Oh, Canada?

During my years in California I used to listen compulsively – nowadays you might call it hate-listening – to a talk show host who constantly infuriated me.

He wasn’t a bad guy. Just insufferable. Michael Krasny, “the Kraz,” as my friend Kendra and I derisively called him, was a standard-issue San Francisco liberal. By mainstream American standards, that made him a dangerous radical; to me, still in my leftier-than-left phase, he was maddeningly moderate. I actually agreed with him maybe 60 or 70% of the time, but where I thought he should be calling for Reagan to be dragged out of the White House and put on trial for war crimes, he’d both-sides the issue in metronomic, unctuous tones for 10 or 20 minutes before concluding that “the government’s actions do raise some troubling questions.”

Occasionally I’d try calling in to set him straight, but the one time I was able to get through, I barely managed to reel off part of an apoplectic sentence about “fascism” before he hung up on me.

Like him or not, the Kraz was no dummy. You’d be hard pressed to get through one of his shows without being reminded that he had at least one Ph.D. and/or that he had a side gig as a professor. That only exasperated me more. Given my own tendency to pontificate – minus the PhD but with even more firmly held opinions – it was probably a case of, as the saying goes, “Those who think they know it all annoy the hell out of those of us who know we do.”

Eventually, my one-way feud with the Kraz faded away, partly because I became less of an absolutist as I grew older, partly because I moved away from California and no longer had occasion to think about him.

Until, that is, the day I was informed I was going to be a guest on his show. By now it was well into the 21^st century and it had been a decade or more since I’d fallen into a serious Kraz-fit. As I prepared to be interviewed, I promised myself that I’d leave all that behind, that I’d be reasonable, friendly, even personable.

It started out well enough. Then he asked about my background. I had what I thought (still do) a good line about growing up near the Canadian border. Riffing on Sarah Palin’s line about being able to see Russia from Alaska, I said “I could see Canada from my roof.”

Whether or not it was literally true (there might have been a tree or building obstructing the view), it conveyed, I thought, how Canada (and my Canadian-born mother) had influenced me.

But no, the Kraz wasn’t having it. He corrected me, saying, “No, you’re thinking of Russia, not Canada.” I was seething, but trying to explain a joke or a metaphor to someone who’s not getting it is a thankless task, so we went on with the show, and it was fine once I realized I’d have to stick to simple declarative sentences.

It had been more than 40 years since I’d left Detroit (North Windsor, as some on the Ontario side of the border might say). Despite visiting Canada many times, including eight of its ten provinces, and having considered moving there once, my dust-up with the Kraz got me thinking, in a way I hadn’t before, about my own Canadian-ness. Another ten years would pass before I packed my bags and headed north to Montreal, where I happily reside today.

My mother married an American, and spent most of her life in the US, but I think in her heart she never stopped being Canadian. Her kitchen radio was typically tuned to the Windsor CBC station, and braving my dad’s ridicule, she’d faithfully listen to the Queen’s Christmas Broadcast. She had a multitude of cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces, and nephews in Ontario, so we regularly crossed the Ambassador Bridge to visit them. One early memory involved an all-day trip via two-lane highway to Toronto, which in1950 felt like a sleepy little village compared with Detroit.

It being Sunday, everything was closed; with my impeccable childlike logic, I interpreted this as meaning the city itself was closed. “We should have come yesterday,” I informed my parents.

The notion of the US and Canada being separate countries hadn’t yet penetrated my little skull. That realization came about when we were visiting my mother’s cousin Lottie in Windsor, and I spotted something called a “confectionery” on the ground floor of her apartment building. I was learning to read, and demanded my mother tell me what this strange word meant. When she said it was a candy store, I grew indignant. “Confectionery” was so obviously a superior word, and when I discovered that in addition to sweets, they also sold fireworks, which were illegal in Michigan, I was all in for Canada.

“We should move here,” I told my parents. “It’s way better than where we live.”

I hadn’t yet learned that adults seldom took advice from four-year-olds, even when it clearly made sense. “There aren’t many good jobs here,” my dad argued, even though he regularly complained about his own low-paid job at the post office. But he was probably right; our Canadian relatives mostly lived in smaller houses and enjoyed fewer luxuries than we did. We’d often bring them items – like, believe it or not, yellow margarine – that weren’t available on their side of the border.

I still preferred the pace and quality of life in Ontario. Not to mention the “u” added to words like “flavour” and “colour,” the flag, which in those pre-Maple Leaf days still featured the Union Jack in one corner, and “God Save The Queen” as the national anthem.

I don’t know exactly when Canada caught up with and passed the USA in many regards, but it was visibly obvious when, after a long absence, my mom and I visited in 2005. Toronto and Detroit had reversed roles, with Detroit having sunk into a downward spiral of Rust Belt despair, while Toronto surged past Montreal to become Canada’s First City. Now it was our Ontario relatives who had the nicer houses, whose towns were more pleasant, walkable, and vastly safer.

