TORONTO -- As a place that normally welcomes visitors, a small coastal town in Newfoundland and Labrador is now asking them to stay away.
Tourists flock to Bonavista, N.L. every spring to see icebergs floating through the area, but now, the town's mayor is asking them to cancel their travel plans amid growing concern over the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bonavista Mayor John Norman told CTV News Channel that he is frustrated by the amount of tourists he has seen in the town despite public health orders restricting non-essential travel.
"Under normal circumstances, we're only too happy to see them coming, spending monies to build our economy, tourism is a very important sector for our region in our province, but... now is not the time and I'm quite frustrated and disappointed as are many locals in our region to see visitors showing up for those icebergs as usual," Norman said in an interview on Wednesday.
Norman said Bonavista has seen no cases of COVID-19 and Newfoundland has a very low number of infections, but that could change if the area continues to see an increase in tourists.
"We're hoping to maintain that [but] I assume it's going to be much more challenging to do that if we have people coming in from other places, from other provinces, but also from other countries because I've also seen Americans showing up in the last few days in the region," Norman said.
Newfoundland Health Minister John Haggie said during a news conference on Tuesday that the province is looking at how to further tighten travel restrictions in response to the issue in Bonavista.
"I think for the moment, given the fact that there's a pandemic, if you come from away, you best stay away," Haggie said.
"The assumption had been that people who were coming were actually going to play by the rules. The fact that they haven't, or the allegations that they haven't, are the subject of reports to the appropriate law enforcement agencies," he added.
Newfoundland and Labrador has Labrador has enforced strict travel restrictions in the province amid the pandemic. Residents are urged to avoid all non-essential travel outside of the province while anyone entering from another country, province or territory must self-isolate for 14 days.
"I guess some of the messages that the province has put out there hasn't been clear enough for some visitors as we've been seeing them from various provinces showing up," Norman said. "And I've spoken to some of them; these are not just judged by license plate sightings alone."
Being a tourist town, Norman says Bonavista does not want to turn visitors away but has to to ensure the safety of its residents amid the pandemic.
"It's a difficult tightrope to walk, being a tourist community we're very much focused on seasonality, fisheries and tourism. It's very hard to turn them away right now but we have to," Norman said. He added that now is not the time to reopen Newfoundland's tourism sector.
"We have to try to maintain I guess some semblance of normalcy and activity in the community, but tourism is not the thing to open right now."
