Just a thought… Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. [John F. Kennedy speaking in Ottawa, May 1961]
I want to come home.
I envision driving into Canada at the BC/Washington State border, then pulling over to kiss the cold ground. That’s how I’m feeling down here near Palm Springs, California, the place from which Lisa Brandt and I did our Facebook Live last Thursday for our Gracefully and Frankly podcast. (Thank you if you were among the 6000+ who joined us on our Facebook page, both live and afterward. It’s also up on YouTube if you’re not on Facebook; here’s a link, if you’re interested.)
If you skipped the small print, I’ll repeat one salient detail: Rob and I rented the house, until the end of this month, and pre-paid way back before the US election, when we were ridiculously sure that a felon would not win. How naïve could we be?
On Saturday night, Lisa and I watched a live feed of Prime Minister Trudeau pointedly addressing both Canadians and Americans about tariffs that will go into place in response to the moronic and heavy-handed penalties being forced on us this week. As we did, I began to feel a heaviness churning inside. That weight became worry, and then…a sick familiarity.
It was almost exactly five years ago to the day, also down here, that we watched a televised address from #45 to the US about Covid. When it was over, I turned to Rob and said, “Change our flights; we’ve got to get out – now.” It took a few weeks due to restrictions over flying with a dog, but we got home on St. Patrick’s Day and I could have cried with relief.
This time, making an early escape is not in the cards. For one thing, I have one last guest who’s booked to visit me next week and who has now offered to cancel his trip if I want to return home early. You see, yesterday I had the urge to load up the car and the dogs and head north, all on my own, right away. (The plan has always been for Rob to fly here on the 20th and drive us all home beginning March 1.)
Yesterday Rob reminded me that my would-be solo trip includes northern states and parts of BC that may require you to carry tire chains. Oh, right! It’s cold and snowy as we head home. That hadn’t occurred to me.
Add that variable to an already-stressful drive that would include locating EV chargers along the way, letting the dogs out regularly, and taking care of them nightly in hotel rooms, and it all adds up to me just staying put until Rob can get here. I really don’t think I’m up to doing the job safely.
As it stands, I’ll try to breathe and savour the last few weeks here in this pocket of blue sanity, amidst a country that appears to be in every bit of the trouble we knew it would be that fateful, sickening election night when over 80 million Americans were either too intimidated or lazy to go to the polls, something Ontarians are being called to do now; Canadians, probably soon.
As the “true north strong and free,” most of us have always been immensely proud of our imperfect but formidable country. The good has consistently outweighed the negative; when we’ve had spats, we’ve kept it in the family, within our borders. But now that the tangerine toddler has set his sights on his friendly allies, there’s a unity and strength the fervour of which we have not witnessed as Canadians – in my lifetime, at least – and, no, hockey tournaments don’t count here.
Another positive: it feels as if we can all fly our maple leaf again without the nagging fear that someone might think we’re in the maple MAGAt crowd.
Canadians are taking back our flag, metaphorically turning the F— TRUDEAU into F— TRUMP. And isn’t it about damned time? It’s a shame it has taken the brutal and insane bullying from below to bring it all to this. But here we are and we’re bracing, hard. ELBOWS UP! as we say in the land of hockey parlance.
Lisa and I will be discussing this more in Thursday’s Ep. 112 of Gracefully and Frankly. We hope you’ll join us as we discuss Canadian boycotts, how far we can realistically go, and so on.