With Glowing Hearts We See Thee Rise, The Loonie Hits Parity!

Is NYC & Company behind the weak dollar? They don’t seem to be doing much to discourage it:

New Yorkers, like most Americans, pay precious little attention to what happens in Canada, that large, sparsely populated region with the chronically inferior currency.

. . .

Check that last part. Now that the Canadian dollar, known as the loonie, has flapped its way to parity with the American dollar (formerly known as the almighty), Canada suddenly looks like a proud nation of 33 million people whose cross-border purchasing power has grown by more than half in five years.

Tourism officials in New York have taken notice. They acknowledge that they took Canadian visitors for granted in the past, but now they are drawing up plans to lure more of them to the state and New York City.

The state is running ads in Toronto newspapers and on Canadian Web sites, inviting Canadians to spend fall weekends in northern and western New York. The city’s tourism agency, NYC & Company, is rushing to open an office in Toronto, which would be its first in Canada. “This seems like sort of a psychological opportunity,” said George A. Fertitta, the chief executive of NYC & Company, referring to the parity of the two currencies.

The Canadian dollar, nicknamed for the image of a loon that it bears, passed its American counterpart on Friday, when it hit a new 31-year high of almost $1.01. In early 2002, it was worth about 62 cents.

Back then, the flow of visitors from Canada to New York City was in a post-9/11 swoon. The number of visitors dropped to 693,000 in 2003, from 920,000 in 2000, a decline of almost 25 percent. By last year, it had rebounded to 840,000, making Canada the No. 2 foreign source of visitors, behind Britain, according to NYC & Company.

Now, with Canadians brandishing their reinvigorated loonies, tourism officials have stopped ignoring them and started encouraging them to join the parade of bargain-hunting foreigners flooding into New York. When it comes to shopping, little prodding seems to be required.

“Friends will be coming to town and they’ll say, ‘We need one day to shop,'” said Jeff Breithaupt, an Ontario native who coordinates cultural activities for the Canadian Consulate in Manhattan and is an editor of a newsletter titled The Upper North Side. For Canadians, said Mr. Breithaupt, the advent of parity between the currencies has become both a point of pride and a spur to travel. His own parents had been “on the fence” about a trip to the city later this year, he said, but they told him last week that they would come, citing the exchange rate as a deciding factor.

Thankfully, America can still invoke its hegemony in certain ways:

For Canadian visitors, the cold shower on their newfound pride comes on the way out. At the border bridges operated by the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, the fare can be paid with $3 American or $3.50 Canadian — a far cry from parity.

Drivers are complaining to toll takers, “Gee, our dollars are about at par, why is the toll so different?” said Tom Garlock, the commission’s general manager.

Lately, he said, more of them have been holding on to their loonies and paying in United States currency. The commission, which raised the toll last spring from $2.50 American (the Canadian rate did not change), is considering another adjustment to account for the exchange-rate shift, Mr. Garlock said, but first it wants more evidence that parity is here to stay.