Note: This article contains mentions of gun violence.
We're all aware that America and Canada are low-key beefing at the moment. Because of the trade war that's been going on, Canadians have been boycotting American goods and pledging to buy local instead — and now, people are also refusing to travel the US, too.
I guess we're trying to convince ourselves that travelling to the US isn't all it's cracked up to be...because Canadians on Reddit been sharing their "sketchiest" travel stories to America, and these stories are VERRRRRY persuasive.
So if you're looking for an excuse to avoid visiting the US — or just enjoy a good travel tale — here are some of the top stories people shared:
1. "We went to a hockey game in Buffalo, US vs. Canada. My partner wore a Leafs jersey, so we were clearly Canadian. After the American team won, the Americans in front of us stood up and literally screamed at us that we're losers and to go the fuck home, giving us the finger and laughing at us. Then when we were in the crowd leaving, people were shoving and yelling at each other. By the time we made it outside there were multiple fist fights happening, cops drawing guns and all sorts of wild stuff. We left as fast as we could."
"I've been to lots of hockey games. I'm Canadian, of course I have. But never have I ever felt so unsafe at one before. Sore losers are one thing, but Americans are such sore winners they seemed to be picking fights with any obvious Canadian they saw.
I've never seen anything like it before in my life. Probably didn't help that most people were double-fisting the biggest cans of beer I've ever seen."
2. "At a store, I had my ID requested to purchase a Call of Duty game when I was in my 30s. The guy in front of me purchased a firearm with no ID."
3. "When I first arrived in the US for grad school, one of the local students took me aside and said, 'You’re not white; if you get pulled over by the cops for anything, you keep your hands on the steering wheel and ask for permission before you do anything, including rolling down the window.' This was well before many of the police killings."
"Luckily, it never became an issue, but I never forgot that lesson."
4. "I was on vacation in North Carolina a year into COVID. I walked into a store that had some cool-looking trinkets in the window. I was wearing a N95 mask, as was recommended in Canada. I wasn't even a meter inside the door — the owner pulls out a Dirty Harry hand cannon and tells me only thieves and Liberals wear masks."
"Gave me the count of five to leave. I was out in two."
5. "In 1981, I visited British Columbia with my parents and took a day trip across the border to Seattle. I was 11 years old and had saved my own money to purchase souvenirs. I tried to pay with a couple of $2 bills (obviously this was before the toonie) and the cashier freaked out. She started going on about how disrespectful it was to pay with a $2 bill in the US."
"She claimed that since they had gotten rid of the American $2 bill, they were considered bad luck. Apparently I was putting a curse on her by paying with them."
6. "I was in Myrtle Beach the week of July 4th a few years back. There were signs everywhere that fireworks were not allowed on the beach, and there were also cops in golf carts everywhere. That night, I was on the beach by the ferris wheel with my kids to enjoy the city fireworks display. It was magical — until everyone around me started setting off their own fireworks. I watched multiple dads set up fireworks and then let their toddlers and little kids wander over and look down into them after they were lit. And I saw a mom trying to light a paper lantern light her sleeve on fire."
"So many people just walked away from hot, burning firework garbage in the sand for other people's kids in flip-flops/bare feet to step on.
The golf cart cops did absolutely nothing.
It was the most stressful, dangerous couple hours on the beach I've ever had. Absolute brazen selfishness and stupidity on full display.
I kept thinking, Wow, Americans really love to blow shit up, even if it's themselves. For people who have to pay for healthcare, they sure are reckless."
7. "Multiple times I was traveling to US for a sports tournament, we took some free time and went down to Fremont Street in Las Vegas. Three different trips, there were shootings in or around that area. The night after we visited the area our last time, there was another shooting right at the section we were at."
"I feel sick to my stomach knowing at any time in populated areas of the US, I could be a casualty of violence that I am not involved in. I rather fancy my life and am terrified now."
8. "I went to high school in the US and once my school had a threat of a shooting. They did not close down the school that day. People got arrested and attendance was at, like, 8%."
