Ever since we fought side-by-side in both world wars, nearly all Americans have gotten along famously with Canadians, and vice versa.
asserted
Americans → fight → Canadians
Not that long ago, almost 100 million of us travelled each year back and forth across our 5,525-mile border, the longest on earth, for jobs, trade, vacations or more permanent stays.
asserted
million → travel → jobs
But that number has fallen dramatically during the second Trump administration, when our president began treating Canada as an adversary, almost an enemy.
asserted
president → fall → adversary
Given our shared history, it makes the way President Donald Trump is treating our neighbour especially galling.
asserted
Trump → give → neighbour
Most of us are angry, confused and embarrassed that he’s thumbing our ally’s eye in our name.
asserted
he → embarrass → name
We’re baffled by his stupidly counterproductive tariffs and outright bans of other products, his adolescent insinuations that Prime Minister Mark Carney is merely the governor of our 51st state, his executive order that Lake Ontario be called “Lake America,” and I could go on.
uncertain
I → baffle → state
My wife’s ancestors include Adelina Rouleau and Louis François Xavier Frenette, both of Québec, who were married in 1882.
asserted
who → include → 1882
She and I spent our honeymoon in British Columbia and Alaska in 1992, in part because she’s loco for loons.
asserted
she → spend → loons
On other trips, we’ve been to Waterton Lakes National Park, the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, and watched whales with our kids in the Bay of Fundy.
asserted
we → watch → Fundy
We’ve cheered Jim Cornelison as he rousingly belts both national anthems before Blackhawk games with one of your teams, and we’ve never heard boos during “O Canada.”
asserted
we → cheer → Canada
It was, after all, Canadian studs Jonathan Toews, Denis Savard, Bobby Hull, and so many others losing chiclets in pursuit of Lord Stanley’s Cup.
asserted
It → lose → Cup
A dynamic statue of the Golden Jet mid-slapshot has a place of honour outside Gate 3 1/2 of the United Center, facing one of “Stosh” Mikita stickhandling through traffic.
asserted
statue → have → traffic
Mikita was born in Czechoslovakia but grew up, as Hull did, on the north shore of Lake Ontario.
asserted
Hull → bear → Ontario
Despite recent revelations about her sad and strangely unmaternal response to her second husband’s sexual abuse of her daughter, Andrea Skinner, Alice Munro remains my favourite writer of short stories, though most of hers are more like novellas.
asserted
most → remain → novellas
Her female characters have Shakespearean depth and complexity, and many of her stories — “Vandals,” “The Children Stay,” several others — are even darker and more hair-raising in the glare of Andrea’s testimony.
asserted
Children → have → testimony
As a poker historian, I’ve written about the Acadians who brought the French game of poque from Nova Scotia down to New Orleans in the late eighteenth century.
asserted
who → write → century
In that bubbling ethnic melting pot, poque soon blended with English brag and other vying contests to form poker.
asserted
poque → bubble → poker
Variants of that French-Acadian game are now played, for pennies or eight-figure stakes, on every inhabited continent.
asserted
Variants → play → continent
It’s more than just art or games, though; our connection is also military.
asserted
connection → ’ → art
Tens of thousands of white and Black Canadians fought with the Union during our Civil War; only 2 or 3 per cent sided with the slave states.
asserted
cent → fight → states
In the First World War, my namesake grandfather served alongside Canadian and British sailors mining the North Sea from Scotland to Norway to hem in German U-boats.
asserted
grandfather → serve → boats
During the Second World War, my father and all three of my uncles served with over 1.1 million Canadians.
asserted
father → serve → Canadians
In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, President John Kennedy said of Canadians, “Geography has made us neighbours, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies.”
asserted
us → say → Canadians
During the Vietnam era, about 40,000 draft-age American men fled north to avoid serving in a war now widely viewed as a colossal mistake.
asserted
men → flee → mistake
Pierre Trudeau’s government welcomed them.
asserted
government → welcome → them
Canadians sheltered six American diplomats who evaded capture when militant students stormed our embassy in Tehran in 1979.
asserted
students → shelter → 1979
Your ambassador, Ken Taylor, and immigration officer John Sheardown risked their lives to secretly harbour these diplomats in their private residences for almost three months.
asserted
ambassador → risk → months
To safely extract them, your government took the unprecedented step of issuing them real, though fake, Canadian passports.
asserted
government → extract → passports
Ottawa worked with CIA exfiltration specialist Tony Mendez to concoct an elaborate ruse: the Americans posed as a Hollywood crew scouting locations for a science-fiction movie called “Argo.”
asserted
Americans → work → movie
With their new identities and documents, they fooled airport security and boarded a commercial flight out of Iran.
asserted
they → fool → Iran
This “Canadian Caper” was dramatized in Ben Affleck’s masterpiece, “Argo,” which won seven Oscars, including Best Picture.
asserted
which → dramatize → Picture
On 9/11, Canadians sheltered travellers on hundreds of westbound flights unable to land as we struggled to learn what other planes might have been hijacked.
uncertain
planes → shelter → flights
The people of Gander alone accommodated almost 7,000 stranded passengers.
asserted
people → accommodate → passengers
The next day, Ottawa was the first government to invoke NATO Article 5 and soon sent over 40,000 armed forces to Afghanistan to help us try to terminate Osama Bin Laden.
asserted
us → invoke → Laden
This is the country our president is hassling?
asserted
president → hassle → ?
The ultrareliable ally that also gave us Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Kirkland Signature Organic Pure Maple Syrup?
asserted
that → give → Mitchell
Canadians are naturally outraged by Trump’s inane animosity, but you really shouldn’t feel singled out.
asserted
you → outrage → animosity
While sucking up to Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, our wannabe autocrat saves his insults for leaders of democracies.
asserted
autocrat → suck → democracies
“Governor Carney” is “nasty” and “ungrateful,” Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen is “nasty” as well, Angela Merkel was “stupid,” and Georgia Meloni of Italy “begged” him for a shared photo op.
asserted
Meloni → beg → op
Besides his rancid misogyny, our president is obviously a millennium-class mimophant, Arthur Koestler’s term for someone with the thick hide and tusks of a bull elephant when disparaging others but the delicate epidermis of a mimosa flower when criticized himself.
asserted
president → disparage → flower
…and 48 more, not listed.
The Aporia
