The Electric City. Nickle City. Queen City. City of No Illusions.

Buffalo, New York, has accrued many nicknames over the years but, in an age of growing tensions between two traditional allies, one among them has taken on extra resonance: the City of Good Neighbors.

Buffalo, which sits at the head of the Niagara River, has cultivated a reputation for its small-town feel and welcoming atmosphere, especially to visitors crossing the border from Canada.

This week, ahead of a key ice hockey match between two US teams, singer Cami Clune began what has been a tradition for more than half a century: a rendition of the Canadian national anthem. The Buffalo Sabres are an outlier in the National Hockey league as the only team to celebrate their northern neighbours – even when a matchup is between two US-based teams.

But as Clune began with the opening refrain, her microphone malfunctioned and her voice cut out.

A crowd of nearly 20,000 filled the silence.

The vast majority were American – and knew all the words. As the anthem progressed, the crowd grew louder with cheers.

“Well that was interesting!!” Clune wrote on social media afterward. “Thank you all for singing along with me. We have the best fans ever!”

The warm gesture comes amid an increasingly bitter rupture between the two nations that has persisted for more than a year. Last year, a largely Canadian crowd booed the US national anthem during an international tournament hosted in Montréal. Torontonians also jeered the Star-Spangled Banner ahead of a game between the Toronto Raptors basketball team and the Los Angeles Clippers.

The root of the tensions lies in Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada and put punishing tariffs on key Canadian industries. The provinces have retaliated by pulling American wine and spirits from their shelves. Canadians have maintained a boycott of travel south that has key tourist destinations panicking and trying to mend the geopolitical rift.

But like most border communities, the geographic proximity between the two countries has forged a deeper and heavily overlapping relationship. Canada is visible from the roof of Buffalo’s KeyBank Center and is only a 10-minute drive from the border in busy traffic.

“I don’t think people understand just how fluid the border is between Buffalo and southern Ontario. People routinely cross for little things like shopping, beach days, college and in some cases work,” one user wrote on Reddit, adding many Americans took advantage of a lower drinking age to the north. “It’s all suffering now bc of geopolitics, but western New York and southern Ontario are bros.”

Others framed the anthem as a “matter of respect” for Canadian fans, adding the “feeling is mutual regardless of what either of our governments are doing or saying at the time”.