Posted on 07/20/2010 8:36:28 AM PDT by Willie Green
Perhaps, here in the Maritimes, you note the influence of every day Americans more than most other places in Canada. After all, they’ve been arriving here for generations, first as Loyalist refugees fleeing north to the remaining British Colonies in the days after the Revolution. Many would move on to other places in Upper and Lower Canada, setting the stage for the creation of the separate province of New Brunswick and the opening of the future province of Ontario for settlement. The influence of American settlers on the development of Canada has been profound.
With the opening of railroads after Confederation and by the later creation of highways and airlines, rather than as settlers, Americans arrived as visitors or tourists. Former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent summers on Campobello Island just off the New Brunswick coastline, one of many shoreline summer homes and estates, many of which remain the prized possessions of U.S. families.
For years, I’ve had an impression, gathered from conversations with visitors, that many of those visitors carried with them an ample chip of superiority, a rather American characteristic. I remember meeting one chap who, in classic form, began boasting about the size of his native Texas. I reminded him it would take several of his lone star states to fill Ontario, a province with about as many residents as Ohio in a country with a population about equal to California.
But now, I think you might sense a subtle shift in attitudes.
The last decade, since 9/11, has been tough times for the United States. Their financial calamities, even the recent tragedy of the BP oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, have awakened America to her vulnerabilities.
We’ve not been immune to the ripples created by the stomping of the “elephant’s” feet. Yet, while still the “mouse”, we seem to have survived the shaking with comparative ease.
In four separate conversations in the past three weeks, I have been surprised by the inquisitiveness of a young father visiting from Minnesota, a professor from Arkansas, another from Maine and a retired businessman from Maryland now living in Florida. All seemed intrigued by their Canadian summer-time adventure as if something was taking place in the great frozen north and something to which they should pay attention.
Perhaps they sense a gathering Canadian maturity and confidence generated by the globalization of the 21st century world of the Internet and commerce. Maybe we are beginning to sense America is not the be-all and end-all to our political, cultural and economic well being.
Maybe they sense, as others have suggested, that Canadians are shedding their shyness and introverted ways after discovering remarkable opportunities by looking beyond the world’s longest and still undefended border.
Maybe the father and son who rode into Nova Scotia from Connecticut on their Harley-Davidson's two years ago were the mine canaries of the changes taking place in this country. “You know something,” the father said, “this guy Tim Horton is onto something. Good coffee and good food.”
You can now buy a Tim Horton’s coffee and lunch in mid-town Manhattan.
“Every time Canada comes into discussion, the Canadians rush to use the handful of military personnel as cover for the nations failings.”
BINGO.
LOL, there you go, Canadians don't pull their weight, they rely on America to pull the load, and to deflect from that fact, you guys constantly drag in your tiny number of active military personnel as a fig leaf and a distraction, although they are not the ones being discussed.
“Perhaps they sense that Canadians voted in a more conservative government while we in the US have voted in a mentally retarded Che Guevara.”
There is not a socialist country or a socialist enterprise that Willie Green wouldn’t like. He is a plant that uses FR for propaganda.
Answer your own question.
Canada could do much more than they do, they just don’t have the heart.
Since you are supposed to be a conservative, wouldn’t you like to see Canada take on more military responsibility?
I’m still waiting for you to get off this liberal trip you are on and answer post 34, like a conservative.
“Let’s first see if we can identify what canadian military responsibility the US requested that Canada take on or that you feel should be taken on that Canada has refused”
Nuclear interceptors (BOMARC)
Nuclear missles (since 1984)
Vietnam
Meaningful involvement in Iraq (over and above the 40 or so that happened to be serving with US troops)
Spending enough to have reasonable equipment and troops
That’s just off the top of my head.
Which is exactly why Canada might be one of the only alternatives we have, if God forbid, Igor Panarin is correct.
Now you know why I moved out..well, for work actually. I ‘ve had it with the grey skies 90% of the year, then again, it’;s the pacific northwest. Other than friends/family and heading to Whistler in 30 minutes to snowboard on the winter weekends, I couldn’t stand the place and the people.
6. Canadian deathcare. You young? = you die on a gurney in a hallway.
Yeah, Canada had that whole Cold War thing under control, the USSR never had a chance.
About the great mass transit we can expect in an Obamafornicated Socialist States of America?
And toss in something about the moral superiority of Philly cheese steaks and grinders over fare found south of Mason Dixon.
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