Over the next month or so, the dozens of Canadian snowbirds who have for years wintered in the Vero Beach area will start returning back home – but this time, it appears some may not be back next winter.
“I’ve been coming here for years and I’ve always really liked it here,” said Ibrahim “Ibby” El-Raheb, a retired engineer from Hamilton, Ontario, who is getting ready to head back home in April as scheduled. “But I’m seriously rethinking whether I want to come back next year. What’s happening between the U.S. and Canada is insanity.”
Not every Canadian, of course, will fail to return. “We have already facilitated new leases for some of the existing (Canadian) tenants for next season 2025-2026,” said Carol Markolin of ONE Sotheby’s International Realty on Beachland Boulevard, one of the local realtors specializing in seasonal rentals.
But the tariff war that President Trump started with Canada – coupled with his comments about his desire to annex Canada to the U.S. – clearly has upset many snowbirds who come here from north of the border.
Canadians are generally measured people, and no matter how mad they are over the tariff wars and the alleged “insults,” those who have paid for a rental property through the end of the season – or have prepaid hotel reservations – are not inclined to walk out on them and lose money.
“We’re not leaving early,” said the wife of a retired IT executive from the Toronto area who has been renting a condo on the island for several years. But she declined to “comment on politics,” and also declined to say whether they are planning to come back in the fall.
Carol Harries of Kingston, Ontario, a bridge enthusiast who used to rent a winter home in Vero for years, said it is hard to exaggerate the depth of animosity among Canadians toward the current U.S. government, and added: “I will not be crossing the border.”
Harries said she had found a new winter pied-a-terre in Portugal. “It is indeed a shame as I so enjoyed Vero Beach and the many friendships I made there.”
A former Vero Beach snowbird living near Ottawa said that while Canadians are upset by the tariffs being slapped on Canadian imports, even worse, to them, are the “insults – to suggest that Canada isn’t a real country and should just join the U.S.”
He said it was “really astonishing to see how Trump has managed to turn Canadians into patriots.
“We miss our many friends in Vero Beach, but next winter when we want to go somewhere, it won’t be to the U.S.,” he said. “Maybe Mexico, or a cruise, but never the U.S.”
