Dear Canadians,
I would love to visit your beautiful country again. I've traveled from Quebec to Tofino, thumbed the trans-Canada, camped under the stars in Banff, swatted skeeters in Wawa, paddled the waters off Salt Spring Island, slept in a flophouse in Winnipeg and walked the ancient walls of old Quebec City.
As a young man I spent the night in a hostel in Port Alberni. Some officials from Ottawa were visiting to inspect the hostel program and I ended up sharing a meal with some bigwig. I think he was Secretary of State.
I had a less pleasant encounter when black-gloved customs inspectors took my Ford Explorer apart at the border and found a few rounds of ammo under the seat. Ooops! They kept the ammo, but they were so polite about it and they did let me enter.
I have so many fond memories of your fair land. But now, Canadians, your prime minister thinks I am unclean and a health threat because I haven't been injected with a Covid vaccine. I am banned from crossing your border. This makes no sense at all. Covid is everywhere. Stopping me (or a Canadian trucker) from crossing the border isn’t going to make any difference.
Dear Canadians, as a young man I fell in love with the music of Gordon Lightfoot. His "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" is a beautiful tribute to the hard working pioneers who opened the land. Who could write a song like this today?
“But time has no beginning and the history has no bound
As to this verdant country they came from all around
They sailed upon her waterways and they walked the forest tall
Built the mines, the mills and the factories for the good of us all”
I first visited your wonderful country as a child when the Expo was held in Montreal in 1967. We stayed with a French-Canadian family and rode the new rubber-tired metro. At the Expo’s Ontario Pavilion we heard a song that went "A Place to Stand, a Place to Grow". It became Ontario’s theme song. It was the first time I’d ever seen a screen so large, with multiple images and movies projected simultaneously as the music played:
Give us a land of peace
Where the free winds blow
And we will build Ontario.
A place to stand, a place to grow, a place to grow
Ontari-ari-ari-o!
That’s when I fell in love with Canada.
The winds of freedom are blowing strong in Ontario today, and we are standing with you, Canada. We are cheering you on. Your truckers and the thousands of freedom-loving Canadians lining the roads in bitter winter cold, have inspired us.
We’re rooting for all freedom-loving Canadians. Your victories will be our victories, your losses our losses.
For me it’s deeply personal because I miss you, Canada. More than anything else I have lost in this pandemic, I miss Canada most of all.
I too have spent some of my younger years in Vancouver, Banff & Toronto. That this generation cannot do the same without masks, vaccines and tyranny is a crime that must be prosecuted.