Looking Back at the 2020 ‘Summer of Love,’ Major Lessons Emerge

[Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman’s new book, ‘When the World Closed Its Doors: The COVID-19 Tragedy and the Future of Borders.’ Stay tuned for a forthcoming Tyee Q&A with the authors.]

For the thousands who came to Peace Arch Park in the summer of 2020 as the COVID-19 virus was spreading across the world, it would come to be known as the “Summer of Love.”

Located roughly halfway between the Canadian city of Vancouver, B.C., and the U.S. town of Bellingham, Washington, the Peace Arch was constructed in 1921 to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, the last war between the United States and Great Britain.

The white marble arch sits on the 49th parallel, agreed by the two nations in the 1846 Oregon Treaty as the dividing line between American and British possessions in North America.

Canada and the United States proudly call this line “the world’s longest undefended border.”

Some 67 feet high, the Peace Arch flies the flags of both nations. On the U.S. side, a large inscription across the top of the arch reads: “Brethren Dwelling Together in Unity”; on the Canadian side, it reads “Children of a Common Mother,” a reference to the settlers from Europe who populated both countries. On its interior wall is a boldly inked promise: “May These Gates Never Be Closed.”

Since the 1930s, both countries have maintained conjoining cross-border public parks, which allow visitors to mingle freely across the 49th parallel without formally crossing the border.

On a typical sunny summer weekend before the pandemic, a smattering of families and picnickers would meet in the two parks, which were separated only by the normally long car lines of shoppers and vacationers moving back and forth across the border.

Then on March 21, 2020, for the first time in the history of the two countries, the gates were closed.

Faced with the worsening spread of the deadly virus, the governments of the United States and Canada issued a joint announcement: the land borders between the two countries would be shut to all “non- essential” travel.

While trade and the movement of some essential personnel like hospital workers would be permitted to continue, for all other purposes the border would be closed. Except, as it turned out, for Peace Arch Park.

The ambiguous legal status of the park — physically straddling U.S. and Canadian territory but long freely open to visitors from both sides — made it the sole breach along the entire 5,500 miles of the border.

A vital space for reunion

At first gradually, and then in ever larger numbers, families, couples and friends separated by the border began to discover the park as a meeting place.

Where a typical pre-pandemic day would see maybe 50 people scattered around both sides of the park, as the days warmed from spring to summer in 2020, as many as 1,000 people would meet there each day. Most were families and couples living in Washington state or British Columbia, in close driving distance of the border. But as word spread, people started to arrive from all across both countries.

“I’ve had people drive from Montana, Texas, Arizona. I mean, all over,” said Rick Blank, the Washington state park ranger who patrolled Peace Arch.

Christina Winkler, president of the non-profit International Peace Arch Association, said she met people “from as far away from Florida who have flown in just to meet their family in the park.”

Many of the visitors were couples separated by the border. Canada and the United States permitted married couples to reunite — with a two-week quarantine required for those entering Canada — but unmarried couples that summer enjoyed no special exemptions.

For those who had built the most intimate parts of their lives across borders, confident they could always move back and forth freely, the shutdown was devastating.

A young B.C. woman discovered three months after the border closure that she was pregnant by her Washington state boyfriend; several months later she miscarried, and her boyfriend pleaded with Canadian border officials to be permitted to join her in Canada. He was told such a trip was not “essential” and warned he could be banned from Canada for a year if he returned to the border seeking admission.

Another woman in Washington state had a partner of four years who lived across the border in Canada; when they were separated by the border closure, she says, it “killed my mental health in a way I never could have imagined.”

‘The only place they could meet was in the park’

For those who could get there, the park was a lifeline. Chris Irlam and Dana Johnson met online in February 2020, hopeful they could make a relationship work even though one lived in northern Idaho and the other in Chilliwack, B.C. But with the border closed a month later, the only place they could meet was in the park. They spent three days there in June, mostly on the Canadian side of the park, and from then on met every month on the U.S. side, camping out for three or four days, weathering sunburns, wind and rain storms, long lines at the park’s only bathroom, and ever colder temperatures as the summer of 2020 ebbed to fall and winter.

On top of this was what Irlam says was the shaming from close friends for “circumventing” B.C. health rules that discouraged non-essential travel, even though by May 2020 the provincial government had reopened parks and was permitting small gatherings to resume within the province.

The U.S. rangers allowed couples like Chris and Dana to set up tents on the U.S. side of Peace Arch Park, prompting quips that the park had been separated into “adult” and “family” sections.

The tents had to come down at dark, though, and couples would return to their respective sides of the border, staying in nearby campgrounds, motels or Airbnbs.

