LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Is anti-Americanism justified?

Re: Pro-Canadian shouldn’t mean anti-American (Think Again, Feb. 13)

Given the economic pain that President Trump is already inflicting on Canada — in terms of uncertainty and fleeing investors — and given his promise of more to come, is anti-Americanism justified? It would not be if Trump’s ascension to power had occurred because of some sort of military coup d’etat. If such a hypothetical event were, indeed, the cause, Canada would and should welcome the hordes of Americans that would inevitably seek asylum in Canada. We would welcome them because, for the most part, that’s what we do.

But that’s not what happened. The BBC and the CBC indicate, respectively, that 77,302,416 or 77,193,105 American voters gave Trump 312 votes in the infamous Electoral College. Regardless of which popular vote one wishes to accept, the fact remains that 77 million Americans of their own free will, gave Trump a mandate to inflict grievous economic harm on a Canada that has been as loyal and supportive an ally as the United States could ever realistically expect. If that’s insufficient cause for anti-Americanism, I wonder what would suffice.

The point, though, is that none of this is new. As a Feb. 15 editorial column in the Globe and Mail says, of American tariffs in the 19th century, “Secretary of State James G. Blaine had some basis for boasting that the U.S. could force Canada to embrace annexation by throttling its economy.” Of course, John A Macdonald’s national policy and increased exports to the United Kingdom prevented Blaine from achieving his goal.

But there’s more. On Feb. 11, the Free Press published a letter wherein I called readers’ attention to “War Plan Red” — an American military strategy for annexing Canada, as part of a general attack on what was then the fast-fading British Empire. Never mind the fact that Canada had shown proof of its independence by being a separate signatory to the Treaty of Versailles, a separate member of the League of Nations, and a refuser to aid when Britain unnecessarily got itself into a mess during the Chanak incident.

So, with all that in mind, will my wife and I be refusing to buy anything American. No, not entirely. We will be continuing our half-century old habit of subscribing (electronically now, of course) to American publications such as The Nation, The New Republic, and The Atlantic (all of which have been in business for a century or more) because they are in the vanguard of reminding Americans of the mistake they made in November 2024. When discussing those publications’ contents, we will be sipping Niagara Peninsula wine rather than products from the Napa Valley.