During CNN’s Canadian election-day coverage, a brief interview at a polling station in Ottawa got a disproportionate amount of attention on social media. It was a streeter with an elderly woman, who seemed to be from central casting.
Neatly coiffed grey hair and large elegant sunglasses, : “I think who I voted for would be the best to take care of Trump. Because Trump is, I’m sorry to say, an a**hole …”
Buzzfeed’s headline was:”People Are Obsessed With This Canadian Woman’s Thoughts About Donald Trump” and then it followed up with reams of X (formerly Twitter) posts from people applauding what she said but chortling over her Canadian need to apologize.
HuffPost declared: “‘I’m Sorry To Say’: Canadian Voter’s Absolutely Unfiltered Take On Trump Goes Viral” followed by tweets from Americans: “She’s Canadian so she apologizes first;” “You don’t have to be sorry ma’am;” “If you’ve got Canadians calling you an asshole you should probably reevaluate your life.”
“We have officially destroyed their Politeness;” tweeted one American. Forget whatever else Trump is doing to lay waste to civil society; he’s actually so bad that he’s driven these nice people to the wall.
In the 1980s, The New Republic published what its U.S. editor considered the most boring headline in history: “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative,” appeared in the New York Times; ironically the “initiative” was Canada’s efforts to a free trade agreements with the U.S. But that headline remains, to this day, the meme of Canadian “news.” “Bland is good,” former Ontario premier Bill Davis famously said. And Canadians have seemed okay with being ignored.
This past federal election drew an unprecedented amount of international attention as it seemed to the world that this soft-power nation had the chutzpah to confront the global neighbourhood’s bully. All the Whos in Whoville were raising their voices and the foreign press took notice.
During the campaign, news agencies around the world clambered to find Canadian journalists who could explain to their countries what the heck was happening. , the Canadian bureau chief of the New York Times, says she had never seen her newspaper dedicate so many resources to a foreign election —dozens of editors, graphics experts, data journalists, reporters, photographers and videographers.
Canadian David Frum, who lives stateside and is often called upon to Cansplain us to Americans, described Carney’s victory in The Atlantic Monthly: “When Canadians feel warm toward the United States, they look to Conservatives to bind the two countries more closely together. When they feel afraid, they look to Liberals to lock the gates against their southern neighbor.”
Anthony Scaramucci, who bills himself as “an entrepreneur and thought leader” appeared on a UK talk show to describe Mark Carney as ‘the only person handling Donald Trump properly,” and that, according to “The Mooch,” it is by telling Trump to “F*ck off.”
Carney has never said that, of course, but it’s a translation into Americanese of what it appears that the Prime Minister is doing in his very Canadian way. Again, the subtext is that this is not what Canadians normally do.Scaramucci continues with advice to Trump: “Do not f*cking pick a fight with people who live in the cold. Do not do that. They get very pissed off. They’re miserable already and you’re going to start a fight.”
British historian Timothy Garton Ash, a self-described “liberal internationalist” seems to see Mark Carney, the banker turned politician, as some kind of a revolutionary. “Canada… which once seemed— in the nicest possible way— somewhat peripheral to world affairs, comfortably tucked up there between a friendly America and a frozen Arctic, now suddenly looks like a frontline state,” he wrote in The Guardian. “It looks as if Canada is going to have a government that is not just Liberal in name but also combatively liberal in nature.”
Of course it was Mark Carney himself who branded the election as the fight of our lives against a U.S. tyrant as he cleverly cast Pierre Poilievre as a Trump proxy, endeavoring to bring MAGA politics into Canada. Poilievre didn’t do too much to disabuse us of that idea, with his “Canada First” slogan, his rage-farming and a third of his base vying to join the U.S. as the 51st state. For international journalists, Poilievre was cast as an intriguing character, a fifth columnist in Donald’s evil plan to take over North America.
No matter what the election represented for those who actually voted, and for many it was not about Donald Trump, the foreign press saw this as a David and Goliath struggle with the world’s nicest but most boring country up against an arch-villain. There was a “we’re so cute when we’reangry” subtext to international interest, characterized by our war whoop which was not “release the hounds” or “lock and load” but instead “elbows up,” a hockey meme, suggesting that’s as feisty as we’re likely to get.
For those wanting to report on drama, voting day must have been a snore fest. Notwithstanding a nice woman calling Trump an asshole, Canadians who went to the polls in record numbers, did so with absolute decorum. Polling station workers posted on their social media just how polite everyone was and what a great day it was for Canadian patriotism.
The CBC clocked in some of its highest audience numbers in history. It was weirdly snail’s-pace-slow and horse-race-intense, like watching back-to-back episodes of the Danish political drama, “Borgen,” but without the sex scenes. Chantal Hebert fretted when hours passed with no new poll numbers. We began to wonder, what’s going on?
American followers may have had dark thoughts of recent U.S. election sabotage. Was there possibly a “F*CK Carney” flag-waving mob of convoyistas staging a “stop the steal” somewhere?
It turns out that Elections Canada workers decided to call it a night at around 2 a.m. and went home for some sleep. All was peaceful in Whoville. It didn’t matter, since we had enough results to move on to the grand finale.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, whose people-before-power approach to politics probably led to his defeat, gave a tearful farewell, saluting all parties that won: “Tonight, we’re Team Canada.”
Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre was often gracious in his speech, congratulating Mark Carney and addressing his wife so lovingly that many of us wondered why we never got to see this guy before.
And Mark Carney, often criticized as arrogant, spoke of humility, and the need to be humble in order to get things done.
This was the Canada that most of us have been yearning to see again, civil and decent. But in the final moments of his speech, Carney did not disappoint his international observers, nor his supporters, as he made it clear that, in our own way, we are girding for battle: “President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never happen.”
Never underestimate nice people.
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