An American sent to Canada was shocked by how furious Canadians are at the U.S.

Yahoo

3 days ago

Canadians are well aware of the trade pressures and annexation talk from south of the border. But what do Americans think? New York magazine has devoted a sizeable portion of a recent issue — and its cover, featuring an angry beaver with a chokehold on a scrawny bald eagle — to the topic. Its headline: You Have No Idea How Furious the Canadians Are.
Features writer Simon van Zuylen-Wood flew into the war zone that is Canadians' anti-American sentiment. He writes that he reoriented his algorithms to flood him with CanCon, turned on push notifications from Canadian news sources, 'and temporarily moved my family north of the border,' travelling with his wife and child, and making Toronto his new home for a month.
'I totally tried to Method-act and really put myself in the shoes of a Canadian,' he told National Post in an interview. 'To the extent that I was buying Canadian groceries and going to the Canadian LCBO. I tried to become one.'
Van Zuylen-Wood said he and his editors hit on the idea for the article after the election of Prime Minister Mark Carney in March, which he described as 'an entire election … seemingly decided as a kind of referendum.' It solidified when Carney met with U.S. President Donald Trump two months later at the White House, during which Trump continued to talk about Canada becoming the 51st state.
'As I started to make phone calls from New York, it became clear that I wasn't fully aware, and Americans in general weren't fully aware, of the scale of the reaction against America and the depth of feeling behind that,' van Zuylen-Wood said.
And so he got on a plane to Toronto. He'd been to Canada before, and had what he called 'a journalist's baseline awareness of global affairs with our northern neighbour (and) a little bit of of added know-how due to … extended family.'
'I know what the National Post is,' he said. 'I know what the Globe and Mail is. I know what the Toronto Star is. But nothing preparing me for what it's like to really live there, and to enter what I've been thinking about as a parallel universe.'
'Anti-American resistance was visible as soon as I landed,' he writes in his article of his time at Toronto's Pearson airport. 'At a news kiosk … the cover of Maclean's, the de facto national magazine, teased '20 Reasons to Eat Canadian.' Inside was a letter from the editor about canceling a vacation to Cape Cod.' When he picked up the following issue, it contained articles about 'Why Canada Will Never Be an American State,' 'How to Fight Back Against Trump's Tariffs' and 'Fear and Loathing in a Canadian Border Town.'
In a grocery store he saw how 'Canada-affiliated products had been demarcated with red maple-leaf insignia — an official act of solidarity that complemented the consumer practice of flipping U.S. products upside down to make them easier to avoid.' He learned about apps like Maple Scan that identify Canadian products.
He discovered that Premier Doug Ford — 'brother of the late Rob Ford, the scandal-plagued Toronto mayor' — had pulled U.S. booze from LCBO shelves. He even visited Grizzly Bar, a Canadian-themed Toronto watering hole serving cocktails with names like TVO Kids and Hadfield. It features a Wall of Heroes featuring framed photos of Ryan Reynolds, Leonard Cohen, Shania Twain, Margaret Atwood, Alex Trebek and more; and a map of the key battles of the War of 1812.
Some of van Zuylen-Wood's finds were probably already known to many Americans, like Scarborough native Mike Myers' pro-Canadian appearances on Saturday Night Live. Others may have been news to New York-based readers of the piece, like the time that Jagmeet Singh 'was spotted attending a Kendrick Lamar concert' and 'groveled for forgiveness' from Lamar's Canadian nemesis Drake, claiming he had been there only to see the other headliner, SZA.
Van Zuylen-Wood's article unpacks the shaky but incontrovertible Canadian patriotism even among some separatist-minded Quebecers, the well-timed speech to Parliament by Charles III, King of Canada, and the recent political gains made by the Liberal Party of Canada against the background of Trump's talk of tariffs and annexation.
'Part of the purpose of this story … was to bring news back,' he said, 'and to tell Americans that this place that you thought you understood and that you thought was this placid, easygoing place is not so placid and easygoing any more.'
But in terms of, as he put it, 'rectifying that imbalance, reactions were what be deemed mixed.
'There was a reaction of raised-eyebrow surprise,' he said. 'The first reaction is, 'Oh my God I had no idea of the extent of it.' And I think a curiosity and an eagerness to learn more.'
But beyond a sort of sombre head-shaking, and particularly from more right-leaning readers, there wasn't much sympathy.
'Certainly on social media I saw a lot of taunting reactions to my piece,' he said. 'Who cares? We don't need them. We're the big bad elephant in the room. That sort of thing. But it's not deeply felt, even among Trump supporters. No one is listing it as their top issue.'
He reached out to political wonks and foreign policy types, 'and frankly they're thinking more about arctic security and critical minerals in Greenland than they are those issues in Canada. It was actually hard to find people who were thinking extremely seriously about this. It's not in the portfolio really deeply of anyone except Donald Trump it looks like.'
And where does it go from here? 'I think it kind of depends a lot on Canadian sentiment,' van Zuylen-Wood said. 'My prediction, not that you should trust my predictions, is that it will reverse itself on the American side, in that I don't think there's a strategic game here that would go beyond Trump. Even a highly protectionist JD Vance administration I don't think would include anything about the annexation threat, and I don't think it would be quite as erratic and bullying.'
That said, he spoke to some Canadians who claimed they were done with America. 'I talked to people who said, 'We don't care who the next president is. This relationship is over. We don't want to go. We don't feel welcome.' And I think a lot of people maybe mean it. For some people it'll thaw, especially if the next president is a Democrat. But my sense is it kind of depends on how Canadians feel.'
True drinks strong and free: Toronto will soon have an all-Canadian bar
Border bitterness is devastating cross-border tourism. But one Canadian city is bucking the trend
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.