A Tale of Two Countries
As my native land launches a trade war on my homeland, I've never been more proud to be Canadian.
I used to say there’s nothing wrong with a Boulevardier, our house cocktail for some years now, that another wouldn’t fix. But you’re wise to go easy: These babies pack a punch. One shot of Campari, bright and bitter. One of red vermouth, laced with herbs. Then the kicker: one shot of vanilla-scented bourbon. The real deal from Kentucky.
Endings call for a sense of ceremony. As dusk fell on a Sunday evening, I garnished our drinks with cocktail cherries soaked in bourbon syrup. They had come all the way from Kentucky to grace my crystal tumblers in Toronto. I placed two drinks on handmade wooden coasters shaped like a map of the city. My husband said, “You still have one more day to buy bourbon, if you can bring yourself to do it.”
Tuesday, February 4 was to mark day one of a trade war between my two beloved countries: the U.S., where I grew up, and Canada, my home for more than 55 years. On Tuesday Donald Trump would hit Canada and Mexico with punishing tariffs. Quipped a headline in Canada’s National Post: “Florida Man Imposes Tariffs on Best Customers.” Canadians were in no laughing mood. Girding for battle, we vowed to buy Canadian. We cancelled bookings for U.S. vacations, pored over lists of brands to shun in favor of more patriotic choices. We cheered when provincial and territorial leaders vowed to yank American wines and spirits from their shelves.
I’ve bought my last bottle of bourbon. Ordered my last pair of super-soft PJs from the U.S. company I’ve patronized for years. Booked my last winter getaway in the St. Pete neighborhood whose birdsong choir and spreading banyan trees I’m going to miss.
February 4 came and went with bourbon still on offer, for now. Amid the clatter of shifting goal posts and the onslaught of tariffs announced from the Oval Office, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised a “calibrated but extremely strong response.” Meanwhile something precious has ended—the friendship between my two countries. Crossing the border to visit a grandchild feels to some Canadian grandparents like a betrayal. An American writes on Substack, with palpable shame, that “Canadians hate us.”
I thought of Americans, my friends and family members, who did all they could to keep Trump from the White House—making donations, knocking on doors, driving voters to the polls. Most of us don’t hate you, I said, and yet I know of one who does. A Facebook acquaintance has announced, with great conviction, the unfriending of all Americans on his roster.
I’ll say one thing for Trump: He’s united Canadians like no one and nothing in memory. National pride has jumped 10 points since December, according to a survey this month. What riles us is not just the tariffs, sure to cause great pain on both sides of the border (“dumbest trade war in history,” says an editorial in The Wall Street Journal). It’s the malign intent that underlies the economic attack. The way Trump tells it, Canadians should quit bellyaching about tariffs and accept our destiny as the 51st state. He has called the Canadian border “that artificial line” that “somebody drew…many years ago with a ruler, just a line.”
Vladimir Putin might say as much about Ukraine.
When I arrived at the University of Toronto in 1968, I didn’t feel entirely welcome. Six months had passed since American soldiers murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai.
My fellow students had a sour joke about my origins: “Draft dodger, eh?” They seemed to think the U.S. was a country to escape—the land of burning ghettos and a morally blind president who was sending American youth to die. They exulted in the flowering of CanLit, a new generation of writers due to claim their well-deserved place in the canon. In their adulation of Margaret Atwood, I detected a slur on Anne Sexton. I marveled to my mother, a loyal Canadian after more than 20 years in New Hampshire, “I’m hearing a lot of ‘Canada for Canadians.’”
Retorted my mother in a cold fury, “Why not? Who should Canada be for—Americans?”
My mother and I had squared off over everything from the appropriate volume for playing Dylan to the supposed hazards of pot. This time I knew she was right. As a 19-year-old American, told all my life that my country was the greatest in the world, I’d always thought of Canada as my back yard. What was so distinctive about Canadians? My new friends at U of T looked no different from my friends at home—same shaggy hair, same record collections (plus Gordon Lightfoot next to Dylan). The one thing setting Canadians apart seemed to be a faint but nettlesome resentment of American clout.
I married a Canadian, raised a Canadian son and put down roots in a country that was good to me. I rose to the helm of an iconic magazine whose readers said in every survey that they prized its Canadian-ness above all. Fiercely loyal to Canada’s “-our” spellings, they insisted that I reinstate the “u” my predecessor had struck from “flavor” and “honor.” I came to see that the flavor of Canadian life has much to do with being overshadowed by a brash and overbearing neighbor on TV, at the movies, in the news, everywhere. Publishing ground rule number one: What’s important to your readers had better be important to you.
My readers didn’t know I wasn’t one of their own, but the time had come to step up. Around the time I restored Canadian spelling, I became a Canadian citizen.
It’s complicated having two countries. I vote in two elections, carry two passports and file two tax returns as required by U.S. law. Renouncing U.S. citizenship would save me time and aggravation. When the Toronto Raptors played the New York Knicks in my hometown, spectators booed. I understand the outrage but can’t jeer “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
My two national anthems say a lot about my two countries. “The Star-Spangled Banner” has all the drama; it soars with triumphal ecstasy. “O Canada” pales by comparison. While Americans sing of the rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air, Canadians politely and repeatedly promise to “stand on guard for thee.” My husband offers a word of advice: If you forget the words, just keep singing “We stand on guard.”
