I can sympathize completely. It must be infuriating with the whole Quebec dynamic.
I live in the bluest of blue states, and I feel like an alien in my own country sometimes.
My buddy and i were out in Oshkosh, WI for the annual air show a few years back, and it was the end of a beautiful day...the sun was going down fast, the flight line was emptying out, and we found ourselves standing in a big circle with about a dozen people we didn’t know, from all over America. It was just a chance thing, a bunch of strangers talking, asking all the usual questions such as “Where are you from?” and so on.
Going around the circle, there was someone from Oklahoma, which caused someone to sing out “OOOOk-lahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain...!” and someone else was from Texas, and a comment came up about how tough the Texas Rangers were...you get the idea. It was kind of fun.
When they asked us, and we said we were from Massachusetts, the entire circle fell silent. There was about a two second pause, and someone very politely asked “Ah. Um...what IS going on up there in Massachusetts?”
I felt like the eight year old Little Leaguer who was the worst player on the team, consigned to playing out in Right Field. If you ever watch those kids, they stand out there, one foot kicking at the ground until there is a good, deep furrow in the grass. They all do it. Whether out of embarrassment, boredom or fear that a baseball might actually be hit in their direction, there are always those furrows in the outfield.
That’s what I was doing there, when that guy in Oshkosh asked that question of me. I was kicking at the tarmac with my toe. For much the same reasons as that eight year old kid in Right Field.
You a very eloquent way of writing and description that I can envision myself standing there lol.
I know the feeling, and it’s funny, I do it here too.
I saw a few RVs with Texas plates once up by Beaverlodge, Alberta and was talking to a guy and he hated Trump and loved Hillary. You can imagine how that conversation went. I told him he’s an embarrassment to his country and to the other Americans there. I told him to get in his RV and step on it so his communist nature wouldn’t spread like disease around there. The others wanted to apologize for that guy, but I said not to bother, we get the same problems.