I can always move back to Canada…

A version of this piece appeared in the Washington Post.

Full disclosure: I can move to Canada should the outcome of the Presidential election displease me.

That’s because Canada is from whence I came due to the outcome of another Presidential election, one that did please me.

In 2008, I was living in my hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia, working often for US companies in my role as writer of books and producer of television. When Barack Obama won not just the White House, but the imagination of the civilized world with his message of hope and change, our street in Vancouver had a party. Other neighborhoods in Canada and around the world did the same, unleashing a massive cheer for the USA after the dark and bloody eight years preceding this momentous event.

And we decided, in the euphoric aftermath of Mr. Obama’s election, to become part of that hope and change by moving to the USA.  My wife is a US citizen, and our daughter was a year away from entering kindergarten, so it seemed like the perfect time to head south and east. Hope begat change already.

So, there I was, getting my green card in Montreal in March 2010. The immigration officer who approved my application talked to me about my work, and my love of hockey. She told me that she was learning French by reading a book on hockey, one entitled Hockey: La Fierté d’un Peuple.  I told her that I had written that book. Destiny was in play.

Indeed, it had been in play for a long time, ever since my father’s family immigrated to North America from Ireland. They had wanted to go to the United States, where they had family, but circumstances sent them to Canada, which was, as they say, good to them. Still, our family vacations would inevitably take us to California to see family, and to where my father dreamed of migrating to open a business. My mother would always back out at the last minute. I don’t know why, and by the time I was ready to fulfill my father’s dream, Alzheimer’s had robbed her of the capacity to tell me why.

So we came to New York City, and settled in Brooklyn. We were welcomed on Day 1 by our neighbors, the mother, African-American, the father, white, who invited us from our moving van and right into their house for wine, and my daughter met their daughter and so, a best friend. America the beautiful.

And so it went. The generosity of this country, the warmth of its spirit, its belief that the impossible dream could become possible sustained us as we made our way. To be sure, there was turbulence, but none so severe that gave us pause to say: hmm, maybe we should go back to the Old Country.

An amusing thing to us is that because we come from Canada, it’s hard to tell us from natural born American citizens. We can speak with strangers and friends alike who don’t know or have forgotten that we come from the land up north. And even though, as the great white arch demarcating the border between Canada and the United States at Blaine, Washington declaims on its wall, we are both “Children of a Common Mother,” we have found that our American sibling can sometimes confound.

However, in the spirit of our adopted country, we, too, empowered ourselves with clairvoyance, and through that lens could see some of the blemishes of our chosen homeland in a more forgiving light. And with such enlightenment, we believe the Founding Fathers didn’t understand the 2nd Amendment to triumph over all the others; that people who want to come to the USA by means legal or not generally do not want to abandon all they hold dear and uproot themselves and their families to come here to create criminal mayhem, so we need better doors, not walls;  that while life is indeed precious, perhaps we should devote more energy to enhancing the lives of our fellow citizens already with us, so that children don’t go to bed hungry, and women and men are helped, not punished, when making tough life decisions; and that the first or second or third recourse of the police in dealing with a human being, either in distress or at a traffic stop, should not be to kill them. We’re pretty sure the Founding Fathers would be with us on that one.

And we’re certain that they’d be with us in thinking that Barack Obama, the man whose election moved us to move, will be judged by history as a great president, who had vision and imagination and decency, and what he failed to do was not the result of his flaws or of an imperfect democracy, but because people opposed to him had contrary views of to whom our democracy belongs. But that’s why we have term limits. So someone else gets a chance to make their American dream into public policy.

Which brings me to the reason why people have invoked my homeland as a destination should the earth reverse on its axis and Donald Trump win the 2016 Presidential election. Indeed, we view him in the great tradition of American con artists, and history may judge him as just that, a colorful (and yes, add in whichever pejorative you choose and I will agree) character who supercharged a moment with his own brand of regime change, which, the majority rejected as not the kind of democracy in which they wished to live. When we looked at his plan, such as it is, the idea of democracy as the Founding Fathers envisioned would be a lot like the European society that they had chosen to reject: King Donald, dispatching armies to quash foreign lands, while collecting taxes and paying none.

So, I made my choice on October 26 in Federal Plaza in New York City, when I had my application for US citizenship approved during an interview process that was marked from the security guard at the door to the immigration officer who dealt with my case by courtesy, respect and great civility. Everyone knew what I was doing, and they made me feel welcome, and valued.  I will be sworn in an American too late to vote on November 8, but I don’t mind. I have voted already by not going back to Canada.