O Canada!

Canada does seem like a civilized place. We watched a part of the opening of the Olympics, and enjoyed the drumming and dancing by the "aboriginal people." The landscape, as it appeared on our television screen, is of unbelievable beauty. We spent a few memorable days in the city of Vancouver and on Vancouver Island a few years ago, and loved the energy of the area--much slower-paced than busy Southern California. The Canadians seem able to manage both the benefits of a capitalist economy and the more broadly liberal humanitarian concern for the country's citizens. I love the fact that a country of this size has a smaller population than does California. I suppose that's because much of the vast tundra to the north is inhabitable only by a hardy few.

I lived in Canada for two years back in the early 1960s--in Halifax, Nova Scotia, about as close to Europe as one could get! It was my first taste of living this side of the Atlantic. My older son, Matthew, was born there, and proudly maintains his Canadian nationality to this day. It's a bit like me being proud to be a Geordie (one born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne) even though I spent only the first year and a half of my life there. Halifax, at the time, was only just beginning to recover economically and culturally from the effects of the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which for the first time allowed much of Canada's ocean traffic and its cargoes to penetrate closer to the urban centers of Toronto and Quebec. Still, it was a fine place to live, and I have fond memories of the city, its people, and the lovely maritime landscapes that surrounded us there. Not to mention the lobsters, fresh from the sea...

We have often teased ourselves, Ellie and I, with the notion of re-locating north--a recurring theme amongst old liberals like ourselves since the days of the Vietnam war. We have watched with increasing distress, since those days, as our country has been hijacked by the aggressive politics of those to the far right. We were among those who thought the election of Nixon to be a disaster, long before his disgrace. We were appalled by the passage of Proposition 13. We thought Reagan's election--as Governor!--to be a major disaster; his elevation to the Presidency was unthinkable, until it happened. Poor Jimmy Carter was bullied into irrelevance before he had the opportunity to reverse the conservative tide; and Clinton was so harried by poisonous hostility and subversion from the right that it was miraculous that he survived at all, let alone make the achievements that he did. Then Bush junior...!

There have been many times, then, these past thirty-five years and more, when we have teased ourselves with thoughts of leaving for friendlier climes, more compatible with our sense of human justice and concern for the common good. We are still here, watching the Vancouver Games on television even as we watch Obama threatened from all sides, his agenda--the agenda for which we elected him--as frozen as those mountain tops in British Columbia. We have kept telling ourselves that things can't get any worse in this dis-United States--but they keep getting worse. So we tease ourselves, yet again, with those old thoughts...

It's not patriotism, certainly, that keeps me here. I've never had an ounce of that in my body--though I have to say I enjoyed the friendly parade of nations at the Games. No, sadly, it's not very much more than the weather!