PHOENIX — This is the first winter in five years that Steve Monk and his wife, Linda, haven’t driven to Arizona from their home in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.
They typically leave Canada to hunker down in warmer climates for six months. They could fly, skirting travel restrictions at the border, but they’d rather “freeze their buns off” than go to the U.S., where covid-19 infections and deaths are surging, Monk says.
“It’s not worth taking a chance. It’s not nearly as bad in this country as it is down there,” said Monk, 69. “Pretty much every Canadian person we do know that goes down [to the U.S.] is not going. It’s pretty widespread.”
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Many “snowbirds” like the Monks, often retirees who live somewhere warm like Arizona or Florida part time to escape cold weather, won’t be flocking south this…
