I started last Monday in Toronto as I do every day now, flipping through the main stories on the news channels and in the papers with the same questions. What has the Trump government done overnight? What new incendiary tweets are there? What midnight announcements of 180-degree changes in policy? What is the latest target for Elon Musk’s chainsaw? I’d really rather be reading the stories about Meghan Markle’s new TV show or the latest Disney version of Snow White. Then, I go deeply into the Canadian news.
We Canadians are angry with the United States, angrier than I have ever seen. Yes, in the past we had our differences over Vietnam or Iraq. We have our trade disputes over, among other things, softwood lumber exports.
But now Canadians are boycotting American goods. You can download an app, Buy Beaver, which allows you to scan products for their origins. American wine has disappeared from shelves across Canada, and a lot of us no longer drink orange juice. Guerrilla shoppers are said to be turning American products upside down on shelves.
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Tuesday brings a lovely sunny spring-like day: braver and usually younger Torontonians saunter out in shirts, even shorts and crop tops. I go for a walk with a friend in one of Toronto’s oldest cemeteries. As we stroll past the monuments to dead politicians, business leaders, war veterans and artists, we talk about the country’s future. In the short period since Trump’s inauguration we have gone from thinking he was joking about Canada being the 51st state to seeing an existential threat. We are no longer shy about being patriotic.
And our federal politics have suddenly become very interesting. The Trudeau government had become deeply unpopular, and the Liberals were way down in the polls while the Conservatives seemed to be cruising to a majority. The latest polls show an extraordinary reversal. Conservative support has dropped sharply, and there is speculation that the Liberals may be able to form a government again. The Bloc Québécois, which represents separatist sentiment in the federal parliament, is tanking, and support in Quebec for separation from Canada is at its lowest since polling began.
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My friend has just come from a trip to Alberta and we comment, rather bitchily, on how its right-wing premier, Danielle Smith, who has gone to Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee, seems to be morphing into a Trump woman, her hair longer and curlier, her makeup heavier.
Canadians still have their sense of humour. I cannot resist sending around a spoof of Gloria Gaynor’s song “I Will Survive” with lines such as “So, just go, go find the door / We don’t like you, we’re not friendly anymore”. In return a niece sends word of an offer from Moosehead Beer (it checks out okay on Buy Beaver) for the Presidential Pack with 1,461 cans, “just enough to get through a full presidential term”.
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Wednesday morning starts early with an online chat with the writer Misha Glenny, who is in Vienna. We discuss whether we are living through the end of an old order and the start of a new one. We agree that it certainly feels like it, and we compare notes on the views from our respective cities and continents. He is much closer to the war in Ukraine, but we share a sense of events rushing by, and concern for the future.
I then tackle my emails, which grow like Japanese knotweed. There are a lot I still want to read, including from my fellow historians. We ask each other what, if any, are the historical parallels to the present. The answers, which range from Munich 1938 to the end of the Byzantine empire, do not cheer us up. And none of us can find an example of a great power so cavalierly alienating all its allies.
That evening, I have dinner with a lovely couple I have known for years in a good local Italian restaurant. We talk about books—they seem to have read everything—and the old days in Toronto, when garlic was something dangerous and a high-class restaurant was a steakhouse. Now in our cosmopolitan city you can find food from all parts of the world. Of course we get on to politics. We agree that Mark Carney is probably the best leader we have for dealing with Trump.
We deplore just how much time and space Trump is occupying in our minds. It’s maddening because, of course, attention is what he craves. And we get on to Musk, who has Canadian ancestors. There is a petition to parliament—it’s silly, really—to remove his Canadian citizenship. At the last count it has more than 376,000 signatures.
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On Thursday and Friday, I try to clean up my desk and get down to some overdue writing. The weather is turning colder again, so the promise of spring is postponed. A balance between optimism and pessimism in the face of events you can’t control is a Canadian trait. In the evenings, I see more friends and family. No guesses as to what we talked about. And we all remark on the silence from Downing Street on Canada’s predicament.
At the weekend I manage to sketch out an article. I promise myself that from now on I will focus on writing and only look at the news once a day. But on Sunday afternoon, I hear that the snap Canadian federal election has been called. So much for that promise then.
