SEATTLE — Pike Place Market artist and vendor Daniel Fleming says Toronto Blue Jays fans typically flock to Seattle in droves for games against the Mariners, and the current American League Championship Series is no different.
He said the town and market appear to be insulated from political tensions between Canada and the United States, which have caused Canadian visits to the South to plummet.
“The Toronto Blue Jays fandom travels probably like any other fandom I've ever encountered,” Fleming said Thursday. “They come to town, spend money, support small businesses and all that.”
The market was full of people taking photos in front of the first Starbucks, which opened here in 1971, while others filmed the famous fish-throwing ritual for which Pike Place is known.
Fleming said the current tourism season appears to be “pretty normal,” although he has seen a decline in the number of Korean and Chinese tourists and believes the political fallout could be more dramatic next year.
“Pike Place Market, when you look at things like that, is probably isolated from statistical norms,” he said. “I suspect Washington State, I was expecting there to be a lot fewer Canadian travelers in Seattle, but using the baseball game, T-shirts and all that as a barometer, there seemed to be a lot of people there.”
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But Visit Seattle, the city's tourism marketing organization, projects a 26 percent drop in international tourists this year, calling it the biggest drop for a major U.S. city due to its dependence on Canada.
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The figures were compiled by international consulting firm Oxford Economics earlier this year.
Tanya Canavan, president of Visit Seattle, said in an interview Thursday that officials are “excited to have Blue Jays fans in town.”
“We traditionally saw a lot of our Canadian friends come to the game and it was a great rivalry,” Canavan said.
Canavan is originally from Vancouver and has lived in the United States for 25 years.
She said Seattle feels “much like home,” with similar culture, weather and values, but the projected drop in visitor numbers showed “the hesitations and strong feelings that Canadians have when crossing the border into the United States right now.”
She said she has relatives in Canada who have given her more insight into people's feelings about visiting the country amid U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and rhetoric about the 51st state, she said.
“We hope that over time this relationship will become stronger and we will start to see a return to a more normal pattern,” she said. “Politics isn’t necessarily about people, right?”
City fans who attended the games said they came to Seattle oblivious to politics.
Kurt and Tracy Bessey, siblings from Saskatoon, flew to Vancouver and took a bus to Seattle because it was cheaper than flying to the game in Toronto.
Curt Bessey said the last time he was here was a decade ago for a Seahawks game, and while Seattle had changed since his last visit, with many stores closing, people had not.
“The people here are amazing, they are very friendly,” he said.
Tracy Bessey said people were friendly and cheerful to them because they were Canadian, wearing visible sweatshirts with a small Canadian flag embroidered on the sleeve.
But they said they were asked a lot of questions when crossing the border, which was atypical of their past experiences.
“It seemed strange. I crossed the border several times,” Kurt said.
“We had all of our Jay stuff on, so you know why we’re here,” Tracy added.
They said the opposing fans in Game 3 were friendly, and the good-natured chatter died down as the Jays jumped out to an easy 13-4 win.
Back in Pike Place, where Fleming has sold his work for two decades, he said he apologized to Canadians for Trump's anti-Canada rhetoric.
However, he said that despite the current political conflict, Canadians don't need much convincing to visit a city like Seattle.
“As far as encouraging people, you know, don't believe the hype,” he said. “I think you look at a lot of things around the world when there's conflict and you talk to people on the street… you'll find that the people in a place are not the government of that place.”
Canadians spent $586 million in the city and King County last year, according to Visit Seattle.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
