of closure. 'I was told, 'You don't have the money to keep them open and they're in pretty bad shape,' ' he said. 'Thanks to our sheriffs and local volunteers we were able to do a lot of repair and get them presentable and today those seven parks are making a profit.' The Louisiana Office of State Parks operates 21 state parks, 14 historic sites and a preservation area that comprises 45,000 acres, 110 miles of roads and 1.2 million square feet of rental facilities that welcomed more than 1.75 million visitors last year. He said his new goal is creating resort conference centers within some of the state parks to attract visiting conferences. 'We have over 350 groups that meet every year all over Louisiana,' he said. 'They don't meet in New Orleans because the hotel does not cover their per diem, but they meet everywhere else. There's usually 300-500 people and it's a great opportunity for us and it would be a great for the local economies. One thing we won't do is we won't let anyone open a restaurant (within the conference centers) or anything that would compete with local businesses.' One state park thriving at the moment is Bogue Chitto — a top destination for travelers nationwide for its mountain biking trails, which are maintained by the North Shore Off-Road Bicycling Association. 'A thousand people a month from 10-15 states go to Washington Parish for this mountain bike trail,' he said. 'We also have horseback riding. We brought a gentleman's horses into the park and let him run the business out of the park and he's knocking it out of the park, no pun intended. These two private-public partnerships have put Washington Parish on the map. Before they had very little tourism. It has changed that town forever.' Prime Video just completed a documentary on the mountain bike trails and 25 percent of the proceeds will go into building additional trails. He said the park recently acquired an additional 600 acres to expand the mountain bike and horseback riding trails. Museums Nungesser's office oversees nine museums; the Secretary of State's office and some local cities operate the rest. He said he hopes to introduce a bill next year that would force all museums to be open on the weekends — every museum operated under the Secretary of State's Office are not — when people are off work and more likely to visit. His office has also bought the website and plans to video every museum in the state. 'We did a video about the ghost that's upstairs at the Beauregard Gothic Jail — I don't know if it's there but the lady has me convinced and I'm not going up to check — and we test marketed to people who like ghosts and at Halloween, 4,000 people showed up to find that ghost,' he said. 'If you have a ghost, we will promote it and they will come.' He said most are aware of the World War II Museum in New Orleans. Now promotions will tie in Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe, the Louisiana Military Museum in Abbeville and others to draw in like-minded visitors. He also wants to give all museums the freedom to hire the directors of their choice. Right now, that responsibility falls under the office that oversees the facility. Louisiana seafood Several key pieces of legislation passed during the 2024 Regular Legislative Session affected the seafood industry in the state. Act 47 mandates restaurants serving imported crawfish or shrimp must officially inform their customers on the menu; Act 148 requires restaurants and food service establishments to label on menus all imported seafood as such, not just shrimp and crawfish; and Act 756 transferred the Seafood Safety Task Force to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board to help in the regulation of imported seafood. 'We want people to ask before they eat. The goal is to prevent imported seafood — which is filled with a lot of antibiotics — to come into this country and to level the playing field for our Louisiana fishermen,' he said. 'If you eat Boudreaux's crawfish tails, they're going to be from Boudreaux's. They're not going to be from Thailand.' Keep Louisiana Beautiful Love the Boot Week is Louisiana's largest litter removal and beautification effort. During 2024, 19,441 people volunteered a total of 100,712 hours at over 760 events, removing a record 347 tons of litter in all 64 parishes. 'It has become a movement,' Nungesser said. Their efforts diverted 293 pounds of aluminum cans and 330 pounds of plastic bottles from the landfill allowing the items to be recycled. Next month, the office will be handing out buckets at marinas around the state, asking boaters and fishermen to scoop up any trash they may see on the waterways and shorelines. 'We're not going to take our foot off the gas until we have no more trash in Louisiana,' Nungesser said.


