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Carney didn’t dodge either, though, telling Trump that Canada is not for sale. The newly elected prime minister didn’t have much of a choice. To let that sit out there would fly in the face of the “Canada strong” stand that Carney has vowed to bring to Canada-U. S. relations.

So Canadians can feel reassured that Carney said a firm “never” to Trump’s annexation reveries. In fact, he said it several times, even as Trump was crowing that he was taking a “never say never” position on Canada’s future with the U.S.

What Trump was weaving with Carney in front of the cameras at the White House will obviously drive the Canada-U. S. relationship in the days ahead.

At times, it sounded like Trump’s hopes were running in the direction of a friendly takeover. “It’s only time,” he said. “I’ve had many, many things that were not doable. They ended up being doable and only doable in a very friendly way.”

Trust me, he was saying, Canada will eventually ask for it, although in a burst of perhaps hospitable candour, Trump admitted at the outset there’s no appetite for annexation now. “It takes two to tango, right?”

The encounter couldn’t have provided a better snapshot of how these two leaders are such opposites. Where Trump meandered, Carney made only brief interventions. Where the president boasted and did his usual one-man show, the prime minister made sure to say he won the election with help from his cabinet colleagues, and he stressed that his convictions about Canada’s sovereignty come from the voices of citizens he encountered on the election trail.

Carney was also brief and to the point when he gave his summary of the day to reporters travelling with him, and he made a telling remark about where the relationship with Trump and the U.S. heads from here: “We will focus on what we can control.”

The unsubtle message to anyone who had seen the Oval Office performance was that this, as Carney has said previously, is a president that few — if anyone — can control. If Carney had any doubts about that, they would surely have been dispelled at the end of the half-hour sitting by Trump’s side. So would those of any spectators.

The prime minister had clearly been well briefed on how to handle Trump in public: toss out some flattery but keep it mainly neutral. Call him “transformational” and nod to his leadership in the world. Carney’s objections were expressed politely, and the president seemed to want to see this Canadian leader as a friendly guest.

Why? That’s not entirely clear. Trump offered no clue as to why he prefers this prime minister to the last one, although he did take credit for Carney’s recent election victory. “I think I was probably the greatest thing that happened to him,” Trump said. “His party was losing by a lot, and he ended up winning.”

In true Trump fashion, the president frequently dragged the conversation away from Canada-U. S. matters and off into non-sequiturs about everything from Barack Obama’s presidential library to a rail project in California. Whether the Canadian delegation cared or not wasn’t the point. Trump was weaving unabashedly, no doubt assuming he was dazzling his visitors.

“You know, I do the weave,” Trump said on the presidential campaign trail last year. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”

The world “brilliant” was not among Carney’s descriptions of his public or private dealings at the White House on Tuesday. “Constructive” would have to do. But Carney isn’t an English professor. He’s an economist, and will be taking the measure of Trump’s words in terms of what the president aims to do to Canada and its economy.

Carney has been talking a lot about the end of the Canada-U. S. relationship as we know it, so when he called Tuesday’s meeting the beginning of something else, that was a bookmark. He dodged a hostile encounter while Trump wove. That’s probably the best Canada could have hoped for, or expected.