Perhaps moving to the US was different for me. Maybe it was easier. It had nothing to do with politics. I have never thought that anywhere was permanent.

I was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Even six years after World War Two, the future
was bleak so my father signed on as an underground gold miner in a remote
northern Canadian town.

We moved 3,000 miles.

Eight months of winter was all I knew.

When I was ten, my father could see that the gold to be mined was running out so
he took a pay cut and accepted a job with the Canadian government in Canada’s
capital, Ottawa. We moved 450 miles.

We had a small house trailer and in summers we would travel just across the St.
Lawrence River to Watertown New York. It was different. And I liked it there.
I was sixteen when my father originally turned down a promotion in Toronto but my brother and I encouraged him to accept it. We moved 250 miles.

Six years later, he took another promotion back to Ottawa. I stayed in Toronto. I
refer to that move as my parents running away from home.

I was around thirty years old when life took me to Niagara Falls, long before 9-11
and where we would barely put out foot on the brake to whistle through US
Customs mumbling the name of a popular restaurant on the American side and a
large grocery chain, then be waved on.

And I liked it there.

More of life happened and I was in the tobacco-farming hamlet of Tillsonburg
Ontario where I secured a job installing bar-code inventory systems in large
industries in Canada and the US.

I always volunteered to take the American projects. I liked it there.
While working an American project I had purchased a golf shirt featuring a stylized American flag, which I wore to the company picnic back in Tillsonburg. Someone’s husband, after more beer than hot dogs, made the comment along the lines of…

“Damn Yankee.”

I had forgotten about this incident from thirty-some years ago until I recently began wondering where Canada’s anti-Americanism came from. And why.
It’s a question that was asked by my American wife in Alabama some years later.
She had no idea that there was a competition not without animosity between
Canadians and Americans.

It is said that the 49th parallel is the longest two-way mirror in existence. Canadians are constantly peering through it to see what America is up to. Americans look into it and see only their own reflection. Canadians seem upset that Canada knows so much about the US but the US knows nothing about Canada.

While true, it has nothing to do with Canada. Americans, generally, know nothing
about any country beyond their own borders. Canadians take it personally when in fact the statement should be, “Americans know nothing about… (insert country
name here.)

What is the desire of every Canadian hockey fan? To see Canada beat the US in
international or Olympic competition. Why? Why the US? Why are wins against Germany or Sweden shrugged off but the game against Team USA is nearly proclaimed a National Holiday?

Americans, those who follow hockey, want only for their team to be number one.
They have no idea that the War of 1812 is still being fought.

Anti-Americanism makes no sense.

Do no Canadian Patriots get together to watch the American Super Bowl game?
Did no Canadian munch on Doritos dipped in Old El Paso salsa during the game.
Or was a pizza ordered from Dominos at half time.

Perhaps an order of Buffalo Wings was added, the great American creation. Perhaps they slopped Kraft dip sauce on their Hanes t-shirts or Levi jeans… probably purchased at Wal-Mart.

Driving home in their Ford or GM product, I hope a Canadian didn’t listen to an
American artist on Sirius/XM. At home, once the game was over, I hope no one
continued to watch a television program produced for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox or even the CW.

If they are Canadian sports fans, I trust that they do not watch any NBA, MLB, MLS games or indeed the NHL, an American non-profit headquartered in Manhattan whose Canadian players make up only 41% of the league.

Nor did they go to work the next day at a Canadian subsidiary of a US parent, a
company who manufactures product for export to the US or a natural resource
company thriving due to shipments made to, at 75%, Canada’s largest trading
partner, the US.

But Canadians are anti-American.

Can someone please explain that logic to my American ex-wife?

She still has no idea why you don’t like her.