It’s now a PITA to cross the border and back compared to when I wuz a kid. Besides Canada used to have lower petrol prices than the US during Carter’s time, now they don’t.
AFAIK, it was the US that changed the law, requiring a passport to cross the border.
As a silly teen and twenty something, I spent many a weekend (that I cannot remember) in Alexandria Bay, NY. It is located in the ‘Thousand Island’s at the East end of Lake Ontario.
In the ‘off-season’, it was a village of under a thousand, but blossomed to 8,000 during the summer. It opened up on Victoria Day weekend (the weekend before Memorial Day). It was ‘party central’. The village Police Chief was a good, but the County Sheriff and State Troopers were pretty cool with a bunch of Canadian teenage drunks. Long weekends in ‘A’ Bay were a lot of fun. (I think!)