Ranger Rick roamed the park throughout the year, encouraging families to maintain a safe distance and to wear masks in the bathrooms. On a sunny summer weekend, the park was filled with happy families, children playing and other bits of normal life.

A ditch to across the divide

Canada closed its side of the park in June 2020, citing concerns over the high number of U.S. COVID cases and traffic congestion at the Canadian entrance to the Peace Arch parking lot that was spilling out onto land controlled by the Semiahmoo First Nation.

Some Canadian officials urged the United States to do the same, but Washington Gov. Jay Inslee kept his side of the park open throughout the remainder of the pandemic.

Over time, Canadian police who patrolled the shallow ditch that separated the southernmost homes along 0 Avenue in White Rock, B.C., from the U.S. side of the park became stricter, demanding passports or other official documents from Canadians returning home and checking bags for any U.S. goods that might have been passed along by friends or family in the park.

But except for a brief period in late March and April 2020 when Washington shut all its state parks, Peace Arch Park was never blocked off, and since there were no formal border crossing procedures, Canadians who walked across the ditch to meet with friends, family or lovers on the other side did not have to endure the country’s mandatory two-week quarantine when they returned home.

Chris and Dana married in November 2020, with Chris hoping she could finally bring her wife back to Canada for the first time in their relationship. They were far from alone — on a typical weekend in the summer of 2020, the park would host a dozen or more weddings a day; in the entire year of 2019, just seven couples had chosen to marry in the park.

“It wasn’t my ideal wedding,” said Christina Kelly, a Vancouver legal assistant who had been crossing easily for two years to spend time with her boyfriend in Washington when the border was closed.

The day of their wedding was cold, wet and muddy, and just a few family members and friends were able to join them in the park. But in some ways, she said, it was the perfect place. “The park has been my life for the past year, the only place where I can see my husband.”

Len Saunders, an immigration attorney in the border town of Blaine, Washington, would meet almost daily with clients in the park.

“What a lot of people did when they only allowed spouses entry to Canada was, they would literally get married in the park, get in the car, drive down to Bellingham, file the marriage certificate and then drive back into Canada,” he said.

The world closed its doors

In the months that followed the first COVID outbreaks in China in December 2019, governments across the world responded with a bewildering array of different policies to deal with what was appropriately called a “novel” virus.

In the absence of effective medical treatments, they faced three broad choices — try to stay one step ahead of the virus by identifying and isolating affected individuals and their close contacts; try to slow the spread of the virus through lockdowns that closed shops, workplaces and schools; or continue life more or less as normal, hoping the illness would not prove too serious and the population would build natural immunities.

Few countries chose the third strategy. Sweden left most schools, restaurants and ski resorts open and opted for reduced capacity to avoid mandatory lockdowns. Some tourist-dependent economies like the Caribbean islands locked down for several months in 2020, but then opened up when the economic costs became unsustainable. Several countries in Asia such as Taiwan and South Korea were able to use quarantine and contact tracing to successfully isolate infected individuals without completely locking down their economies; Taiwan largely reopened businesses and schools by May 2020.

Some countries pursued stringent lockdowns — the Australian city of Melbourne faced no fewer than six lockdowns, a cumulative 262 days. Buenos Aires in Argentina had the longest continuous lockdown of 234 days.

For nearly three years, China would continue to lock down its major cities every time there was a new outbreak. The financial capital of Shanghai was shuttered for three months in early 2022, with residents locked in their homes or apartments and dependent on unreliable food deliveries.

Some countries, like the United States under President Donald Trump and Brazil under President Jair Bolsonaro, cobbled together what historian Peter Baldwin called “chaotic, almost deliberately inept, responses,” with some unco-ordinated lockdowns by state and local governments but little in the way of national plans.

Most European nations lurched between short lockdowns and reopenings that often allowed for a resurgence of infections.

But amid all this variation, there was one constant — nearly every country in the world shut its borders.

North Korea was the first, on Jan. 22, 2020. By April 2020, more than 90 per cent of the world’s population was living in countries that had imposed some sort of border restrictions, and 40 per cent were in countries that had completely closed their borders to non-citizens and non-residents.

By August 2020 every one of the World Health Organization’s 194 member states had imposed travel restrictions; in comparison, just 127 countries had implemented domestic social distancing or other preventive measures.

Some countries even closed their borders to their own citizens. When effective vaccines were rolled out early in 2021, most countries eased their domestic restrictions, but most borders remained restricted until late that year, and in some countries well into 2022 or even 2023.

A ‘zero-sum situation’

Why did every country restrict its borders during COVID? The WHO had long argued that travel restrictions were ineffective, at best briefly delaying the spread of diseases, while harming economies and violating human rights. Yet when COVID-19 began spreading in early 2020, nearly every government imposed significant travel restrictions. In some countries, state or provincial-level governments even closed internal borders, blocking people who wished to travel from one region of the country to another.

