Raising the Drawbridge and flooding the Moat
Stridently obvious events
indicate that the age-old political, cultural and religious global upheavals
that have unceasingly and violently transformed world civilizations, ever since
the beginning of human time, are still as volcanically active as ever they
were in ancient or modern human history.
So the prospect of a mutual
agreement with the USA regarding the establishment of a common security zone
around our joint geographical perimeter is a clear and timely requirement. It is a practical and sober precaution
for ensuring the safety of our almost exclusively shared continent — North
America.
For Americans
are more than just our cousins.
Overall, compared within the larger sphere of modern civilizations, they
are us and we are them.
Canadians are to Americans as firemen
are to policemen. As pork chops
are to spare ribs. As ale is to
beer.
So low key murmurings about the close
links we have with our American cousins, while at the same time emphasizing—in
a much louder voice—how we must safeguard our precious Canadian sovereignty and
our so much superior culture considering the exigencies of today, is pointless
academic bilge. Why? Because Canadians are Americans
already—geographically, historically and most especially culturally. And we have been for some time. We just couldn’t help becoming so. Period.
We’ve been close
neighbours for too long to be otherwise.
In fact because
of our shared geography, imposed by globally-shifting tectonic plates and
planetary evolution, we have often shared political responsibilities for many
scores of decades past. For
example, long before the Global Positioning System appeared, our two countries,
along with Mexico, relied on mutual agreements for measuring and positioning
the size, extremities, and salient features of our continent by referring all
map making endeavours to the same point of reference: the North American 1927
datum point in a farmers field in Kansas, know as the NA Datum 1927, and marked
by a bronze marker plug set in a bed of concrete. Thus the entire myriad Canadian bronze plugs set across the
length and breadth of Canada and its Arctic territories, were calculated in
reference to that central plug in Kansas.
The St. Lawrence
Seaway is another example of shared responsibility and mutual benefit in
managing the vital commercial and international responsibilities of our two
countries.
As is of course,
NORAD, with its desolate Arctic network of warning radar stations providing a
continental stretching defence and deterrence against the extremely real
nuclear devastation of all North America, was the most critically required,
decades-long, partnership for our shared very existence.
Once, in a
convivial social gathering, I asked the dozen or so people within earshot to
raise their hands if they had family members or very close friends who were
permanent residents of the United States.
Every hand was raised.
Such a showing affirms the plain fact
that with most Canadians living very close to our normally peaceful border,
which for the better part of two centuries past has been wide open for the
convenience of honest citizens from both our countries, an inevitable
intermingling has taken place.
For a hundred years or more we have
fought together against common foes, experienced the same economic downturns
and upturns, eaten the same food, mostly delighted in the same laughter,
suffered the same setbacks, shared the same lifestyles, treasured the same art
forms, enjoyed the same recreations, weathered the same snowstorms, sweltered
in the same heat waves, and talked the same talk.
I imagine my own Ottawa family is
typical. We have welcomed many
visitors from the USA. My wife has
relations in Arizona and California.
Our son has close friends in San Francisco and New York City and we have
fond memories of trips and peewee hockey tournaments south of the border.
Also, I personally can boast of having
an American twin first cousin—born in the US mid-west on the same day as I
myself was born in England. His
father, my uncle, emigrated to America from England a hundred years ago. Notwithstanding that we only keep in
touch by e-mail these days, there was one time when we actually met for a few
days. It was in 1945 in London,
England. He was on leave from his
US Army regiment and I was on leave from my squadron. Though he was the visitor and I was the native Londoner it
was he who showed me the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and other notable
sights I had never bothered with before.
Afterwards I took him to a couple of nice pubs where we discussed the
sharing of our mutual cultural values.
Today, as for
most other Canadians, they are still just about identical.
Apart from many
being somewhat dauntingly Biblically over religious.
Yes, ok! I admit it. I’ve been a Yankeephile since 1941 in wartime Britain when
Pilot Officer Weir, an American RAF Eagle Squadron pilot, took me up for my
first flight ever at North Weald fighter station. Pilot Officer Weir was killed just one week later.
I have also spent six-month-long periods during each of the years 1954-59, sailing along, exploring,
charting and defining the coastline and geography of the Arctic perimeter now
under discussion.
So what I say is this:
What this three-country-continent needs is a
self-sufficient, safe, firmly unified, North America which is intelligently
alert to rigidly protecting itself from the hideous ambitions of obviously
insane aliens.
With tomatoes and sunshine in good supply from Mexico; with
oranges, grapes, and with shared continental-wide defences against ballistic
nukes by the USA; and with maple syrup, poutine, wheat, real beer and ale and,
most importantly, vast oil and natural gas production from Canada, North
America will be a haven of democracy and freedom.
Richly developed and civilized, with a trilingual —
Spanish-French-English population — a united North America would be the
mainstay in preserving global civilization.
As a more unified, confident, and powerful continent we will
have a distinct advantage in conducting our political and commercial dealings
with the rest of the world.
proulxough@rogers.com
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