Canadians in the Crosshairs
The Cold Shoulder South
It starts with the rhetoric. Always does. The tone, the grin that isn’t a grin, the coded language. Then comes the policy. And soon after that, the targets.
It’s 2025 and the air in North America feels like a sour vintage of something we’ve uncorked before — dry, bitter, laced with retribution.
Donald J. Trump, once again cradling the nuclear football and the fractured ego of a twice-impeached carnival barker, has turned the temperature up on his enemies list. The targets are as predictable as they are jarring — journalists, judges, immigrants, college campuses — but now, add “Canadians” to the crosshairs.
Not since the draft-dodging days of the Vietnam War, when young Americans snuck past border agents into small towns like Nelson, BC and the Laurentians, have we seen a moment so ripe with cross-border paranoia. But this time, it’s flipped. Canadians, the passport-waving symbols of calm diplomacy and syrupy neutrality, are being advised to rethink their travel plans south of the 49th.
Why? Because Trump doesn’t forget — and he sure as hell doesn’t forgive.
He’s taken to threatening his foes — judges, journalists, and now even foreign nationals — with detention centers. Not Guantanamo this time, but El Salvador. A place where prison overcrowding and extrajudicial beat downs make headlines, not because they’re rare — but because they’re designed to scare.
And it’s working.
Canadians — dual citizens, expats, musicians crossing into Buffalo for a gig, a family from Vancouver en route to Disneyland — are starting to get the hint. The line at immigration is more hostile than helpful. Questions come with a sneer. “What’s your business here?” is no longer rhetorical.
This isn't policy; it's posture—performance rage politics. Trump’s dislike for Justin Trudeau is well documented — part frat boy grudge, part nationalist fever dream. And his contempt for anything smelling of globalism, compassion, or — God forbid — civility, has metastasized.
When ICE starts asking if that Toronto jazz trio on tour has a work visa or why a 70-year-old Canadian photojournalist is carrying a Leica and a notepad in Charleston — it’s not paranoia; it’s a preview.
We’ve seen this before, in other places, under other strongmen. It always starts this way — with a joke at a rally, a threat, a detention, a warning.
In Trump’s America, every border agent has become a foot soldier of fear. And fear, as history teaches us, needs no passport.
So maybe we skip Florida this spring. Maybe we reroute the tour through Europe. Maybe we meet our New York contacts in Montreal. Just until the fever breaks — if it breaks.
Because right now, the land of the free is running a quiet war on the civil and the sane. And Canadians, kind as we are, might just be next.
Stay strong Canada!
On As It Happens the other night - two young female Canadian musicians told of being stopped by the police while driving back from a gig (can't remember which state they were in). There was no reason to stop them except they had Canadian plates on their vehicle. The interrogation was more than a bit hostile, they said. They were searched personally. They had no drugs, no opened or unopened alcohol. Every inch of the vehicle was searched, nevertheless. After 45 minutes (they were lucky!) they were released and allowed to go, but they were still followed for several miles/kilometres. They were glad to arrive back in Canada safely!
If they say they are coming for you , believe them. We have seen this play before and know how it ends. People die and people disappear and good people have to fight . The world was saved by young men and women last time. I hope they won’t be called to do it again. It may not be yellow stars but it may be rainbow flags or blue flags or loss of basic human rights. Beware , you aren’t immune.