I believe Shannon Proudfoot must have been living in my kitchen for the past month:
[gift link] ...There was another one-liner making the rounds about the Canadian reaction to Donald Trump’s imperial hostility. That one I knew to be true in my bone marrow: “Canadians have two modes – ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘You’re about to be sorry.’”
...I assume many Canadians experienced something like the weird cocktail of emotions that buzzed through me that weekend. There was dread, to be sure, because whatever came next would not be good. But there was also a strange relief that bordered on elation: Someone was about to punch me in the face, and I was grinning at them with savage glee in my eyes.
Brightest, on top of it all, was the same feeling that had made me tear up every time I’d heard O Canada over the past 18 months: a patriotic pride so quietly fierce that it sneaked up on me with an almost physical presence.
...“There’s a sense that if you’ve already been given a couple of black eyes and been bopped on the nose, then it’s like, ‘Fine, hit me again. Do your worst.’”
Within a few days, fresh polls showed that between 70 and 85 per cent of Canadians supported the government walking away from the trade talks.
On the Trans-Canada Highway just west of Sudbury, someone had taken red spray paint to an unused billboard, which in early August shouted “FUCK CARNEY” at westbound drivers. By the day after the Prime Minister’s press conference, someone had gone back to the billboard with more red paint. Now it said “THANK FUCK 4 CARNEY.”...
...Over a few days at the end of summer, Ipsos ran a qualitative research panel... the overall sentiment could be summed up with a weapons-grade hoser phrase: Just keep givin’ ‘er.
“Exactly what our leaders are doing. Standing up to a bully and making it hurt,” wrote a 62-year-old man from British Columbia. “I’m willing to suffer a bit to make things better long term.”
“They need to stick to their commitment of dollar for dollar retaliation,” a 65-year-old man from Ontario said. “Seems to be the only way to deal with the orange bully is to stand up to him, instead of making concessions in hopes of getting anything in return.”
A 57-year-old woman in Ontario responded, “As long as we don’t give up, I’m in.”
Canadians know full well that we are so much smaller – and that in their eyes, that’s a hilarious weakness. And we have no idea what’s going to happen next, much less how this ends.
We can be certain that we will all be sorry about all of this to some degree, because in the circular firing squad stupidity of a trade war, everyone loses.
But Canadians have decided – at least for now – that he’s going to be sorry too, because that is who we are, even if they don’t get it. In the words of our Tragically Hip, it’d be better for us if you don’t understand.
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