The Year Canada Grew Up
2025 will be remembered as the year where our nation shed its reputation for meekness and asserted itself for the whole world to see.
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Do you remember the Canada that led the world think we were a nation of likeable slackers? Getting by was good enough. We didn’t rock the boat. Americans barely knew who we were.
And when they did notice us, like in the infamous ‘Blame Canada’ episode of South Park, we laughed and went along with the gag. It didn’t bother us that Americans saw us as bland and inoffensive, too harmless to be anything more than the butt of a joke.
When they made fun of our accents with the bizarre “oot and aboot,” we simply smiled and played along.
But not anymore.
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I was thinking about how much things have changed when I heard a podcast with Graeme Wood of The Atlantic discussing the last-minute decision by CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss to kill a story about illegal rendition and torture under the Trump regime.
According to the internal emails the staff at 60 Minutes saw this 11th-hour intervention as a blatant attempt to shield the Trump administration from embarrassment. But in the Atlantic podcast, Wood bent over backwards to recast it as a mere misunderstanding, with much of the blame placed on the investigative journalists for resisting a determined outsider in the form of new CBS president Bari Weiss.
Wood didn’t mention Trump’s shakedown lawsuit of Paramount to force an apology for how 60 Minutes had edited an interview he didn’t like. He didn’t mention Trump’s work to get Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert fired. Or the fact that the President of the United States is threatening to withdraw broadcast licenses from networks that don’t provide fawning coverage. He didn’t bother to explain to the listener that Weiss is the darling gal of the Trump regime.
Nope. The vital back story was missing.
But when it came to the issue that the Canadian affiliate ran the story as per their legal right, Wood went hard. He put it down to Canadian “treachery” in an attempt to discredit American journalism.
“Global TV may have been merely careless in letting the segment out, but since they are Canadian, I would not rule out treachery, and an effort to make Americans and their media look silly, no matter their political views.”
Like many Canadians, I saw the word ‘treachery’ and thought, F-you. The days when Canadians will be your meek puppy to be pushed around are over.
It is a sentiment I have been seeing across the online world: F-you Atlantic, that’s the last issue we’ll buy, We are done with you, etc.
I saw a similar reaction to the news that Jim Beam Distillery is shutting down production because of the collapse of America’s export market for booze.
Many Canadians that I know were celebrating with lines like “sucks to be you” or “FAFO” (F-k Around Find Out). A massive economic catastrophe hit the American heartland, and Canadians were doing high fives.
Last year, such sentiments would have seemed un-Canadian. But last year, we weren’t facing threats to break our economy or turn us into a vassal state.
Canadians have changed.
When we were first threatened by Trump, we were convinced it was a misunderstanding. Who didn’t like Canadians?
In the early days of this American war, I saw many posts about the work Canadians did to help Americans stranded during 9/11, or how we helped hide the hostages in Iran. We wanted to remind Americans that we were their cousins, their friendly neighbours.
But it became apparent that Trump wasn’t kidding around. And we knew these threats were for real. And then everything changed.
Canadians responded with an unprecedented display of nationalism. A massive boycott was launched and it was led by ordinary people. Our resistance grew even as many in the pundit class assumed Canadians would cry ourselves back to sleep. That hasn’t happened. We have proven to be a lot tougher than people thought.
In the year since the war began, Canadians are no longer trying to please.
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We aren’t waiting to find out whether economic peace can be found with the stroke of a pen on a trade agreement. Canada has taken bold steps to move out from under the shadow of the United States. We are building economic and military alliances with Europe. We are now talking about a 300,000-person citizen army to defend our nation.
This would have been an unimaginable proposition a year ago. Now it is being embraced.
But I want to go back to Mr Wood, a writer for The Atlantic and a lecturer on politics at Yale University. Some might suggest that Mr Wood was being ironic in accusing Canadians of treachery. The Canada of a year ago would no doubt have bent over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt. But that was a different Canada.
On the podcast he said we as a nation were responsible for making American journalists look “silly”. But that’s not the appropriate word.
The word is pusillanimous - an adjective for displaying a lack of courage or determination; timid.
The failure of the American intellectual and media class to stand up in the face of gangster authoritarianism has been something to behold. The world didn’t need the ingenuity of Woodward and Bernstein to expose the naked criminality and kleptocracy of Donald Trump. It has been on full display since day one.
What was required was for journalists, writers, and political leaders to stand up and do the right thing. That hasn’t happened.
So leave it to Canada. Maybe this is why Mr. Wood sees treachery in our national fibre. He is watching a nation that Americans dismissed as a weak geek take on the bully of the block.
Does that make us treacherous? No. It makes us a nation willing to defend democracy, truth, and the rule of law.
Deal with it, America.
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