I will admit. Writing humour is NOT easy during a simmering trade war that could destroy our country’s economy. Despite tough talk about retaliation from some of this country’s politicians, TikTok videos abound with armchair economists pacing in the snow and predicting the next Great Depression, the worst unemployment in one hundred years, and, in some cases, the end of Canada altogether.
Most Canadian mainstream media is out in full biased force throwing incredulous palms to cheeks and painting President Trump as a super villain unjustifiably bent on destroying his harmless and friendly neighbour to the north. With few outlets giving us a balanced story, the news is affecting people. Just before attempting a deep-end cross-country-ski manoeuvre to the lively beat of ABBA’s Voulez-Vous, a woman in my Friday Aquafit class shouted to the woman next to her that she has a new mantra.
“Hang Donald Trump! Hang Donald Trump! Hang Donald Trump!”
I started to see her as an angry villager marching to the woods to find the ogre. The spell was broken when the music switched to Lady Gaga’s Born This Way and our instructor called, “Jumping jacks!”, modelling the move from a firm spot on the deck while we desperately tried to imitate her in six and a half feet of water.
The mood was no better in the change room after class when the throng of wet sixty-something ladies crowding the showers and lockers howled for President Trump’s death – by lightning strike, sharpshooter bullet, or their own bare hands. The talk was strong and lent an air of violence to the wringing out of Speedos and snapping of bra straps.
“Maybe draw the line at wishing for another human being to die,” I said quietly to a woman beside me.
She must have only heard the word “die” because she nodded enthusiastically and cheered, “Exactly!”
“No,” I tried to clarify. “I am suggesting you do not wish for him to die. I am suggesting you remember he is a human being.”
Her smile turned to a grimace as she realized what I was saying. In my imagination, she threw a flaming Speedo onto a snorkel, pumped it towards the ceiling, and chanted, “Hang Donald Trump! Hang Donald Trump! Hang Donald Trump!” In actual reality, she threw her bag on her shoulder and growled, “He pretends to be human, but he certainly is not.”
I left the change room quickly, worried one of the villagers would spot my iPhone and with it a recent search for MAGA shoes, size ten. If that happened, a mob of damp, foaming-at-the-mouth Aquafitters would surely be upon me.
President Trump says Canada must clean up immigration and drugs. Canadians are right to smart at his threatened punishment if we do not, tariffs that could turn this country into something that makes Somalia look like Monaco by comparison. However, any Canadian with working eyeballs has only to spend ten minutes near Dundas Square in Toronto to know we are already headed in that direction and understand why someone trying to tidy up their property might not be thrilled with having us as neighbours.
“I don’t think we can use the elevator,” a fellow theatre patron commented. We had just finished a matinee performance of Moulin Rouge across the street and were with with other theatre goers also returning to their cars in the St. Michael’s Hospital Parkade in Toronto. The woman who had spoken walked up to the elevator and hit the button. The door opened. She peered in and shot the rest of us a look that made me think, “Good grief! You would think there was poop in there!”
“There is poop in there,” she said.
“Poop” was all we needed to hear to forget we were total strangers, step closer to each other, and head for the stairwell in light infantry platoon formation.
The stairwell was a field of human poop mines. However, unlike the elevator’s promise to pin us next to it for the two-level descent to the parking, the stairwell allowed us to scurry past it, even providing a diversion in the form of thousands of empty alcohol swab packets plastered to the cement.
Finally, down the stairs and as breathless as if we had just ascended to the roof, we swapped a few shaky grins before parting with the only farewell a Canadian knows, even after three harrowing minutes passed with strangers never to be seen again.
“See you later!” (And our Prime Minister says we have no identity. Take off, eh?!)
If you live in a major city in Canada, maybe you have observed, as I have, that above ground is no better. I have discovered that sauntering into Dundas Square or the adjoining shops at Eaton Centre promises the cheerful prospect of being confronted with someone stooped over to hold up his pants and stick a needle into his leg, masked protestors screaming at shoppers to obliterate Israel, or, as I witnessed in broad daylight on a Saturday, while Brock and I steered through throngs of people on our way to Toronto’s Christmas Village, a man proudly pointing his male appendage at the street while grinning at us all and urinating.
I remember when an encounter with the dark and seedy in Dundas Square involved me chewing Hubble Bubble while a fast-talking street hustler tried to sell me “One hundred percent real!” Christian Dior sunglasses from a tea towel he had laid on the sidewalk. With a fifteen-year-old’s allowance in my pocket, it was the glasses or a Duran Duran record from Sam The Record Man. A tough decision but there was no time for humming and hawing back then. One glimpse of a cop car and the towel, the sunglasses, and the hustler would be gone. Alas, the days of a police officer encouraging and, where necessary, enforcing a minimum standard of behaviour appear to be gone.
If all of this was not enough to convince me that we have let the neighbourhood go, I can always arrive for my volunteer shift at the Mission and count how many more families are in line that week for our free Food Market.
If a new neighbour pokes his head over the fence, notices the poop in there, and barks at us to clean it up, we may bristle at his approach. Some might label him an ogre, grab the flaming torches, and call for his head on a platter. However, it might be better if we take a good look around to see if there is any truth to his complaint. We could also ask how that truth might be hurting people we do not see during our forty-five minutes of showgirl kicks and jumping jacks in the deep end at Aquafit.
If that inspires us to clean the yard, just so we can better enjoy it, how could that not be a good thing?
Like, seriously?
Author’s note: In the above article, I refer to the intersection of Yonge and Dundas Streets in Toronto as Dundas Square. This despite Toronto City Council’s 2023 decision to spend $2M changing the name to Sankofa Square, a name from Ghana, a country that is not Canada. After an unscientific and uncontrolled survey of random friends near Toronto elicited reactions akin to, “Sanwhat the Square??”, the author decided to choose the name still used by most people today and the one that honours the memory of Henry Dundas, a Christian Scot who, in the 1790’s, led the legal team that freed an escaped slave, convinced Scotland’s highest court to declare that slavery was illegal, and worked with William Wilberforce, another Christian politician from England, to craft the plan that led to Upper Canada becoming the first territory of the British Empire to abolish slavery and the slave trade. This is a story to make Canadians proud. God bless Henry Dundas.
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