Canada Hasn’t Slept Well Since the U.S. Election

TORONTO — It was Robin Williams, of all individuals, who coined the phrase that I’ve heard repeatedly in Toronto over the previous few weeks.

“You might be like a very nice residence over a meth lab,” he mentioned throughout an “Ask Me Something” session on Reddit in 2013.

I’ve learn it on Twitter. I’ve heard it whereas standing in a socially distanced line on the road. And most just lately, it kicked off the main editorial in one in all Canada’s nationwide newspapers, The Globe and Mail.

It’s been exhausting to pay attention up right here, with all of the noise on the opposite facet of the border. First, the coronavirus received manner uncontrolled down there. Then there have been the Black Lives Matter protests and the counterprotests. Now, do I’ve to say it?

Tuesday’s election has brought on people around the world to fidget.

Canadians have been ripping their cuticles off.

Not solely can we reside proper upstairs from the US, however we do all of the issues that shut neighbors do — share issues, hatch native enchancment plans, kvetch, celebration collectively. The US isn’t just our largest buying and selling accomplice, it’s our largest trip spot, too. Regardless of Canada’s huge dimension, two out of three of its residents reside inside 62 miles of the border and many people have sisters and brothers and cousins down there. (I’ve two sisters in California and a sister-in-law in North Carolina.)

I haven’t slept properly in days, and neither have lots of my mates and neighbors.

“I’ve carried out no work in two days due to a drawn out election in a rustic I don’t reside in,” Emmett Macfarlane, an affiliate professor of political science on the College of Waterloo, mentioned on Twitter.

Latest polls present that as many as four in five Canadians have been rooting for former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, to win the presidency. Canada’s political heart tends to lean additional left than America’s, making the Democratic Social gathering a cushty ideological residence for a lot of “Pink Tories” — what we name liberal right-wingers.

However, this isn’t about insurance policies. It’s about President Trump. Canadians actually don’t like him — his confidence score amongst Canadians plummeted to the lowest point of any American president over the previous 20 years.

At first it was private — he slapped tariffs on the nation’s metal and aluminum exports two years in the past, threatened to chop Canada out of the continental free commerce deal, and insulted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “very dishonest and weak,” moments after leaving the Group of seven summit, which Mr. Trudeau had hosted.

Since then, watching Mr. Trump politicize the coronavirus, vilify his opponents and assault democratic establishments, many Canadians say it has develop into a query of morality.

“Even the proper is offended morally by his conduct;conservatives have values,” mentioned Janice Stein, the founding director of the Munk Faculty of International Affairs and Public Coverage on the College of Toronto, after an evening of watching Fox Information. “They’re deeply offended by this man, who’s frankly all about himself on a regular basis. He’s a horrible narcissist. He’s a racist.”

Whereas Mr. Trudeau has maintained a disciplined silence concerning the election, saying diplomatically that he’ll work with whomever American voters elect, the chief of Canada’s New Democratic Social gathering, Jagmeet Singh, spoke out against Mr. Trump at a news conference this week. “It will be higher for the world if Trump loses, and I hope he loses at present,” Mr. Singh mentioned.

However as the anticipated blue wave did not materialize, and Canadians hunkered down into their couches for one more day of watching People — lots of them maskless — protest exterior vote counting facilities, many got here to the sobering realization that Mr. Trump isn’t an aberration. With a deep properly of help in the US, he’s a mirrored image of lots of their American neighbors. Whether or not or not he wins, some 70 million individuals voted for him — roughly double the entire inhabitants of Canada.

“Past despondent,” one reader wrote in a haiku competitors hosted by The Toronto Star. “That so many help his bigotry and hate.”

Even political analysts, who research the nuanced dynamics of voting, mentioned Mr. Trump’s widespread help signaled a worrying cleavage within the American id.

“He’s tapped into one thing actual — a way of disillusion and hopelessness,” mentioned Lori Turnbull, the director of the Faculty of Public Administration and an affiliate professor of political science at Dalhousie College in Halifax.

“Whether or not he will get to 270 or not,” she mentioned, “the problem will probably be: Is America capable of restore the integrity of its establishments and it’s mythology and perception in an American dream?”

Canada shares the longest border on the planet with the US. Earlier than, Canadians crossed it commonly — for holidays or household reunions or lunch. We haven’t carried out that since March, when the pandemic arrived and the border was closed, like a protracted storage door. Regardless of the painful financial and private ramifications, an overwhelming majority of Canadians need that border to remain closed till our American neighbors have contained the unfold of the virus, which this week, reached record case numbers two days in a row.

Given this election, few of us suppose we’ll be seeing our American brothers and sisters anytime quickly.

“We’ve had totally different administrations,” mentioned Mike Bradley, who since 1988 has been the mayor of Sarnia, an industrial metropolis throughout the river from Michigan.

“I’ve by no means felt that collective angst about what’s occurring and what’s going to occur sooner or later,” he mentioned, pointing to Mr. Trump’s Thursday night pronouncement that the election had been rigged. “Everyone seems to be frightened of retaliation.”

He added, “I believe People have modified in a fashion that’s tough for us to take care of as Canadians.”

Trans Canada

• Aydin Aghdashloo, an artist on the heart of accusations in Iran’s #MeToo motion, is a Canadian citizen. Whereas an exhibition of his work in Tehran has been canceled, the manager director of Tirgan, a vastly standard Iranian cultural competition in Toronto, would not commit to publicly uninviting him.

• Halloween was horrible in Quebec Metropolis this 12 months — two people were stabbed to death and 5 others have been wounded by a person wearing medieval garb and brandishing a sword.

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