When the world snoops on the relationship between the United States and Canada, they see a complicated marriage. Longtime allies who haven’t seen a shot fired in anger between them since the War of 1812 juggle significant societal differences.
Star-spangled banners wave at maple leaf flags across what was once termed the world’s longest unguarded border. (There are guards on it these days, but that’s more a product of post-9/11 security concerns than it is tension between Washington and Ottawa.) Still, the famed even temper that remains perhaps the first cultural touchstone for Canadians stands in stark contrast to the impassioned, sometimes violent clashes of American politics.
Interwoven with the U.S. in both commerce and defense, Canada has almost as much at stake as Americans close in on November. A handful of its people took a moment to reflect on what they hope will come of Election Day in 2024.
Married couple Mary and Art both work in education. The residents of British Columbia have dual citizenship with the U.S. and vote only in American elections. This fall, their main choices are, of course, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee effectively since President Joe Biden bowed out, and former President Donald Trump, her Republican rival. The couple set the tone for their fellow Canadians, targeting the possible second term of Trump as their greatest worry.
“Kamala Harris entering the race has eased that concern a lot,” Mary said. “America is the lynchpin for the Western democracies being able to stand up to autocratic countries such as China and Russia. Donald Trump’s made it pretty clear he has no interest in standing up to them.”
Art agreed, insisting a Harris win would preserve the world order established after World War II.
“There’s been no election where we haven’t had to hold our noses a bit for the vote we cast, but the idea that Trump might pull out of NATO and support Putin and Xi Jinping, perhaps because of secret real estate deals, is so destabilizing that we’d cast our ballots for a Democrat ticket of Dracula-Godzilla before contemplating Trump-Vance,” he said.
Art mourned for the Republican Party that he claimed might have made him and his wife think about their votes, believing it no longer exists. As a result, he sees the 2024 cycle as more heated than 2016 or 2020.
“There’s always deranged sniping going on between both sides, so that’s not different,” he explained. “But so far in this cycle, there’s not been a battle of ideas. Our dream is of a presidential candidate debate in which both candidates, people of principle, lay out their differing visions of going forward based on ideas and philosophies and not on who hates America and wants to destroy it. The idea that someone running for political office is doing it because they want to destroy the political process is just nonsensical. It is disturbing to think that some of our American neighbors buy into that as a reasonable assumption.”
Mary also lamented that the most important of American political processes devolves into a screaming match.
“Elections should be about people choosing between different sets of policies — different approaches to common issues,” she said. “This time, it’s insulting and who has the best snappy comeback. That accomplishes nothing.”
Across the country, just outside Toronto, Don and Debbie had careers in training and sales, respectively, before retiring. These days, they snowbird between progressive Ontario and the more conservative Phoenix area. They’re also rooting for a Harris win, though they keep that to themselves among their American friends.
“We winter in Arizona, so we’re obviously concerned about what’s going on in the U.S.,” Don said. “We’re in a Republican area down there, so we don’t say an awful lot for fear that they might not like what they hear.”
Debbie agreed with that strategy, resigned to an American political environment in which minds rarely change.
“We don’t talk politics at all,” she explained. “When I hear the election brought up, it doesn’t make any difference what anyone says. They all have facts and figures to support whatever they say. No one is open-minded, so there are no exploratory discussions. It comes the same, ‘I’m right. You’re wrong.’”
Don said he believes most Canadians would favor a Harris presidency, while Debbie said she fears the turmoil riled up in the states could find its way north.
“I think it’s important to feel like the U.S. has a government system that is stable and fully democratic,” she added. “Whatever we see in the U.S. tends to come to Canada eventually.”
Canadians’ alignment with Harris is more understandable when one considers that the future vice president lived in Quebec for five years and graduated from high school north of the border. Harris’s mother took up a teaching position at McGill University and moved from California to Montreal with then-12-year-old Kamala in 1976.
There also remains a strong philosophical link between the California Harris oversaw as attorney general and senator and the progressive Canadian government of Justin Trudeau.
In York, Ontario, Susan is an engineer who believes there’s one observation that unifies Canadians observing the American campaign season.
“This election highlights the tremendous discord within the U.S. and the level of dysfunction in government,” Susan said. “Canadians have a huge amount at stake in any U.S. election as changes in American policies can affect all of our businesses. We track all that as we’re saturated with more U.S. than Canadian news cycles.”
Susan described the average Canadian voter as more in tune with the Democratic Party’s worldview. She said she believes her fellow citizens want economic peace through a working NAFTA accord since the two countries’ industries are heavily integrated.
“Canadians are much more at ease negotiating with Democrats through our shared values,” Susan added. “There is also a fundamental sense of fairness in Canada, which was founded on the principles of peace and order — very different from the ‘Live Free or Die’ sentiment in the American South.”
Dan is a writer born in the more rugged stretches of Alberta. He acknowledged that his ancestral home runs more to the right than Ontario or British Columbia — describing his province as “more Trump territory if anything like that exists in Canada.”
He explained that whether they lean left or right, many Canadians see a severe decline in the Republican Party’s intention and integrity.
“I feel like [the Republican Party] lost its way under Trump,” Dan lamented. “Studying American history, it’s difficult to see the party of Abraham Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, and even Martin Luther King Jr. is now run by Trump — or by what I saw Trump described as: ‘a con man and a TV reality show host from Queens who can’t make bail.’”
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If Harris should take the day, Dan said he believes Trump will abandon the Republican Party — while the party will be glad to see him go.
“The original Republican values get lost, I think, because all Trump cares about is Trump,” he added.
John Lewinski, MFA, is a writer based in Milwaukee.
