You Mentioned You Wanted to Move to Canada? (Three lessons with a self-quiz at the end)

A few weeks ago, as I was sitting in my Nova Scotia kitchen, overlooking the beautiful Lunenburg harbour—reading on my I-pad about North Korea’s claim that they can fit a hydrogen bomb on a missile that could hit an American city—this email came in from my ex-mother-in-law, Rosalyn Borg:

Tricia: I don’t trust “what’s his name” to keep us out of a war.  In that case, a draft might be re-instated and Lucas would be the right age. If you have yet to get his Canadian citizenship papers, NOW IS THE TIME. PLEASE. Hugs, Rosalyn. *

My husband, Dave Clingan, looked up from his computer where he reads The Oregonian each morning, and told me about Hurricane Irma, Level 5, moving in on the heels of Harvey and expected to sweep through the Caribbean Islands and Florida, close to Coral Gables/Miami, where he lived as a teenager.

Another email in the queue was from my ex-husband, David Biespiel, with a photo of fires roaring through the Columbia Gorge, not far from our family cabin. I flipped into Facebook and saw grey-smoky photos, and orange-smoky photos, and ash, from an Eagle Creek, Oregon fire started by teenagers throwing firecrackers into the forest.

Then a Trump tweet: Congress, get ready to do your job – DACA! He’s shutting down the US legal provision that protects undocumented children from deportation. I think of kids back in Oregon who will be affected by this.

The calm of our kitchen, the morning sun on the sailboats and glassy waters of the harbour … trying to decide whether to go for a run or do yoga before sitting down to my computer … the contrast of the news versus my fortunate day makes me feel guilty. Yet I feel good about being where I am, too, here in Canada, my birth country, and I tell myself: I am a Canadian citizen, and it is OK to be here and look forward to this day.

But I am also weepy, and worried about my American friends, and my son and my stepson and all the young people who could get drafted, all the people in Korea, the Caribbean, Florida, and so many other places in the world. I’m worried about bombs, global warming, the planet. Yet I’m safe, or kind of safe.

No one is safe.

Lesson One for anyone thinking of moving to Canada to get away from Trump and stress: You will always yearn, worry, and miss loved ones in the other country, and you will always worry about the world.

Lesson Two is that you can come home to your home country, but if you’ve spent several decades in another country and even become a citizen of that country (as I have—I am a “dual citizen” since 2008, the first year I voted in the USA, for Obama of course), then you really are an odd duck in both lands. Or, as my mother said about herself (she was dual British-Canadian), and to mix metaphors, you are neither fish nor fowl.

Lesson Three is that when you are in the USA, you get almost zero news about Canada unless you dig deep for it, but when you are in Canada you are swamped with American news. In fact in Canada, a hell of a lot of the news is actually American. I suspect the newspapers in many countries in the world contain an undue amount of articles about the USA. Especially now, when things in the Unites States are so openly fractured.

Don’t think (if you are an American reading this) that it is all smiles and lollipops up here in Canada:

• Three Inuit activists have been in jail for 10 days because they asserted their right to protest Nalcor Energy’s plans for a dam at Muskrat Falls, Labrador.
• Canadians disagree on whether schools named for Sir John A. MacDonald ought to remove his name (he was an avid supporter of residential schools for First Nation peoples back in the late 1800s).
• Canada has its own alt-right media entity: Rebel Media.
• Three Toronto cops just got acquitted of sexually assaulting a colleague, even after one of them admitted to incriminating behaviour.

Sounds familiar, eh? You don’t hear any of this in the American news. But you do hear about Justin Trudeau posing with pandas, or how Canada’s immigration web site crashed on November 8, 2016, because of Americans desperate to get away from Trump politics (sic).

So do you want to get away from Trump politics (sic again)? Below are two, super short self-quizzes… one for Canadians, one for Americans. Please try them (no googling!); answers are in the clickable image below.

If you are thinking of becoming a dual citizen, or already are, I’d love to hear your experiences. Let me know (in the comments, below) what came up for you. And since this dual citizen stuff is a central concern of mine, I’ll be posting lots more about it in the future.

With love,

Tricia

Test for Canadians:

Who was the first President of the United States?

How many states in the US?

What does July 4 celebrate in the United States?

Would you want to live in two countries, and if so, which ones?

Test for Americans:

Who was the first Prime Minister of Canada?

How many provinces in Canada?

What does July 1 celebrate in Canada?

Would you want to live in two countries, and if so, which ones?

For answers, click below (don’t peek!).