Neighbors

    

     One of the identifiers, when Canadians are asked "What makes you Canadian?" is that they are not Americans, as if being an American were a bad thing. 

     My admiration for Americans goes back to the 70's and 80's when I developed a business that was American based. I began rubbing shoulders with and dealing with Americans for the first time in my life and found it to be an eye opening experience, one that blew some of my misconceptions out of the water. Some of the things I admired about them was their tenacity, honesty, entrepreneurial spirit, patriotism, bold faith, forthrightness, and lack of inhibitions. These were qualities that I lacked but coveted. 

     I also have American cousins and I like them a lot. There is definitely a difference between us but it is mostly in style, not substance. 

     This has been on my mind lately as President Trump is making noises about Canada becoming the 51st state. I seriously doubt that this will happen, but exploring the possibilities of this prospect is an interesting exercise. Most dismiss the idea out of hand, but giving it some serious thought opens up a can of worms, and I am meeting some people who are open to some interesting possibilities. Exploring these ideas will take a whole other post. 

     I have been wanting to write about this for a few days now but events are moving so fast that even hours later, what I might write would become irrelevant. I have said from the beginning that all we have to do appease Trump and stop the "annex Canada" talk is to clean up our borders and stop the fentanyl and illegal border hoppers from going back and forth. How much less expensive to do this that to get into a protracted trade war with the biggest economy on earth. Besides, it is the right thing to do, and should have been done years ago.

     And now, as of the time of this writing, it seems that there has been an agreement to do just that. We will see.