Editorial: Canada, U.S. as far apart as ever with critical election looming

SEATTLE (NEWS 1130) – About 100 years ago, a few thousand people trekked to a tiny point at the northwestern extreme of the contiguous United States to open a monument to the enduring peace and deeply interconnected nature of the two countries whose border it shares.

“Children of a common mother,” reads one side in tall, capital letters as if shouting through the past at the top of the Peace Arch in Blaine, Wash.

“May these gates never be closed,” reads another inscription above a wrought-iron gate welded to the Peace Arch.

As word came out so many month-years ago that our century of uninterrupted openness would be coming to an end, I found myself at Peace Arch Park, staring at this shrine to peace and unity from the American side, thinking of how my entire life has been predicated on the openness of this border.

I found myself thinking about how many of us are between two worlds, and how much farther away our worlds must feel now.

Two Countries, One Home 

It’s a situation that is likely more familiar north of the 49th parallel: I was born in Richmond, B.C., to a Canadian father and an American mother, leaving me with dual citizenship. His work moved us south into the craggy mountains of Utah before long, but even there, we remained constantly connected to our Canadian family.

The Peace Arch Border crossing. (Peter Wagner, NEWS 1130 Photo)

Moving back to Blaine (yes, home of the Borderites) brought this intermingling of worlds together at once – as my English teacher opined on Odysseus, I could watch trucks stacked up to enter Canada, or the unyielding lines at gas stations and minimarts.

For many of my classmates, daily life included two border crossings from Point Roberts – many of them, the children of Canadians, living their life among Americans.

It made sense, then, that I would end up pursuing work in Canada at NEWS 1130, while still living in the United States. So common is this arrangement in our neck of the woods that few people really ask many meaningful follow ups about my (previously) international commute.

Five days a week, I would leave the U.S. and spend my days among people who felt not unlike all the wonderful Americans I’ve known in my life. Yes, the font on the street signs was different, and I had to re-acclimate to a base-10 system, but materially, Canada has always felt to me like your favourite sibling lives door. And it has always been an extension of my home in the northwest.

That, however, was then.

A strained friendship 

For the last four years, American leadership seems to have made a point of so continually misunderstanding the nature of our relationship, that it left many Canadians (rightly) wondering what had happened.

“Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?” U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“I guess Justin T doesn’t much like my making him pay up on Trade or NATO!” the president Tweeted, after he learned the CBC had cut his cameo in a film years before he ran for president.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets U.S. President Donald Trump at Winfield House in London on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

The reason so many heard so much ringing in their ear when struck with the bluster and bravado of the American president is based, I think, on the lived experience of those of us who spend our lives in perpetual motion between two countries.

We have always been as one people, separated by an administrative division, and bound together inexorably by our geography and our history. Both our nations share a past that includes great triumph and great evil – forged by colonialism and pushed west by capitalism.

Whatcom County, which encompasses the northwest corner of Washington state, has built its retail economy to cater to Canadians – our Costco has an enviably large dairy section, and just about every shop within 50 miles of the border had a currency conversion posted.

Amble down Birch Bay Drive in the summer, and most of what you see might be owned – or previously occupied – by a Canadian family. Or pick any random address in Phoenix or Palm Springs in November. If there wasn’t a Canadian staying there, one of their neighbours might well hail from the North.

But all of this – the expanding political divisions in the U.S., the view that the American democratic experiment is failing – has been made infinitely worse by the coronavirus pandemic. Canadians are again acquainting themselves with the particularly American form of federalism that creates a patchwork response to the coronavirus now on full display.

The political ideology of whoever might be your state executive will be a determining factor in how that state will manage the pandemic, not the intellect and determination of your public health officers. I find myself lucky to be a citizen of Washington, but find myself deeply troubled about how others in my country who did not win the geography lottery are faring right now.

This patchwork also creates massive inequities in the law, and how we view the application of justice. In so many prominent examples, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s killings by police, the world is confronted with how deeply broken the American justice system is.

Demonstrators protest Saturday, June 6, 2020, near the White House in Washington, over the death of George Floyd, a black man who was in police custody in Minneapolis. Floyd died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The American dream: an ongoing argument 

So often now, I am called upon continuously by Canadian friends and family to explain “just what the hell is going on down there.” And perhaps it is much of the same hell that’s been going on for generations, and we are now simply presented with the most inarticulate rendering of those ideals to date.

But I am without much explanation, beyond the obvious historical interpretation: America has always been in constant friction since its colonial founding. Federalists versus anti-Federalists, Abolitionists versus slave owners, Democrats versus Republicans. In many cases, our friction has erupted into violence. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were cut down in peach orchards and along great American rivers over the question of slavery.

This seems inadequate to truly answer to the scale of what’s happening, of how many different pillars of democracy seem to be falling at once. It’s why I’m sure so many of my northern brethren speak with some concern about America, not in the abstract way one might describe a place they can only imagine, but in the pragmatic terms of someone familiar with the place and its people.

It speaks to a larger belief, I think, that for all the bemoaning of the Bully Big Brother to the south, Canadians see a lot of themselves in Americans. And to see a country that shares so many of the same ideals of democracy and justice and freedom fall prey to vindictive nationalism might well be a warning of how fragile Canadian democracy is.

On Tuesday, Americans will decide what kind of government they’d like for themselves. You, too, will decide whether that government represents a people you can call friends.

I know I’ll be reflecting on one question – should these gates stay closed?

Editor’s note: Peter Wagner is a Managing Editor with NEWS 1130. He is a citizen of Canada and the United States, and currently lives in the U.S.

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