Love ain’t easy.
Throw in an international border and a pandemic and it becomes downright impossible for some.
“We’ve been apart for 130 days,” declared documentary filmmaker Brina Romanek who, with her partner Dan McArdle, launched 1091 Meters to Love last week, a podcast focusing on cross-border romances.
Romanek, who won the Barrie Arts Awards’ most promising youth accolade in 2013, accidentally started a cross-border romance last year when a dating app offered the match because the two lived within an acceptable geographic distance of each other.
But it failed to recognize that Lake Ontario and the border divided them — she’s in Toronto and he is in Buffalo, N.Y.
Undeterred they met halfway, in Hamilton, for their first date with subsequent dates in her hometown of Barrie or in Toronto or Buffalo. One or the other would have to cross the 1,091-metre Peace Bridge, one of the busiest border crossings between the United States and Canada.
Then came COVID-19 and the unprecedented world health pandemic, the Canada-U.S. border closed and the two were separated.
They initially decided to wait it out. But the closure has been repeatedly extended with a reunion becoming more remote.
“It’s been really hard,” said Romanek, explaining that they’re both having to do without their support system. “I have a wonderful therapist and we’ve reached this point where she said: ‘I don’t have anymore tools for you.’”
And since there is no essential need for one or the other to cross the border, and they’re neither married nor in a common-law relationship, they’ve not been able to see each other.
Romanek and McArdle realize they’re not alone. There’s a Facebook page dedicated to couples just like them and other groups are emerging, here and abroad.
Recently, another cross-border couple who live in an RV were able to reunite after their first futile attempt weeks earlier. Steve Barkey and Cathy Kolsch are spending two weeks in isolation on a Saskatchewan farm after she was able to satisfy border officials that they live common-law and the Californian resident was granted access to Canada.
On Wednesday, they'll hit the road and are hoping to finally get to Barrie during the August long weekend to see family and where they’ll spend the rest of the summer.
“Both Cathy and I are looking forward to get out of quarantine and see our family and friends and to do some boating,” wrote Barkey in an email. “Looking forward to see my mom, brothers and especially Jenna, my 35-year-old daughter who has messaged me every day since last October.”
Toronto immigration lawyer Ali Esnaashari helped Barkey and Kolsch get all their papers together to prove to Canadian border officials they are indeed a common-law couple — not an easy feat for a pair who call an RV almost constantly on the move their home. And although a Supreme Court of Canada case outlines 67 factors that need to be satisfied, it’s not black and white.
Esnaashari said he’s had queries from other couples, including a group who has launched a campaign to draw attention to their plight.
There are options, including having one of the couple apply for an electronic travel authorization for a visit. The more involved permanent residency application can be difficult, he said, because it requires medical or legal documents from other organizations or offices that might be closed during the pandemic.
Romanek and McArdle are looking at filing a temporary residency application so he can come to Canada. The government has started accepting online applications as of July 1.
But currently, the federal government is still discouraging non-essential travel. And that could be frustrating for separated couples, said Esnaashari who is calling on the federal government to consider how it might better accommodate cross-border couples.
“The border closure may be extended until the end of the year,” he said. “It seems like it’s going to be a more prolonged issue.”
While working on her podcast Romanek is seeing more couples considering marriage when that might not yet be on the table under normal circumstances just so that they can be together. She’s also come across some creative gatherings along the border among couples as well as one couple who are expecting a baby but still live in two different countries.
“Some of the stories are really tough, some of the stories are really beautiful, but it’s been a really exciting way to recognize that there are a lot of people dealing with this and that there are a lot of stories that need to be heard,” she said, explaining that three of them have already been told in the podcast while another four are in the hopper.
That includes an interview with a couple from Australia and Germany who’ve launched the website Love is Not Tourism, encouraging governments to acknowledge and make accommodations for cross-border couples to be together.
The podcast will continue telling the evolution of cross-border couples across the world and address some of the issues they face as they continue to be forced apart from their loved one.
