COVID-19 forces local journalist to make a big decision

Robin Smith grew up in the Rock Island section of Stanstead, Quebec, but like many residents of the Eastern Townships of that province of the baby boom generation or thereabout, Robin was born across the border in Newport, in one of two now-defunct hospitals in that Vermont community—orleans County Memorial Hospital and Broadview General Hospital.

The Orleans Memorial Hospital was in operation near the junction of Highland Avenue and Longview Avenue between 1924 and 1974. Broadview General Hospital did business on Broadview Avenue between 1947 and 1967. The current day North Country Hospital in Newport didn’t arrive on the scene until 1974.

At 63 years old, Robin spent more than half of her life living and working in Vermont as a newspaper reporter. Her career in that field began with a short hitch at the Newport Daily Express in Newport, followed by about 15 years with the Bennington Banner in Bennington, with her final place of employment being about 19 years with the Caledonia Record, which is based in St. Johnsbury in Caledonia County. She, however, was hired to provide news coverage for Orleans County.

After accepting the job with the Record, she bought a home on Highland Avenue in Derby Line, only about a quarter of a mile as the crow flies from her childhood home on Ball Street in Stanstead, where her parents and sister Kelly, live to this day. For generations, Ball Street was an unguarded and ungated border crossing. On the Vermont side of the border, the street is named Phelps Street.

For most of the history of the border, area residents could cross it without much hassle. That all changed following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Every border crosser, even locals to the border region, were treated as potential terrorists by American and Canadian border agents No longer could locals cross the border with little more than a couple of questions, or sometimes only with a wave of the hand if one was a regular border crosser. It became necessary to show border agents proper identification, whether it be a passport or an enhanced driver’s license.

The changes at the border didn’t sit well with some border area residents, but little did they know the far more dire changes that would come to the border on March 21, 2020. That was in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. In an effort to curtail the spread of the virus, the United States–canada border was closed to all but essential travel, among them, healthcare workers.

Sadly, out of the shutdown arose heartbreaking stories, including families—with some members of the clan living in Vermont and others living in Quebec—unable to cross the border to attend family gatherings, even to share final words with dying relatives. As for Robin, who is a longtime friend of mine and a longtime writing colleague, the border closure brought with it great hardship, including the separation from her beloved family.

Robin is the oldest of three daughters born to Lindsay and Mavis Smith of

Stanstead. Robin was born in Orleans County Memorial Hospital, in 1958, followed by a middle sister, Janice (aka Jan), in 1960, then with baby sister, Kelly, arriving in 1962.

When Canadians of her parents’ generation were born, Robin said many of them, including Robin’s father, were born at home in Stanstead. Her mother was born in Montreal. So, while their daughters are citizens of both countries, Robin’s parents are only citizens of Canada. All three daughters were delivered by their mother’s doctor, Dr. White, a doctor in Quebec. Like some other Stanstead area doctors of the time, he treated patients on both sides of the border. They also performed rounds in hospitals in Newport.

“As dual nationals, we have the same rights as any American citizen,” Robin said. “And we have the same rights as any Canadian citizen.

“By the 1950s, women were encouraged to have their babies at the hospital,” she explained. “For folks living on the border, the closest hospital was in Newport. And the doctors—in what was called the Three Villages, Stanstead, Rock Island, and Beebe, Quebec—also saw their patients at Orleans County Hospital and Broadview Hospital in Newport. So, most of the Baby Boomer generation living in Stanstead, Rock Island, and Beebe was born in the U.S., and their parents “imported” them into Canada.

“I have a citizenship paper from 1958 that says I have Canadian citizenship because they brought me across the border into Canada a couple of days after I was born in Newport,” Robin said. “It’s in safekeeping, proof of my Canadian citizenship. And I have a birth certificate from my birth in Newport. So that makes me a dual national, like many other folks who grew up on the border my age.”

While growing up in Rock Island, Robin said her primary care doctor was Dr. Gillies Bouchard, whose clinic was in his home in Stanstead. Dr. Bouchard— who also, for many years, performed medical rounds on both sides of the border—was a legend in the border region because of his diagnostic skills and because he promoted the concept that only patients who could afford to pay, should pay him. His patients hailed from both sides of the border. When he passed away on March 9, 2018, at 83 years old, thousands of people on both sides of the border mourned his passing.

