‘The enemy to the south’

It’s almost like Canada saw Trump coming long, long before we did.

On my 17-mile cycle from Otty Lake to Newboro I stopped for a break at Rideau Lock #35.

I watched as numerous pleasure boats, not to mention the closest thing Canada has to a motorcycle gang – a gaggle of jet ski enthusiasts – pile into the lock for transfer from the Big Rideau to the Upper Rideau lakes.

This transfer facilitated by teenagers who spend their summer hand-cranking the lock gates open and closed. Just as their predecessors have done since a century ago, when the Rideau Waterway was constructed.

For its time the Rideau Waterway was an engineering marvel. A series of locks, canals and dams that connected the historic city of Kingston – on the St. Lawrence – to the capital city of Ottawa.

Some 126 miles distant, as the barge floats.

These days the waterway is almost exclusively used by recreational boaters. And in that regard it is a major tourist draw.

But it is worth remembering that the Rideau Waterway was constructed (1826 to 1832) explicitly to protect Canada from “The enemy to the south.”

And – sorry Stephen Miller – they weren’t talking about illegal immigrants trying to sneak in from Mexico.

“The War of 1812 had shown that a successful defense of Canada against an American attack depended on secure supply lines,” reads a bronze plaque at Lock #35. “The Rideau Canal was built as a safe alternative to the easily attacked St. Lawrence supply route.”

Reading this reminded me of the time, some years earlier, when I was touring one of a string of Canadian forts constructed along what is now the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Our guide was explaining that the forts were built to ward off invasion.

“From who?” I chided, only half in jest.

“From the Americans,” she said, shooting me a look that seemed to ask what planet I had come from.

It is hard to overstate how much of modern Canada’s development stemmed from an historic aversion to being gobbled up by that “enemy to the south.”

Hell, Canada has been fending off threats and incursions from the south since American revolutionaries tried to take Montreal with ambitions to make it our 14th colony.

Indeed, it is one of the reasons that Ottawa – once a frontier town tucked safely away on a river some distance from the border – is the capital rather than older and more established cities like Montreal, Kingston and Toronto.

All of which are located just across the water from you know who.

Neither is it happenstance that one of the most prominent monuments outside Parliament is dedicated to the ragtag group of Canadians who rallied to fight off an ill-fated (for America) U.S invasion during the war of 1812.

The 51st state indeed.

The wonder to me, as an American who frequently travels north of the border, is that the most of the Canadians I have met are so damned nice, friendly and helpful to their historic “enemy to the south.”

To the extent that most Americans know anything at all about the War of 1812, said knowledge base is likely limited to a vague recollection that the British impressed American sailors at sea and then burned Washington, D.C.

Oh, and that Andy Jackson “fought the bloody British in the town of New Orleans.”

Canadians have quite different memories of that long ago conflict.

And, no doubt, it did not escape their notice when we Americans later invaded Mexico on scant provocation so we could add several more states to our Manifest Destiny.

Is this all ancient history? Hardly.

Not with Trump imposing tariff after tariff on Canada – the latest ostensibly because of…um…smoke.

We Americans may not take seriously our Mad King’s ravings about making Canada the 51st state. But there is a reason that our northern neighbor picked a new Prime Minister who showed his willingness to stand up against the bully Trump.

PM Mark Carney: You want tariffs? Fine, we’ll trade with China.

Which reminds me of that time last fall when we dropped into the bar in Ottawa’s historic Chateau Laurier. When one of our party ordered bourbon, we were politely informed that there was not a drop of that uniquely American mash whiskey to be had this side of the border.

No bourbon! Oh Canada, you really know how to hurt a red-blooded American.