After that, the contrast really hit home every time I crossed back into the USA. Not just at Detroit, but everywhere along the border, things on the Canadian side looked shiny, new, and looked after, while the US featured decrepit, post-industrial wastelands. Since I’ve been living in Canada, I’ve discovered that we have our own decrepit regions and neighbourhoods, but few if any have the post-apocalyptic and sometimes downright dangerous feel of what was once the American heartland.

Dad and Mom aren’t around to argue the merits of Canada vs. the USA anymore (I was pretty sure my mom preferred Canada, but she didn’t like to contradict my dad), so I mostly conduct that discussion with myself. When I started writing this piece last year, I was still semi-questioning my decision to move here. “Did I make the right decision? Was I a little too hasty? Is the US really that bad?”

As you may have noticed, everything has changed since then. When I left for Montreal, I knew it was possible Trump might return to power, but it didn’t seem likely. “If he does,” I warned my friend Jesse, “I can see him launching his own American Anschluss against Canada.”

It seemed far-fetched, but I had a bad feeling. And if there’s anything worse than being proved wrong, it’s being proved right when the thing you were right about is something you profoundly don’t want.

So here we are, with Trump sounding off almost daily about annexing Canada as well as our neighbour, Greenland, both of which are rich in the resources Trump needs for his war machine. At first, Canadians – tolerant to a fault – laughed off Trump’s fulminations. He speaks so much nonsense, they reasoned; surely this too would pass.

Besides, wasn’t American our longstanding friend and ally? Didn’t we share the longest undefended border in the world? But after Trump began threatening to wreck our economy if we didn’t join the US – and instituted tariffs aimed at doing just that – Canadians began saying, “Wait, he’s really serious?”

Still, there doesn’t seem to be a great rush to take the steps necessary to maintain Canada’s independence. The government is barely functional, having shut down while the Liberal Party chooses a replacement for the unpopular Justin Trudeau (having him in charge of the country, I once observed, was like your parents going out and leaving you with a teenage cousin or neighbour who spends the whole night on his phone). The Conservative alternative, Pierre Poilievre, is as right-wing a candidate as Canada has ever seen. His enemies denigrate him as Trump-like, but unlike the American leader, he’s capable of speaking in complete sentences and paragraphs, so who knows?

Some American friends have mocked me for leaving America only to have America come after me, but I’m not getting the joke. What would I do if worse comes to worst, if American troops occupied my city and went door to door to check everyone’s identity? Would I/should I hide my American passport and claim to be fully Canadian? Would they see through my story if I did, or treat me like a traitor if I didn’t?

I’m too old for these shenanigans, though I’d say that no matter what age I was. I chose Canada because it’s more civilized, more educated, more cultured. Sure, we’ve got our share of idiots – a couple of them live on my block – and plenty of social problems that we’re not much closer to solving than the Americans are. But still, high taxes, freezing winters, ridiculous French-English conflicts and all, it’s a better place to live. For me, anyway.

When I left the USA, I didn’t see myself turning my back completely on the country where I’d spent much of my life. I figured that America and I would be like exes who remained good friends, sent each other birthday and Christmas cards, visited from time to time. The idea that my onetime home could morph into a mortal enemy seemed vaguely preposterous.

It’s not anymore. Canadians who still think we can accommodate Trump’s demands so that he’ll stop picking on us are, I fear, naïve. His claims of drugs and immigrants pouring across the border are nonsense (if anything, more drugs, immigrants, and – especially – guns flow into Canada from the US). The assertion that the US is “subsidizing” Canada is equally ridiculous; Canada has, against its own interests, been supplying the US with artificially cheap energy while failing to develop other more lucrative and reliable markets.

For most of its history Canada trusted and relied on the US. Suddenly that doesn’t seem like such a great idea. Now we need new allies and new markets, and we need them in a hurry. One suggestion is that, along with Greenland, we join the European Union. Another is that we mend our relationship with China and increase our trade with them. Although a lot of Canadians have bought into the “China is the evil empire” line pushed by the Americans, China has never, not even slightly, threatened to invade us, and unlike the Americans, they actually honour their trade agreements.

Well, that’s enough out of me. For now, anyway. I haven’t been here long enough to run for prime minister, and people aren’t generally fond of someone who’s relatively new in town telling them how to run things. So I’ll stick to studying my French (and my Chinese; Montreal isn’t just bilingual, it’s multilingual), and hope for the best. Nearly every time I look out my window, I find myself thinking, “I’m really glad I live here.” Canada is my home now, and I love it. America, please (I say politely because, well, it’s required as part of the Canadian entrance exam) leave us alone!