Yesterday was Canada Day.

I can’t say I ever really “celebrated” Canada Day growing up, apart from enjoying some fireworks when I was a kid (waiting for it to be dark enough on on one of the longest days of the year at the western end of the time zone was agony). Having a long weekend away at my grandparents’ or girlfriend’s cottage was nice. One Canada Day I did a road trip with my best friend Mike because he had landed an announcing gig at jetski races at some place north of Ottawa on the Ottawa river.

Canadians, living next door to the USA, tend to be a little muted in their patriotism because of the example of their next-door neighbor. The embarrassing excess of American patriotism that has been on display since the Cold War has led Canadians to be quietly proud. We prefer to remind ourselves of great achievements rather than say we’re the best or the first or whatever.

National pride, like any kind of pride, can lead to conceit and foolishness when unchecked. I remember going to a Tragically Hip concert in Pensacola FL in 1995 and there was some idiot who had made some kind of maple leaf glove and insisted in shoving it up in the air a few feet from Gord Downie’s face most of the show. The great McKenzie Brothers sketches on SCTV were born out of Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis’ frustration of being mandated to provide “Canadian Content” on a show written and performed by a fully Canadian cast.

Moving to the USA I never had any expectations that Americans would have any understanding of Canada, its history, or its people. It did occasionally feel galling, given that Canadians know as much about the USA as Americans do, since Canada has access to all of the USA’s media and because a fair amount of Canadian history is entwined with US history. But I am enough of a realist to know that expecting the average American to know anything about any country beyond their own is wishful thinking.

To be honest, until recently the thing that has bothered me more is how Canada seems to be the eternal punchline. Canadians are so nice. Canada is so clean. All Canadians do is watch hockey and drink maple syrup. Canadians say “eh” at the end of every sentence. I get it, it’s fun to make simplifications about nations in order to make it easier to understand them, but seeing my rich country reduced to a cipher can wear after a while.

Now however my country’s right to set its own trade policy, and even its sovereignty, is being attacked by elements of the US government. People may write this off as the illogical rantings of President Trump and his advisors, but seeing as how Trump is pretty much the chief policy architect of the Republican party, and Republicans control all three branches of government, it’s pretty hard to not see attacks on Canada’s right to exist as official US government policy.

It took me a long time to obtain my US citizenship, due to an error I made when I first arrived in the USA about registering for Selective Service. For a long time I thought that error completely prevented me from obtaining citizenship, but then I discovered that there was a legal path to getting it addressed. Once I had the financial resources I hired a lawyer and started the process, and on April 23, 2021, I was sworn in as a Citizen of the USA.

At the time I was very happy to do so. The nation had recovered from four years of Trump and resisted the January 6 coup attempt. President Biden appeared interested in working on getting America out of the hole of COVID via infrastructure and benefits improvements. Things were looking bright.

But now the US finds itself in a situation with an authoritarian president who seeks to punish all who displease him and no one in power with any understanding of their responsibility under the Constitution to check this behavior. And if there is a large swath of this country that refuses to adhere to the very principals it claims to hold dear as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, where does that leave me as someone who chose to live here?

A long time ago I knew where my home was – Canada. But I left it and tried to create another one in the USA. And now that I finally made my commitment, the things that I valued about this country are slowly eroding. I honestly don’t know where that leaves me. I can’t just leave – I can’t ask my family to give up everything they have. But I honestly wonder if I am really welcome here any more.