As national anthems go, “O Canada” falls a tad short on fervor. It appears to confirm a persistent American myth about Canadians—that we’re staid, nice and on the boring side. Yet its lyrics contain a uniquely Canadian story of what it means to live national values. Canadian women (and some enlightened men) used to take strong exception to the line “True patriot love in all thy sons command.” Standing to sing, I always changed it to “True patriot love in all of us command.” Other women within earshot, many with young daughters beside them, sang the same unofficial words, a female choir united in hopeful indignation. It took more than 30 years to make our point, but in 2018 “O Canada” became gender-neutral.
People who stand with their country, as Canadians do in this pivotal moment, can summon what it takes to pull together.
My two countries put me in mind of a parent with two strikingly different children. Mom trusts the reflective, responsible child to get things mostly right in time. She lies awake in fear for the other—the brilliant, volatile, daring one. The U.S. reaches higher, fails bigger, survived a civil war that continues, in attenuated form, to this day. The trade war will hit us hard, but perhaps we’re overdue for lean times. Our parents and grandparents made do in the Great Depression and planted victory gardens in World War II. My mother recalled a wartime recipe consisting of bread crumb patties fried in bacon fat. People who stand with their country, as Canadians do in this pivotal moment, can summon what it takes to pull together. Ninety percent of us intend to remain a country.
Americans, meanwhile, are being pulled apart. In “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the American flag survives a night of battle. Will the American Constitution survive the next four years? I don’t fear that Trump will annex Canada. I fear the end of America’s defining greatness. The Canadian author and essayist Stephen Marche, a self-described “professional worrier about America,” put it this way in an interview last week: “Annexing a country is the work of the state, and they’re in the middle of breaking down their state.”
At six I stood in Mrs. Eggert’s first-grade classroom, hand over my heart as I saluted the flag. “Liberty and justice for all:” a noble ideal, I knew even then. Americans treasure the stars and stripes. Every schoolchild learns that desecrating the flag is a crime.
Among the mysteries of Canada, back when I came here to study, was a diffidence about the nation’s flag. People didn’t plant the maple leaf in their yards or wave it every chance they got. Now stores can hardly meet demand. Yesterday was Flag Day, and my Pilates teacher wore miniature flags in her hair. My local dollar store had no flags left for the maple leaf bouquet I had pictured on our coffee table, so I had to improvise. Maple leaf luggage tags make dandy ornaments for what we call our winter tree. Amid the twinkling lights, that flash of red gives me hope.

South of the border, hope is on the wane among people dear to me. My friend Ruth Pennebaker, lifelong Texan and eloquent writer, asks on Facebook, “How do you stay sane when your country is reeling out of control, commandeered by malignant clowns, and careening toward autocracy?” When Ruth turned 70 a few years ago, I flew to Austin for the party of her life. I’d do so again without fear of letting Canada down. It’s one thing to give up a Florida vacation, quite another to turn my back on a friend. Time is running out for my loved ones and me. We need one another more than ever.
Since I'm going to be highly selective about every border crossing, here’s my proposal for American friends new and old. Come visit us in Canada. My living room looks out on an attractive new hotel where your American dollars will go far. I’ll show you local treasures you won’t find on your own, then host you for a cocktail (or a Pellegrino if you prefer). Just don’t expect a Boulevardier. I’ve switched to its cousin, the Negroni, made with gin. We’ll drink to the true north strong and free.
The floor is open, Amazement Seekers. I’d love to hear from you and welcome all views. How far would you go for your country? What does it take to light your patriotic spark? The political is personal, now more than any time in memory. You won’t all agree with me or one another. This group has always been frank and kind-hearted. I’m counting on you to be respectful.
If this essay struck a chord with you, I hope you’ll heart it, share it or restack it. You’ll be nurturing an essential conversation between patriotic people of good will.
Writing for readers who value my words is among the great amazements of my life. As Leonard Cohen puts it in a song I can’t hear enough these days, you get me singing even when the world is grim. If now is the moment to upgrade your subscription, I’d be touched to the core. No pressure, though. You’ve got a place in my choir for you. Let’s keep singing, my friends.
It certainly is a mess. I'm horrified daily at the lengths the idiot "president" is going to to alienate the United States from the rest of the world and the work he is doing to alienate us one from the other. This is NOT the country I grew up in, in many ways, and in others, it's just the culmination of years of dysfunction in our government. I wanted to move to Canada after he was elected the first time, making jokes about my refugee status. It doesn't feel like a joke anymore. It's really hard to relocate if you're not wealthy or have a skill that Canada is in need of. I would happily join Canada, as a resident of New York, if we could move that invisible line south a bit. I don't understand someone unfriending all of his America FB connections. As an American, being resented because of the heinous decisions fascist at the helm is not a solution or kind. I applaud the response of Canada, the boycotting, the coming together. It's a beautiful thing to witness.
I hope you know how over half of us here in America felt when we read the news of Trump's words towards Canada...horrified! So many of us are resisting. Keep doing what you are doing. We're behind you all the way.