SNOBELEN: Dear America: No need to suddenly hate Canadians​on March 14, 2025 at 8:00 pm

I found myself at a rodeo south of the border last week. It goes without saying the event was in a rural area in a deeply red state.

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It was a good rodeo. The stock promoter and cowboys put on a great show and my old friend Bobby Kerr entertained the crowd with his mustang act.

Most of my friends in the cowboy world know I have more than a passing interest in politics generally and in Canada specifically so, deep in MAGA country, I was expecting a few pointed political conversations. What I heard kind of surprised me.

While my friends understood the need to cut the size and cost of government, and most probably voted for Trump, they all wondered why they were suddenly expected to hate Canada. What’s up with that?

It’s a heck of a question.

Before the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln opined that the succession of the states was a physical impossibility. He said it was akin to a man and woman divorcing and being condemned to live forever in the same house with a joint bank account.

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The same is true for the relationship between two historically good neighbours. We share more than just trade. Our cultures aren’t the same, but our values are — or used to be — similar.

Cultures are shaped by geography and weather. A lobster fisherman in Bass Harbor, Maine faces the same rough seas and cold winds as his neighbour in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. A farm family in Ripley, Ontario says the same prayers for rain and sun as a family in Findley, Ohio. And cowboys in Longview, Alberta and Shelby, Montana share the same long, cold winters and, I’m guessing, the same love of Ian Tyson’s music.

We aren’t so different. Which is a good thing to keep in mind as we are pulled to react to the taunts and threats emanating from Washington. Trump claims to be a master negotiator — and maybe he is. But I don’t think he knows or cares much about the fishermen, cowboys and farmers on either side of the border.

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Which doesn’t make an irrational president any less real. Canada and the rest of the world are experiencing a suddenly unreliable America.

This America cannot be trusted. No agreement is sacrosanct. America is no longer willing to be its word on anything.
Inevitably, this gives great relief to the world’s madmen. For the rest, it calls for unity to take up the leadership once provided by America. We will need to lean on each other for trade and security.

This is a good thing. It is time for us all to grow up and take responsibility for our financial well-being and collectively resist the imperial tendencies of Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping.

But, unlike our friends in Asia and Europe, Canada will enter this new era sharing a physical boundary with an, at best, unreliable neighbour. We share a house and a joint bank account with a suddenly angry, unstable partner.

Trump is not a fad. America has drifted into a mean place, and it won’t find its way out anytime soon.

The cult of mean, petty, vindictive, volatile politics isn’t our problem. The fishermen, farmers and cowboys of America will have to sort that out.

The job for our leaders is to ensure we don’t go down the same path and to ensure Americans continue to wonder why they are required to hate Canada.

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