Ogdensburg, NY UPS Store has 9,000 to 10,000 packages for Canadians waiting to be picked up when border reopens

OTTAWA -

The UPS Store in Ogdensburg, New York has thousands of packages addressed to residents in Ottawa and Eastern Ontario waiting for pick-up when the Canada-U.S. land border reopens next month.

A White House official says the U.S. will announce Friday that it will reopen its land borders to vaccinated non-essential visitors on Nov. 8.

With the border being closed to travellers for 19 months, some packages have been sitting at the UPS Store in Ogdensburg for nearly two years.

"There's at least between nine and 10,000 (packages)," said Orin Wing, manager of the UPS Store in Ogdensburg during an interview on CTV Morning Live.

"It's been continuing. We've had packages coming in the entire time, just nobody coming in the door from the Canadian side."

Wing says the freight section of the facility has been full since the start of the pandemic.

"We have packages still here from December 2019," said Wing Friday morning.

"We used to charge holding fees for packages – once a package is here longer than two weeks we charge $5 a week for those packages. But once the pandemic hit we understood that the Canadians weren't going to be able to come over and it's not their fault at all, so we waived all the holding fees for all our customers. We still got everything here."

Wing says businesses in Ogdensburg are "relieved" the border will soon be open for non-essential travellers.

"It has been tough for a lot of the community, a lot of restaurants have closed, a lot of people have lost their jobs, lot of people running short staffed," said Wing.

"The fact that it's happening right now, we're losing another business here by the end of the month, the fact that the Canadians are going to be able to come back over is going to help a lot of people over here on this side."

If you have a package to pick up at the UPS Store in Ogdensburg, Wing has some advice.

"They can either call us ahead of time and let us know if they've got more than one or two packages – just let us know the day they're going to be coming over, we can pull them ahead of time and we'll set them aside. It will make it a little bit easier for each of the customers when they come in."