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FOREWORD

By Bob Rae

Important symbols of Canadian parliamentary sovereignty have been in the custody of the United States for nearly two hundred years, captured by American forces in 1813 when the town of York (now Toronto) was burned and the legislative assembly of Upper Canada was plundered.

In other countries this would have become the subject of intense nationalist feeling and struggle. This has not been so in Canada. Most Canadians and Americans neither know nor care about it. We have grown together on both sides of a remarkably open border, and with the signing of the free trade agreements complete continental integration seemed well underway.

David Dyment explores the deeper dimensions of this relationship, which is not at all simple and has real issues attached to it. The divides have never been unbridgeable, but they are very real, and David’s careful scholarship shows how both the federal and provincial governments have wrestled with them in recent years.

These divides include the sheer difference in size and the fact that the border often seems more like a two-way mirror. Because we are so close, Canadians suffer from the illusion that we know the Americans as well as they do themselves. The American illusion is different: they believe that we are “just like them.” No doubt John F. Kennedy was right when he said that history and geography made us friends as well as neighbours, but Canada’s particular personality and interests do not always converge with our American cousins.

I am always reminded of the simple fact that the majority of U.S. senators come from states with less than 20 percent of the U.S. population: hence our deep trade challenges in softwood lumber, agriculture, and resources. American “exceptionalism” is deeply ingrained in its soul. Canada has no choice but to see itself as an inextricable part of the world itself. We are in the world and the world is in us.

David Dyment explores the dimensions of this unavoidable relationship with intelligence and gusto. His book will help us both to understand each other better.