At almost 9,000 km long, the Canadian-American border has become the fault line for Trump anxiety.
While Donald Trump has spoken about building a wall between the US and Mexico to keep immigrants out, it is Americans who may be trying to flee.
During this election's vicious campaign cycle, the idea of Americans heading to Canada became a political statement.
Celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Bryan Cranston, and Lena Dunham have threatened to move north of the border to escape a Trump presidency. When that possibility edged closer to a reality late Tuesday night, the Canadian government's Citizenship and Immigration website crashed due to what officials called "a significant increase in the volume of traffic." Statistics provided by the government indicated over 200,000 people were trying to access the site at 11 pm when it crashed.
American IP addresses accounted for some 50% of the traffic, instead of the usual 9% to 10%. Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati says the community would be happy to welcome fleeing Americans on a more permanent basis.
"We'd roll out the red carpet. But don't believe there's going to be a mass exodus," he said. "The American spirit is strong and those were emotional statements.
" The mayor thinks that once everything has settled down in the US, things will not have changed as much as people think they will. "The way I see it, things are never as bad as they seem and they are never as good as they seem," he said."
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