Canadians set aside contempt for tariffs and Trump rhetoric for the love of the Toronto Blue Jays

SEATTLE (AP) — On this perfectly crisp and sunny October day, Canadian Grant Murray was eager to drive down to Seattle for a once-in-a-lifetime Major League Baseball playoff game featuring his beloved Toronto Blue Jays.

But he really didn’t want to be here in the United States, and the 62-year-old lawyer from Vancouver, B.C., was determined to spend as little money as possible after his old brother, who flew in from Australia, convinced him to go.

In the past, Murray said he’d typically make a special days-long trip to Seattle to see the Blue Jays during the regular season, spending five times as much money enjoying Washington state along the way.

“I’ll have a hot dog inside but I’m not here to spend money,” Murray said Wednesday, detailing the limited expenses planned for his visit to T-Mobile Park for Game 3 of the American League Championship Series against the Seattle Mariners. “I’m only here for the Blue Jays.”

Toronto won the game 13-4, though Seattle still leads 2-1 in the best-of-seven series with the American League pennant and the chance to the play in the World Series on the line. More Canadians are expected Thursday and Friday for the remaining Seattle games before heading back to Toronto, if needed.

Like many Canadians, Murray has been boycotting the U.S. since the Trump administration started threatening Canada’s economy and sovereignty with tariffs and heated political rhetoric, most offensively of all by claiming Canada could be “the 51st state.”

But like many Canadians, Murray is also a die-hard Blue Jays fan, so he made an exception for baseball this week and paid $280 for a standing-room-only ticket — the cheapest he could find. But, he points out, he’s not drinking the beer and refuses to spend the night in a Seattle hotel, opting instead to drive more than six hours roundtrip on a weeknight to root for Canada’s only MLB team.

“I switched from not visiting (Seattle) to visiting because of this,” Murray said of the playoff series while donning a clearly much-loved T-shirt from the 1992 playoffs that ended with Toronto’s first-ever World Series championship.

You could call this a geopolitical thaw for the love of the ball, made possible both by Canadians’ fervent Blue Jays fandom and the deep Pacific Northwest ties that bind British Columbia and Washington state.

Rhiannon McMillan called the Blue Jays-Mariners matchup a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see her two favorite teams.

“This is my dream series,” said the 36-year-old electrician from Maple Ridge, B.C. “Either way, I can’t lose.”

Yes, of course the Blue Jays have the hearts of Canadians at large. In fact, MLB reports that there are 15.8 million Blue Jays fans across Canada, over half of whom live outside of Ontario, which by the league’s count represents the largest single fan base of any Canadian professional sports team.

But the Great White North being so massive means many Canadians also have loyalty to an American club on the side, a natural fandom out of proximity. Inside the game, McMillan said Mariners fans were gracious and welcoming — the exuberant atmosphere serving as a reminder of how much she missed visiting the area even if the political environment nationally couldn’t be erased from the picture.

McMillan said she didn’t hesitate to pay $300 for her ticket to see the game with friends, though the mom of three refused to bring her kids along due to U.S. politics.

“This was a small pocket of love and harmony for a few hours,” McMillan said.

She added: “My biggest reasons for avoiding (the U.S.) is 100% the fear of uncertainty over how this administration may change policy on a whim, (and) their casual disregard of the Constitution and rule of law.”

McMillan said she’s especially concerned about its policies on transgender rights, as well as the possibility that her kids could witness ICE agents detaining families. Recently, her family was also debating between Disneyland in California or Mexico for an upcoming vacation and decided against the U.S. destination despite having family in that area.

It’s choices like these that have manifested into a precipitous drop in visits and tourism for the U.S. from the world’s longest international border.

Border crossings from Canadian passenger vehicles into Washington state have dropped 36% in the first nine months of 2025 compared with the same time period last year, according to analysis by the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University.

Visit Seattle, the tourism agency boosting the city and King County, said they are forecasting a 26% drop in international tourism for 2025, which is largely made up of Canadian visitors. In 2024, Canadians spent $586 million in the area, representing 60% of international visitor spending or 6.6% of total tourism dollars for the city and county.

Bob Donegan, President of Ivar’s, an iconic seafood eatery with outposts on the Seattle waterfront just blocks away from the Mariners’ stadium as well as inside T-Mobile Park itself, said it was depressing tracking the steady drop in Canadian tourists this year.

They were so missed that Donegan led a local tourism campaign in May with other local businesses offering them specials, discounts and goodwill to entice them back for the last regular season Blue Jays-Mariners matchup. Donegan said he’s hopeful the playoffs will now be a turning point for Canadian tourism in Seattle.

“They tip well. They treat the servers well. They tend to come in family groups. The Canadians have a couple of beers and they’re even friendlier,” Donegan said. “It’s noticeable when our Canadian friends don’t come.”

The downturn in Canadian tourism even led the FRS Clipper, a fast ferry operator running between Seattle and Victoria, B.C., to cut routes and significantly scale back operations this summer during its peak season.

But in seizing upon the baseball momentum, the Clipper ferry this week launched special “Playoff Express” sailings to accommodate Canadian passengers with a direct ride to downtown Seattle for each of the three games. Wednesday’s ferry, the company said, had nearly 300 passengers.

Among them was Nathan Bird, 47, of Victoria, B.C., who paid about $350 for his game ticket and budgeted about $1,000 for the “down and dirty” 24-hour trip to Seattle.

Bird, who works in tourism, said while the Canadian outrage has softened in recent months, summer tourism was shot because many people booked their vacations in the spring at the height of the Trump agitation. He said he’s unfazed personally by the political turmoil and predicts tourism will bounce back next summer.