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TORONTO, ONTARIO — Donald Trump is losing an election in a landslide — in Canada. After a decade under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada was ready to move on from his center-left Liberal Party. It seemed inevitable that my homeland was about to elect a new conservative government and perhaps redefine the idea of what it means to be Canadian — an identity that mostly starts with the premise of not being American.
If Trump had said nothing about Canada — if he hadn’t bullied, belittled, and threatened to annex the country — the Conservative Party would have won a massive majority. If Trump and the chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk hadn’t engaged in adolescent taunting of Canadians, for no apparent reason other than frat-bro hazing of what they imagined to be a defenseless target, the relationship between the two countries might have been mutually reimagined.
Instead, incredibly, unbelievably — but also inevitably, as any sane Canadian would have told you — Trump’s bully-boy behavior resulted in virtually universal revulsion. The trash-talking, Trump-like leader of the Conservative Party best resembled Wile E. Coyote after Trump’s assault; the politico who had long claimed Canada broken was suddenly lost for words as the bottom fell out of his campaign. In a matter of days, there was a 25-point swing in favor of the governing Liberal Party, now led by a no-nonsense plutocrat banker named Mark Carney. No marketing genius could have come up with a way to unite Canadians more rapidly than Trump’s threats and tariffs, affronts by a supposed marketing savant who is turning America into a globally toxic brand.
WALKING THE STREETS of Toronto on a rainy, cold early spring day, under a billboard forecasting “Chances of Canadian Weather: 100 percent,” the most remarkable thing about the city is how unremarkable it is. The frantic chaos of Trump’s America unceasing news cycle is countered with civic calm here. A pro-Palestinian protest marches along University Avenue toward City Hall, with no terror of students being disappeared by government agents wearing masks. The hip-hop exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario proceeds with no fear that the tender feelings of sensitive white men will be bruised by divergent historical and political narratives; a blonde bride poses with her groom on the circular stairs in the main atrium, oblivious to how threatened she is supposed to feel by the large poster on the wall with a set of oversized teeth and braces spelling out “Black Power.”
In a mall on Toronto’s main drag, the rebranding of America is well underway. Teen shoppers bypass American stores without a glance, the flags and lapel badges and Canada Goose fleeces abounding, as customers in Eataly ask specifically for products that are not made in the United States. My favorite pho joint in Chinatown is bustling, until I pull out a wad of American cash to pay for my lunch, and I’m met with a hush and looks of disapproval. (“Dream big little one,” the sign above the urinal says.) The evidence of economic slowdown in Canada are already evident, but the malaise is contradicted by the excited, ethnically diverse and inclusive kids equitably lining up to shop at a new Chinese fast-fashion pop-up.
In a hotel downtown, on the top floor of a formerly Trump-branded tower, the bar once called America has been rechristened to avoid the association, the lone vestiges of the president’s bad-taste version of luxury evident in the tacky black marble and gauche deco interior. Customers in bars all over the city are specifically asking for non-American brands of alcohol, bartenders and waiters say, a glimpse of the solidarity that is binding the nation together. In a nearby liquor store, there are no American brands on offer. When I ask the clerk if there have been any complaints, he looks surprised by the question.
“No one has complained,” he says. “People are starting to appreciate Canadian whiskeys.”
A few bleary-eyed day drinkers on the sidewalk outside are talking politics, like everyone else I meet, as they share a bottle.
“At least Trump talked to Mark Carney with respect,” one drunk says approvingly. “Trump called Carney Prime Minister, so at least that’s something.”
Another drunkenly agrees. “C’est la vie,” he says.
“NO WAY CANADA can win a trade war with America,” Vice President J.D. Vance declares on television, as he visits an American military base in Greenland — yet another society menaced by the Trump administration.
But here’s the thing: There is no war in Canada. Canada is not at war with America, nor is it at war with reality or empathy or the basic elements of human decency that also define Canadian identity. DEI — or Donald, Eric, and Ivanka as it has been called on Canadian television — is part of the political debate in Canada, of course, but the underlying sentiments of the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement are still the character traits taught in Canadian kindergartens: do your best, tell the truth, respect others, don’t be a bully, the rules matter — along with the lyrics of O Canada.
On one level, what Canada is going through is a divorce, it strikes me. What Vance doesn’t seem to grasp is that no one wins a divorce. Both parties are poorer, if not happier, the bonds of trust and affection and history that tied the couple together broken beyond repair. And here’s another cruel reality of divorce: The abusive partner is still an abuser after the split. The empty threats, the irrational demands, the self-pity, the lying, the cheating, the wild mood swings, all the unattractive characteristics are still staring back in the mirror the morning after the marriage is over.
But the most elemental disagreement between Canada and America seems to be about the modern world. For years, conservative America has been engaged in an angry argument with history, with originalists on the Supreme Court selectively retelling the past to serve their ideological interests. For an old man like Donald Trump, instead of yelling at the television and changing the channels with his remote, he now possesses the power to end life on earth and thus the world cringes in fear as his discontent with the present and longing for the past turn the world upside down.
There are historical plaques all over the city, celebrating Canada’s heritage, but no one seriously wants to travel back in time to a fantastical golden age, or live in a fantasy where all the woes of the world can be wished away by a magical red hat.
THE SNOW IS SLANTING across Toronto on April 2, Trump’s “Liberation Day,” as the event is broadcast live from the White House on Canadian TV, with the president turning reality itself into a perverse kind of reality television. The anxiety of the newscasters is evident, but it slowly emerges that Canada is being spared the worst of the new global trade tax regime. Tariffs on cars and steel and aluminum remain, but the rest of the world is now experiencing what Canada has been enduring for months: global trade rules unilaterally discarded and huge new Trump taxes described as an act of kindness — truly transcendental gaslighting — as the crowd in the Rose Garden scramble to catch a tossed MAGA hat.
“Trump likes to be fluffed,” a Canadian commentator says, after listening to Trump praise the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that helped worsen the Great Depression and call to mind the 1880s as a golden age — a rambling proudly incoherent discourse that seems to reject the realities of the 21st century.
The sun finally comes out the next morning — no Trump tariffs apply to that yet, it would seem — and the city again moves forward. The toll on Canadian workers and the economy are immediately felt in jobs lost and lives changed. But all the Canadian political parties agree that there is no turning back. The preexisting relationship is over, as Prime Minister Carney says; the marriage is finished. Unlike so many cratering American institutions — law firms, universities, soulless groveling tech billionaires — Canada stands up to the bully as best it can and calls bullshit. No matter who wins the Canadian election, there is already one clear loser: Donald Trump.
In this new era of American lawlessness, treaties like the one Trump negotiated with Canada and Mexico are tossed aside with the same shameless ease that the president once displayed stiffing subcontractors. Trump has now set himself up to dispense and collect tariff favors like a Mafia don, the corruption and inscrutability practiced with impunity — and, of course, immunity. The president treats the world like it is a ship of fools — certain that he’s smarter than everyone else. Canadians, politely minding their own business until a few short weeks ago, now behold their neighbors with a mixture of horror and disbelief and fear, dreading that this is the kind of arrogance that always goes before the fall.
