Carol Bergman

The appetite grows in the eating.  

 

-Stephen Kotkin to David Remnick, The New Yorker Radio Hour 3/7/25

  

I have two Canadian cousins, one in Toronto, the other on Gabriola Island off the coast of Vancouver. Sherry, my Toronto cousin wrote to ask why I haven't written about Canada yet on my blog. Of course, I can't write about everything, but I was smitten; I hadn't been paying enough attention. Sherry had crossed the border to join us for "American" Thanksgiving in 2024 after the October "Canadian" Thanksgiving, and I wondered if she'd be traveling to New York in 2025. "The only time I'm going to America is to get on and off a cruise ship," she said definitively during a recent WhatsApp conversation. 

 

My Gabriola Island cousin, George, said something similar. He's not going to "step foot." Unlike Sherry, he has a US passport and a Canadian passport. Happily dual. But he is not going to step foot.

 

I am bereft that my cousins have, for the moment, given up on America, that they are postponing their visits.  I understand, but I am bereft. Even worse, #47 signed an Executive Order on January 20 targeting Canadians. They now have to register as "aliens" if they stay in the US for more than three months. This particular "order" slipped under my radar. 

 

I come from an Alpine skiing family and when I was a kid I had the good fortune to go skiing every winter holiday. If there wasn't enough snow in the US, we headed for the Canadian Laurentians, a 617 mile 17 plus hour car trip from New York City. My stepfather was an endurance driver but at about 2 or 3 a.m. we pulled over to rest in a motel. The next morning we "crossed over" into Canada.  I have no recollection of a border, a border patrol, or a presentation of passports. Either I was sleeping or the border was seamless, one country segueing into another. But, of course, this is an illusion. Canada has it's own culture, history, languages, politics, mores and border control.  Indeed, there is much to learn and admire about our neighbors and allies to the north-- the settler population, the immigrants and migrants, Quebec, and the First Peoples of Canada.

 

Talking to Sherry I realized I don't know enough about Canadian history. I asked her to recommend a good book, and I asked my cousin George the same. They are researching, and if I hear from them before I post this blog, I'll include their recommendations here.

 

Sherry mentioned that the patriotic fervor among Canadians across the political spectrum, inspired by the threat of annexation, has taken everyone by surprise. It has not surprised me. I remember a summer I spent in Canada at Manitou-Wabing Camp of Fine Arts as a swim instructor. I was asked to model my sculptural face in the art studio when I wasn't at the waterfront, and because I had to sit still was able to listen intently to conversations among the teen artists. They knew I was an American and were careful not to insult me with their banter, but it was evident that what I had thought was an inferiority complex was thoughtfulness, manners, and Canadian chauvinism tempered by  an altruistic, internationalist spirit.  After all, Canada is still a member of the British Commonwealth. They never seceded from that union or fomented a revolution. In sum, we may speak the same language and enjoy a shared border, but we are not the same people. Canadians are distinct. Their nation is sovereign.

 

 

Stephen Kotkin (quoted above) is realistic about aging autocrats. They always become infected with a desire for territorial expansion, he says. Nice to know but not comforting for Canada, Panama, or Greenland. Indeed, such belligerent expunging of treaties threatens all of us.

 

And that's just the tip of the melting icebergs this week.

 

A Canadian historian recommends these basic texts:  Canadian History for Dummies by Will Ferguson [new edition 2005!], still viable in 2025 and Lower's Colony to Nation.

 

When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.

   

― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom,  1941

    

 

In Shanghai during the extended Covid lockdown—as reported by Evan Osnos for The New Yorker—people  were singing on their balconies and also demanding supplies. Government drones hovered in the sky: CONTROL YOUR SOUL'S DESIRE FOR FREEDOM/DO NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS TO SING  they broadcast above the heart throbbing sound of resistance.

 

We are bloodied but unbowed I told an EU friend this morning when she called  and asked why we were not all on the streets protesting. Patience, dear friend, we are recovering from the trauma of the coup. Our soul's desire for freedom will not be eviscerated so easily.

 

I only speak to myself and for myself. I cannot answer for my neighbors, or the nation, or our politicians.  From my vantage, it's a calamity from close-up or far away, certainly. And it isn't the outcome I had hoped or planned for all my progressive life. "I will never believe my government again," a young person told me the other day as we discussed ICE raids nearby. "We were supposed to be the good guys. We weren't supposed to hurt civilians, men, women and children." 

 

Such cruelty is hard to witness. Yet many good people are working to help the detainees in my locale. As best they can.  And that is the most we can do right now,  as we still feel endangered.  In this chaotic moment, it is not difficult to imagine the worst.

 

Let's say, for example, that we own our home and the home is comfortable, capacious. We are affluent, comfortable. And one day an official in a uniform barges in and says, "This house is condemned. You have to evacuate."  So we evacuate. But there is no compensation, no assistance, and maybe there is nothing wrong with the house except that someone else covets the house. What do we do? Where do we go? How do we resist once we are homeless and incapacitated, weakened by our unexpected circumstance?  Or, an email arrives at our place of work and announces "termination," as though we were vermin infecting the office. In an instant, our  life has been hit with a wrecking ball.  How do we recover and move on? 

 

So, patience, dear EU friend. We are taking a breath, protesting as best we can in this moment. The citizens of these United States have faced many challenges over the years. This one is cataclysmic, worse than anything in my lifetime. But now that we fully understand what has happened, we will find the courage to open our windows and sing.