I grew up in suburban Detroit. Access to Canada has always been easy. You need proper identification, but it’s not by any means “locked down”. Beyond personal experience, I had acquaintances with cottages in Canada. They never have any issues traveling.
Good ole days (pre-2000) meant giving a verbal declaration of citizenship and being sure to have a decades old crumbly birth certificate if they asked.
Canada technically doesn't require passports at the land border, but they make it more of a hassle if you don't have one.
On the plus side, the Canadian side cares a lot less about whether returning Canadians owed taxes & duties. The booths used to be staffed by a division of the CRA (Canadian IRS) and unarmed.
I'm jealous of the Niagara crossing that has a pedestrian bridge called the Rainbow Bridge because you can see the rainbow in the falls' mist from the middle of the span. Areas on both sides are pedestrian-friendly and you can just walk across, for a $1 fee. It sucks that you can't get from Detroit to Windsor without either your own vehicle, or boarding a grubby bus.
I haven't done it yet myself. But I'll probably do it for a parcel pickup one day.
Will the new Detroit-Windsor bridge enable walking/biking over?
https://www.gordiehoweinternationalbridge.com/en/bike-or-hik...
It’s worth mentioning that the enhanced driver’s licenses and state IDs are still valid, which tend to be easier to acquire and require far less paperwork if one is already getting a license/state ID, so residents of the more populated border states have a somewhat more seamless option.
I’ve always wondered what they would do.
In the 90’s, I once showed up at the US border without documentation and basically was let through after a 30 second lecture. I wonder if it would still work like that?