Buzz Feed
20 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
Flight Attendants Shared Their Worst-Behaved Routes
Recently, I've been infiltrating airline forums. Most of the time, I leave because all of the airport codes give me a migraine, but these threads on r/flightattendants actually had me hooked. Started by u/Appropriate-Pop-6725 and u/AdhesivenessInfinite, the threads are filled with flight attendants divulging their "worst-behaved" air travel route. As someone from Florida, I'm relatively ashamed at how often it's mentioned. "In America, it's: Anywhere to Florida but especially Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach." "Toronto passengers give Canadians a bad name." "Going to Montreal, Toronto, Tel-Aviv, anywhere in Florida, and to Las Vegas is usually pretty bad. The reverse flights are generally pretty chill." "I have never worked so hard as I did on a MIA (Miami) – LGA (LaGuardia) flight. That is a tough crowd." "Passengers going to Aspen on vacation are the worst. Entitled and condescending." "I started my career in Seattle, WA, and never had any passenger issues. Pacific Northwest customers are largely mellow and easygoing. My next base was JFK in New York City, and I was shocked at how much more challenging the customers were. New Yorkers literally don't give a f*ck and will challenge you on everything. BUT, once you figure out how to deal with them, nothing fazes you anymore." "Anything EWR (Newark), Florida, and sometimes, SFO (San Francisco) passengers are the worst. My most pleasant is PHL (Philadelphia), surprisingly, they're always well behaved." "Whenever I see PBI (West Palm Beach, FL) on my schedule, I drop it for almost anything else. I don't need that headache. Also, Toronto is out here giving Canadians a bad name." "Newark to anywhere in Florida. I almost slid off the back of the wing after my EWR (Newark) – MCO (Orlando) flight one night. Good gracious." "Tel Aviv and Trivandrum for me. I love every Australia flight I've done so far, customers are amazing." "West Palm Beach. Anywhere in Florida, really. Except for MCO (Orlando), 'cause the kids are cute. LAX (Los Angeles) is a close second; they love that call light." "My least favourite destinations are in the Caribbean cause everyone is a sunburnt, broke, and angry tourist." "Work at an airport. Passengers from EVN (Yerevan, Armenia) have been known to scream at us, threaten to sue us, and made a few of our newer agents cry." "YUL (Montreal) – CUN (Cancun), YUL (Montreal) – PVR (Puerto Vallarta), YUL (Montreal) – PUJ (Punta Cana), YUL (Montreal) – FLL (Fort Lauderdale). Anything leaving Montreal to go to a sunny destination is something else." "As a Florida girl, my MCO (Orlando) flights never bothered me and I never understood the Florida passenger hate, but I recently worked RSW (Fort Myers, FL) and 💀 omg horrid, I get it." "DTW (Detroit) – ATL (Atlanta) has always treated me poorly." "That ATL (Atlanta) to JFK (New York City) is pretty hard. Also, the JFK (New York City) to Montreal can be challenging." Finally, "Worst? Anywhere with a 'rich' clientele, for the most part, or tourists. New York to Savannah, or anywhere in Florida. (Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket were always surprisingly pleasant, so I think it's the nouveau riche that are a pain in the ass)." If you're a pilot or flight attendant, tell us the destinations you hate flying in and out of the most and why. It could be anything from unruly passengers to stomach-churning turbulence. Share in the comments or completely anonymously using the Google form below!
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Club Offers Released on July 25, 2025
TORONTO, July 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Travelzoo® (NASDAQ: TZOO), the club for travel enthusiasts, announces the release of Club Offers for Club Members in Canada. Rigorously vetted and negotiated for us travel enthusiasts: $1999–$2199—SWITZERLAND BY TRAIN: 8 NIGHTS W/FLIGHTSTravelling on the famous Swiss rail system, Club Members will visit Zurich, Lucerne and Geneva. $2699—MEXICO: 3 NIGHTS AT 5-STAR ALL-INCLUSIVE FAIRMONTClub Members can experience the Fairmont Mayakoba's exceptional service through October for 42% off. An upgraded casita, premium meals and drinks are included. $179–$219—MONT-TREMBLANT SUITE W/BREAKFAST & PARKING Stay in the centre of the pedestrian village into October for 38%–43% off. Suites feature fireplaces, kitchens and space for a family of four. $849 & UP—TREK THE HIMALAYAS W/GUIDE & MEALS Choose from five guided treks to iconic destinations like Everest Base Camp, Annapurna, and Langtang, with savings of 45%–50%. $999—ALL-INCLUSIVE PUNTA CANA ESCAPE W/FLIGHTSStay five nights at this 5-star all-inclusive Dominican Republic resort this fall. Fly from Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax; depart from other Canadian cities for $1099. Some offers have limited inventory and are subject to availability. Are you a travel enthusiast? Join the club today: About TravelzooWe, Travelzoo®, are the club for travel enthusiasts. We reach 30 million travellers. Club Members receive Club Offers personally reviewed by our deal experts around the globe. We have our finger on the pulse of outstanding travel, entertainment, and lifestyle experiences. We work in partnership with thousands of top travel suppliers—our long-standing relationships give us access to irresistible deals. Travelzoo is a registered trademark of Travelzoo. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Media contact: Amanda Ieraci – Toronto+1 437 866 8540aieraci@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Travelzoo Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data