Part of the reason was fear and uncertainty. Governments knew little about the severity of the disease, who the most vulnerable populations were, details about how the virus was spread or the prevalence of asymptomatic transmission.

Traditional border health screening tools such as fever checks quickly proved ineffective because many of those infected did not show symptoms. The few studies available on the efficacy of border restrictions in reducing disease spread strongly suggested they were effective only if imposed early, before the disease had embedded itself in the community.

Governments were therefore faced with a stark choice in which the scale of the threat was unknown, and the speed of the response was vital. In the face of such uncertainty, many governments felt they had no choice but to shutter their borders quickly and sort out the consequences later.

But uncertainty was not the only driver. For governments, border controls were both popular and relatively easy to enforce. As Baldwin puts it: “In the zero-sum situation where no medical solution allows an escape, some unfortunates must pay the price for sparing the majority.”

Writing in the early stages of the pandemic, Baldwin had assumed the “unfortunates” would be those who were exposed to COVID; they would be forced into isolation and their close contacts would be traced and monitored to stop the spread of the disease. But few countries — South Korea was one of the standout exceptions — had the capacity to test and trace cases effectively enough to staunch outbreaks.

Others — China is the most obvious example — were willing to use the full powers of the state against their own citizens to require mandatory daily testing, enforce lockdowns and remove the infected and exposed to government-run quarantine facilities. But few governments were willing to act in such a heavy-handed fashion.

Instead, the easiest population to target was foreigners. Most borders — at least at the official ports of entry — were hard lines that could be closed relatively easily; they were a controlled environment in which government agents decided who would be permitted to enter.

In the two decades following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, most governments had become much better at controlling their borders. Secure passports, biometric scans, advanced passenger information — and big increases in the number of border agents using those tools to screen arrivals — had made national borders more robust than at any previous time in modern history.

Policing mobility restrictions domestically was, in contrast, extremely difficult — authorities outside of China, which committed the vast resources of the state to its “zero-COVID” approach, mostly lacked the will and capacity to stop everyone who was outside their homes to determine if their reason for being in public fell under one of the “essential” exceptions.

In the early stages of the pandemic, most who could do so voluntarily stayed at home, but few countries could maintain these lockdowns beyond a period of several months.

Border controls had strong support

Border controls were also widely supported by the public. In an Ipsos poll of 21,000 people in 28 countries in late 2020, two-thirds of respondents said their countries should “not allow anyone in or out” until the virus was contained.

Border measures were especially popular in Malaysia, Australia, Canada, Chile and Peru, with 80 per cent or more in favour. Support was lowest in Europe, where national borders had been largely dismantled in the 1990s and many people live in regions where they cross national borders daily for work, shopping and even medical treatment.

Even as vaccines were rolled out and domestic restrictions eased, border closures remained popular; the same Ipsos poll in November 2021 found 56 per cent of the public still wanted the borders to remain shut.

Governments that resisted closing their borders to outsiders — as South Korea had done in staying largely open to Chinese travellers in the early stages of the pandemic — faced vocal public opposition.

In most countries, the costs of travel restrictions were small and fell on others. As political scientists Michael Kenwick and Beth Simmons argue: “Policies can focus on externalizing the costs of pandemic control (by restricting travel and closing borders, for example) and/or they can internalize these costs (by regulating social distance, contact tracing, and regulating where and how many people gather).” The choice was obvious for most political leaders.

In many countries there was public resistance to domestic control measures such as school and business closures, and to masking and testing requirements.

Border controls had few opponents; most of those separated from their families or stranded outside their own countries could do little but complain on social media.

Border restrictions, therefore, are “a good political bet for most leaders,” Simmons and Kenwick argue.

For political leaders, border closures have much to admire — they are quick, visible and popular. In the face of complex external threats, restricting borders is an easy way for governments to signal that they are taking the security of their citizens seriously.

Throughout the pandemic, U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly reminded Americans that he had “cut off China” — the United States blocked travel by non-citizens who had visited China on Feb. 2, 2020 — as evidence that he was leading the COVID response, even as his administration was actively undermining less popular domestic measures to reduce the spread of the disease such as lockdowns and masking.

Governments that closed borders during COVID were widely lauded by their own citizens, and sometimes even abroad.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern became an international star for her country’s success in keeping the virus contained by using some of the world’s most stringent border measures, including restrictions that even kept many citizens from returning home.