9. "I was on a drive through Detroit with a friend. He was going under the speed limit because we ended up in the wrong neighborhood and were looking for a way to turn around. We had a cop roll up next to us and tell us not to obey the stop signs because we were a target with our Ontario plates."
10. "I used to be in New York City very regularly for work. One time, I was in the upper West Side of Manhattan (a nice area), and a sketchy-looking guy walked up to me and said, 'Give me all your money!' No gun or knife was shown."
"Up to that point in life, I had confidently agreed that the best thing to do would be to hand over the money. Instead, I started screaming and threatening the mugger, to the point where the would-be mugger ran across the street and started shouting, 'That mother fucker is CRAZY!'
By the looks I got from the other New Yorkers on the sidewalks, they agreed.
I have now returned to believing that the best thing to do would be to hand over the money."
11. "About 25 years ago, I was looking for a hotel in the NYC area and took a wrong turn and wound up downtown Jersey City after midnight. The street looked like the dawn of the living dead, and it was scary as hell. Some guys pulled up next to our car and flashed a gun. Thankfully, a police cruiser was nearby, spotted the foreign plates, and pulled me over asking me what in the hell Bermuda shorts-wearing tourists were doing in that neighborhood at that time of night."
"He escorted us out of town and I lived to see another day. I'm told Jersey City is much improved now, but I'll pass on a revisit."
12. "A friend of mine from Houston asked for help moving, so I flew down to lend a hand. The first day we were there, we went to a Tex-Mex family restaurant for lunch. Next door was a motel where there were a bunch of cop cars with lights on — reminded me of the scene in No Country for Old Men. Halfway through my huevos rancheros, shots rang out and we saw the cops had kicked in the door of the room they were surrounding, and seconds later they pulled the guy's body out."
"This was crazy enough, but what below my mind was nobody in the restaurant freaked out or even reacted much at all — even the tables with kids!
My buddy said it's not unusual to hear gunshots and 'you just get used to it after a while.' I doubt I ever would."
13. "Went down to watch the Blue Jays play the Rangers in 2016, wearing Jays gear, of course. This was the year after the Jays knocked the Rangers out of the playoffs with Bautista's iconic bat flip. Leaving the game, people were heckling us: 'Canada sucks,' 'Go back to home,' and posturing."
"I was with my wife who was pregnant at the time, so we just jumped on our bus back to our hotel."
14. "I went shopping in North Dakota with a friend years ago. I took a wrong turn trying to get to the border crossing before they closed and wound up in some tiny, sketchy little town. Every building on the main street looked abandoned, except for the bar. People suddenly started slowly walking out of the bar towards my car. The look on their faces was not friendly, and it felt like the start of a horror movie, so I got out of there ASAP."
"My friend and I still talk about how creepy the whole thing was."
15. "I was visiting my now-spouse in Missouri in 2021, and got sick. I went to one of the COVID testing clinics nearby, and they said I was all clear. So I went about it like it wasn't COVID and just a cold — but I kept getting sicker. Then, I had to send in more test results to be allowed to fly back, and got told no, I had COVID, so I'd have to stay in the States for an additional 30 days. But then on the news we saw that the clinic I went to was being shut down, and the owner arrested for fraud."
"They were taking money for the COVID testing program, and weren't actually testing anyone — just calling everyone saying they were negative without bothering with the tests.
This cost me hundreds of dollars, and would have cost even more if I didn't have traveler's insurance."
16. "We were parked for the night in a scenic Oregon campground with our trailer, just finished supper after a great walk in the beach with our dogs. Suddenly there was this HUGE explosion that rocked our trailer. The dogs were terrified and we kinda froze in shock. Went outside to find our idiot neighbors (older couple with their adult son) had casually tossed one of those plastic propane canisters INTO THEIR CAMPFIRE to get rid of it."
"Can’t fix stupid."
17. "I was in an airport evacuation in Nashville where a substance was set off in the concourse, affecting the breathing ability of my colleagues. To this day it was never explained, and all mention of it was scrubbed from the airport's social accounts, but I have on good authority was bear spray."
