This Fourth of July, Have You Considered Being Nice to a Canadian?

 

Let’s get a little American penance going.

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I’m not on Twitter (are you really going to make me call it X?) anymore because I have shit to do, but periodically I like to check my mentions. The latest tweet I received came from a fellow Canadian (according to their user bio) irked by a recent piece I wrote about Hillary Clinton: “For a CND looking in you have some tough opinions and protected tweets … How about participating in a real democracy in the lower 50?”

Good point! As a Canadian with permanent residence in New York, I often find myself in the role of outsider, trying to make sense of whatever you lot are doing down here. College? As expensive as possible. Deductible? A word—and concept—that never should have come into common parlance. Taxes? Higher than in Ontario, and yet with even fewer services provided. Treading on me? Don’t.

This year will be my fifth Fourth of July on record. I never participate in the festivities—because the beauty of America is that you have the freedom to shit all over it, even on its birthday—but I have developed one annual tradition of sorts. Every July 4, I ask myself the same question: Why didn’t anyone wish me a happy Canada Day?

Yes, it may surprise you to learn that every year, Canada Day is July 1, always a few days before the Fourth of July. But it always goes unacknowledged by every American I meet. My choice to live in the United States is precisely that: a choice. But it forces me to recognize an unalienable fact, which is that you guys are annoying. America does nearly everything worse, noisier, and, broadly speaking, more. What stings the most—even more than the American crime that is cheese in a can or the way you make a meal out of the word pasta—is that you forget that we exist at all. This Fourth of July, after another Canada Day has floated on by with nary a hint of recognition, I demand penance. I demand self-flagellation. Be Canadian for once and just feel bad!