“The practice of Canadians having their babies in Newport ended for the most part in the 1960s, when Canada introduced Medicare for all citizens,” Robin said. “Suddenly, Quebec women didn’t have to pay for health care. And the ones living on the border had their babies at the closest Canadian hospitals instead.” For example, she said her two nieces, who were born in a hospital in Sherbrooke, Quebec, but grew up in Stanstead, are citizens of Canada only, not dual citizens like their mother or aunts.

While attending college in Montreal, Robin said she found her “calling.” That was to become a journalist. However, having grown up speaking English, and not being fluent in French, she understood her inability to speak French meant she had no future in the media world of her childhood province. That’s when she began her long and prestigious

career in the Vermont newspaper world.

“I worked in Vermont for 33 years, living the last 18 years in Derby Line, just a quick drive across the border from my parents,” she said. As her parents aged, and her sister Kelly, having special needs, Robin, especially in later years, crossed the border once or twice a day to help her family along with her sister Janice.

While the arrangement wasn’t ideal, for many years it worked for her and her family. That is until COVID-19 forced the closure of the border on March 21, 2020. In the early weeks of the closure, Robin was allowed to continue her journey back and forth across the border.

But then on April 20, 2020, something terrible happened. When Robin pulled up to the Stanstead border crossing, she gave the border officer her usual paperwork, but instead of being allowed to proceed on her way, she was told she couldn’t enter Canada. The rules for her had changed. A shower of tears wasn’t enough to change the minds of border officials. She returned home devastated and called her parents and told them she’d no longer be allowed to help them until the border reopened to general traffic.

“After spending many hours each day helping my parents and my sister Kelly who lives with them, I was suddenly cut off,” Robin said. “I was devastated. My other sister, Jan, had to do all the care for them.”

During the decades she lived in Vermont, she said she had come to realize that it wasn’t if she’d return to live in Quebec but when. As she had never married or had children, she had planned to eventually return home to help care for her aging parents and her sister Kelly. Her sister Jan also was, and is, equally committed to assisting their parents and baby sister. Suddenly, though, after being banned from crossing the border and not knowing when the border would reopen, she had no idea what to do. She spoke to her Canadian family by phone each day and occasionally chatted with them at the gate that had been built at the border where Ball Street in Stanstead becomes Phelps Street in Derby Line, a gate which had been erected following the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Seeing her family through the gate was better than nothing, Robin said, but not being able to touch them wasn’t the way she wanted to live, what might be the final years of her parents’ lives. She agonized about what to do.

“Then my good friend Scott Wheeler reminded me that a job and a house don’t mean much compared to family,” Robin said. “So, I put the house on the market, sold it, and moved July 18, 2020, to Stanstead.

“I cried all the way from Derby Line to Stanstead, except for the 45 minutes it took to clear Canadian customs,” Robin said. She moved in with her parents and sister Kelly, so she could better care for them.

“After I moved, I looked across the border every day from my breakfast table, my bedroom window, my back porch,” she said. “And there wasn’t a day that I didn’t miss just being able to return to that other half of my life. Zoom meetings and phone calls aren’t enough. I wanted to eat at the East Side and drive through Holland and Morgan to Lake Seymour and see my American friends and relatives again.” However, she knows she made the right decision in moving back to Quebec.

Although COVID-19 restrictions prevented her from crossing back into Vermont, her bosses at the Caledonia Record allowed her to work from home. She couldn’t thank them enough for extending her this courtesy as she struggled to determine what lay ahead for her.

“Working as a journalist during the pandemic was the hardest and most rewarding work of my life,” Robin said, “but eventually I decided it was time for the next chapter, and I retired in the summer of 2021. The border closing will be a story we will be telling the next generations for the rest of our lives.”

Border restrictions began loosening up the second week of August, but with the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus ramping up, there’s no telling what the future holds for the border or border residents.

The author of this article, Scott Wheeler of Derby, is also the publisher of Vermont’s Northland Journal, a monthly magazine designed to share and preserve the history of the Northeast Kingdom through the words of people who lived it. He is also the publisher of several Northeast Kingdom history books, and is the host of the Vermont Voice radio show on WJJZ 94.5 FM in Derby, and the host of the Northeast Kingdom Voice television show on NEK-TV in Newport. To learn how to subscribe to the Journal or how to buy copies of his books, check out Scott’s website at www. northlandjournal.com/store-2/. Or email him at northlandjournal@gmail.com or call him at (802) 487-0254.