"This was during a weekend the Republican Party was fundraising, held across the street from where my professional development sessions were.
It is the most terrified I have ever been in my life."
18. "I was waiting for the streetcar in New Orleans after midnight after a Saints game. I didn't know it wasn't a 24/7 streetcar. A guy comes over and tries to bum a cigarette from me, then sits down beside me as if he’s waiting for the same nonexistent streetcar as me."
"Bumming a cigarette after midnight in the city I live is a red flag and a sign you’re about to be mugged, so I bolted and ran back to where I was staying."
19. "In April 2011, I was in Newport News, Virginia for a conference. I landed at the airport and proceeded to hail a taxi to take me to my hotel. The journey was unnerving. The taxi was in terrible shape — I've seen cars in Canada driving in poor shape, but this was much worse. The driver immediately launched into a long rant about how the government, Illuminati, Masons, etc. were out to get them."
"They drove down the highway at speed dodging imaginary bombs while continually speaking. I am glad it was only a 15-minute drive from the airport."
20. "I love Chicago, but I saw an old lady get pushed onto subway tracks (there was no train coming). I also saw a guy get punched in the face for sitting where another dude wanted to sit."
21. "In Seattle for a work trip in 1999, I was walking with a colleague on our way to get dinner by the fancy downtown mall when a man and woman started fighting right in front of us. My colleague happened to be a jujitsu instructor, so he grabs the guy in some sort of hold and then all these gangster-looking kids run up and start wailing on the dude."
"I’m still standing there like frozen like a goober when a cop car pulls up. The kids look at us, we look at them, and we just all decide to run away. We made it down an alley to a diner, and I grab us a couple beers while buddy goes to try and wash the blood out of his sweater.
After 20 minutes or so we slowly make our way back to see what’s going on. We notice that a van full of cops in riot gear have stopped at the corner and seem to be getting ready to go do some riot cop shit. IDK what happened, but it was the exact same corner we were at 20 minutes earlier, so probably not a coincidence, right?
We hid in FAO Schwartz for an hour and then went back to the hotel."
22. "As a couple of Canucks on flashy Japanese motorcycles, we strayed into east LA once on a weekday. Stopped at a gas station for directions — there was no GPS back then. The guy at the gas pumps took one look at us and yelled, 'What the eff are you doing here? Get the eff out of here. Right now! Get the eff out!'"
"We turned around and made tracks."
23. "One time I was at my partner’s house and we heard fireworks. An hour later we heard a helicopter, which is kind of odd. Then we looked outside and saw 10 cop cars. Someone had been shooting and then was trying to escape the cops by running through all the backyards."
24. "I was driving with my best friend from Orlando to Atlanta, and we desperately needed gas and a pee break. I saw a gas stop, so we pulled over…to find that the store attached to the station was basically covered in Confederate flags. Covered. Like, wallpapered with it. I looked at my best friend and told her I’d rather piss my pants than step inside that place."
25. "Years ago, I worked for a Canadian subsidiary of a large American engineering company. While visiting the mothership, I was taken aback due to having to go through a metal detector like the ones at the airport. Years before, an employee came to work and shot his supervisor three times — and that supervisor still works there."
26. "My friend and I (females) did a motorcycle ride throughout the States. We stopped to get a motel room in Kentucky and went to the office. This creepy-looking man said he wanted a $100 cash key deposit. I was like, 'Um, okay, do you have Wi-Fi?' To which the answer was 'No.' I grabbed my friend's arm, said, 'Thanks but I needed Wi-Fi,' and abruptly started to leave. As we were leaving, this man standing outside one of the rooms yelled out that he liked our bikes. I said 'Thanks man.' He said, 'You guys been on the road for a bit?' 'Yup,' was my reply. Next question from buddy: 'Do you want to come in and take a shower?'"
"We were both like 'Nope, thank you,' and couldn't get on our bikes fast enough.
We hightailed out of that place as fast as we could and went to the next town. Felt like the beginning of a horror flick."
27. And finally: "As a Manitoban, tried to order honey dill sauce in North Dakota. Never been treated so poorly at a restaurant before or since."
