Tod Maffin’s Nanaimo Infusion Kicks Off Today as Americans Arrive

NANAIMO, British Columbia — More than 600 Americans are making the crossing to Vancouver Island this weekend. Half of them came in groups that included a healthcare worker.

Ferries leaving Tsawwassen for Vancouver Island were sold out Thursday and Friday, but they were not filled with simple tourists. They were people from the United States angry enough at their government’s treatment of Canada to get on a plane or a ferry and spend their money there in person. They were invited to visit the local shops, eat in the local restaurants, by Canada’s unofficial ambassador of good vibes, Tod Maffin.

And a meaningful number of them are quietly looking at something bigger: whether British Columbia might be the place they build the rest of their lives.

Maffin built the door. Now other Canadian communities want to build their own.

What Nanaimo Infusion Actually Became

Maffin, a Canadian broadcaster and digital media strategist, launched the first Nanaimo Infusion last year with a viral video inviting Americans who support Canada to come to Vancouver Island. The idea was simple, Maffin said. Have folks show up, spend money, and remind Canadian people that America is more than its current government.

The gathering spread online, drew national attention, and turned into something Maffin did not entirely predict: a pipeline.

Healthcare workers who attended last year’s Infusion are already working in hospitals up and down the Island. This year, roughly half the visiting groups that made the crossing included at least one healthcare worker actively exploring what a move to B.C. would look like.

Vancouver Island needs them. Twenty-four percent of residents there still have no family doctor. A new hospital in Duncan will need nurses to fill it. The math is simple, even if the immigration process is not.

A Region That Does Not Feel Isolated

For people in Bellingham and Blaine, the crossing is actually pretty easy. It is a 20-minute drive to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal, a two-hour ride across the water, and suddenly you are on an island of a million people.

Bigger, Maffin likes to note, than the country of Belgium.

“There are a million people on this island,” Maffin told PNW Daily. “It’s bigger than the country of Belgium.” He does not frame the ferry dependency as a hardship. “It’s only isolated in all the good ways,” he said. “You feel like you can breathe a little bit deeper.”

The island also stretches American dollars further than most visitors expect. “Your American dollar is worth like 40% more anyway,” Maffin said. His personal recommendation for first-time visitors looking for a meal: Jalapeños in Nanaimo. “If you like Mexican food, Jocelyn and I’s favorite place is Jalapeños,” he said. “We love Jalapeños. It is authentic, it is good… BIG portions, cheap prices.”

The Message Behind the Gathering

Maffin is clear that the Infusion is not just a recruitment drive. It is for people who want to do something that feels real, in a moment when signing a petition online does not feel like enough.

“Just come up here,” Maffin said. “Help us remember that your country won’t always be this crazy.”

He is also direct about what he wants visitors to understand about what Canada is living through. “Help us remember that even though your country is attacking us financially, geopolitically, threatening our sovereignty,” Maffin said, “come here and show people by your presence that America’s not like that.”

For those who do want to make a move, Maffin points to one starting place. “Canada’s Express Entry Program is what you should look at,” he said. “We need basically everything you need a two year diploma for.”

Come here and show people by your presence that America’s not like that.

— Tod Maffin, Nanaimo Infusion Organizer

Other Communities Are Watching

The Nanaimo Infusion started as one man’s viral video. It has since become a model. Communities across Canada are now looking at what Maffin built and asking whether they can do the same — draw Americans in, show them something real, and let some of them decide to stay.

For Maffin, the measure of success is not the weekend itself. It is what happens after. It is the nurse who came last year and is now on shift at a hospital in Campbell River. It is the family that almost did not come, and then did, and then moved. It is, as he put it, a kid who will grow up on the Island and never know it started with a ferry crossing and a country that needed them as much as they needed it.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney may speak for Canada. But Tod Maffin, as he once sang in his own invitation video, keeps the “u” in neighbour like a linguistic contrarian — and he is building something that outlasts any single weekend.

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