The impacts of COVID-19 restrictions are far-reaching, especially when a border divides families.
A family originally from Squamish felt this deeply recently when they were unable to celebrate together.
But they made the best of it.
Harj Aulakh said she wasn't able to cross the border for her father Shangara Sanghera's birthday on April 8, due to the COVID-19 border restrictions, "which we fully respect and comply with," she said.
Aulakh married an American and lives in Lynden, Wash.
The birthday was deemed a non-essential reason to cross, she said.
Most of her family is on the Canadian side. On the U.S. side is Aulakh, her husband and children and her youngest sister's fiancé.
"A few weeks earlier, I was able to cross for an essential reason, to attend my grandma’s funeral in Squamish," she said.
"But the rest of the American family and a lot of our Canadian family and friends couldn’t attend, due to limits on social gatherings. So the emotions were high and we wanted to get the family together—and this was a great way to do it," she said of the surprise border party.M/p>
Though they live in Surrey now, Sanghera moved to Squamish from India in the early 1970s. He and his wife Kamaljit raised four children in Valleycliffe.
"We found a way to surprise him and have all his kids and grandkids together in one place, even though we were in two different counties, and socially distancing ourselves from each other," she said.
This story originally appeared in The Squamish Chief on April 19.