Unprecedented extremes

Governments, of course, have shut their borders before. The Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China for several decades maintained an “Iron Curtain” that severely limited the ability of foreigners to visit and prevented their own citizens from leaving. More than 100,000 East Germans tried to flee across the fortified border to the west between 1961 and 1989; over 600 died in the attempt.

Wars have repeatedly closed borders across the world. Many countries — in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America — have shut their borders temporarily to refugees and asylum seekers from neighbouring states seeking to escape conflict and violence.

The United States went to the highest security level at its land borders and closed its airspace after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, though the measures were lifted within days.

Border restrictions had also been used in the past to slow the spread of disease, from cholera outbreaks in the 19th century to the first appearance of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in 2003.

But the world had never seen anything like the COVID border shutdowns. The United Nations World Tourism Organization stated that “never before in history has international travel been restricted in such an extreme manner.”

The measures varied — from modest screening, testing and later vaccination requirements to complete bans on foreign citizens to restrictions that excluded citizens as well.

Immigrant workers were especially vulnerable, often blocked from returning home even as domestic lockdowns shuttered their places of employment.

Even after vaccines had been widely distributed in 2021 and deaths from COVID were down sharply, many countries still maintained significant border restrictions. Taiwan and Japan did not fully reopen to foreign tourists until the end of September 2022. China would keep its borders closed until January 2023, nearly three years after first closing them.

The COVID border restrictions stand out for another reason — for all the claims that governments had “lost control” of their borders, most proved extremely effective at controlling their borders during the pandemic. The restrictions permitted trade and small numbers of “essential” travellers to continue crossing borders while keeping everyone else out.

For many decades, and especially since 9/11, wealthier countries in particular had worked to develop “smart borders” that would permit governments to control entry without disrupting lawful trade and travel. The COVID-19 pandemic was the proof of concept — governments showed themselves remarkably adept at facilitating trade and the movement of some essential personnel while closing their borders to the vast majority of travellers.

By permitting commercial rail and truck crossings without impediments, and container ships to continue crossing the oceans — even as the ship workers themselves were unable to return home to their families — governments ensured that store shelves remained stocked and public discontent was minimal.

COVID border restrictions did lead to some product shortages and supply chain challenges, but overall trade proved remarkably resilient — indeed, the supply problems were caused largely by surging demand for electronics and other consumer goods from shut-in populations.

This meant that, despite growing desperation as the months rolled by from tourist-dependent industries and their workers, from separated cross-border families and couples, from container ship workers stranded on the high seas, from universities losing foreign students, and from businesses struggling to hire or keep foreign workers, there was minimal pressure on governments to ease the restrictions.

A chilling blueprint for future crises

In the United States, the border restrictions under Title 42 — a provision of U.S. public health law that permits emergency actions at the borders to keep out communicable diseases — remained in place more than three years after the initial outbreak of COVID-19, and long after the United States had abandoned all domestic measures to control the spread of the virus.

The Trump and Biden administrations used Title 42 to expel more than 2.5 million people attempting to cross the southern border from Mexico. Many U.S. Republicans wanted the measure to remain in place permanently as a tool of border control.

COVID taught governments — in a way that had been far from certain beforehand — that borders could be closed or heavily restricted for extended periods with strong public support and minimal disruption to the everyday lives of most of their people. The temptation to do so in future crises — from pandemics to terrorist attacks to flows of desperate asylum seekers — will be irresistible.

Even as borders reopened in the aftermath of the pandemic, pressures were growing across the political spectrum in the United States to seal the Mexican border against a rising surge of migrants from South and Central America and shipments of deadly fentanyl.

Populist parties running on platforms calling for tighter borders and immigration restrictions gained ground not just in Hungary and Poland, but in Italy, Austria, Germany, Sweden and Finland.

Climate change is creating more opportunities for deadly viral mutations; few health experts believe we will wait another century for a major global pandemic. In the face of such external threats, governments will be more willing than ever before to close their borders.

There is therefore an urgent need for an in-depth assessment of the harms caused by the unprecedented closure of borders during the pandemic and the implications for the future.

Unfortunately, few countries are doing the sort of in-depth independent reviews — the kind that the United States did after the 9/11 attacks — that would allow for considered judgments about the effectiveness of border restrictions during COVID, and would also assess the enormous costs paid by the millions of people whose lives were upended.

Publics, understandably traumatized by their experiences during the pandemic, are reluctant to look back, but failing to do so makes it likelier that governments will feel free to impose the same restrictions in future crises.

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From ‘When the World Closed Its Doors’ by Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman. Copyright 2025 by Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman and published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Authors Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman are holding a launch event for their book on Feb. 22 from 2 to 4 p.m. at 3755 W. 8th Ave. in Vancouver. Register by emailing Tom Sandborn.