“This land was hammered from the shield of ice,
By winds that howled a lonely, fierce embrace.
But out of stone and snow, a spirit rose,
A stubborn will to endure, to survive.”
– Al Purdy, At the Magnetic North in The Cariboo Horses, 1968
All is far from quiet on the western front – or across the pond.
The expedient announcement of a ceasefire in the Middle East – one that came as a flat tyre – served as the optics for the uneasy shuffle of power in Washington, where the ambient comings and goings at the Office of the President reflect a more profound uncertainty.
Meanwhile, in the shadow of President-elect Donald Trump’s musings about annexing Greenland, Canada, and even the Panama Canal, echoes of historical absurdity collide with the spectre of American expansionism. His offhand remarks about claiming vast territories revive an old audacious fantasy rooted in Manifest Destiny but repackaged with a surreal, modern twist. Trump’s Greenland becomes an Arctic trophy, and the Panama Canal is a wistful nod to bygone imperial omnipotence. But his invocation of Canada cuts deeper. It stirs a peculiar undercurrent of the American psyche: the idea of Canada as unfinished business, a thread from the endless basics of the frontier.
The United States, a nation forged in the fires of revolution, owes its vast Dominion not solely to lofty ideals but to an insatiable appetite for land. Its history is a story of independence and relentless territorial ambition. The Louisiana Purchase, a masterstroke of 1803, doubled the nation’s breadth and set a template for expansion dressed as destiny. Florida was pried from Spain’s weakening grasp; Texas absorbed through blood and bravado, and Alaska procured in icy silence – all woven into the narrative of inevitability. These historical roots of American expansionism provide a deeper understanding of its impact on Canada.
Dressed in the garb of liberation, the Spanish-American War became a convenient pretext for empire. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were swept into American hands, and their annexation was a quiet proclamation that the Dominion did not need to respect the ocean’s boundaries. Each acquisition bore the hallmarks of conquest reimagined as providence, with Article II, Section 2 of the constitution providing a convenient framework for legitimising imperial claims. Treaties became swords and shields, turning conquest into doctrine and imperialism into identity.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ratified in 1848 at the close of the Mexican-American War, exemplifies the transformation of battlefield dominance into formal territorial claims. This agreement transferred a vast stretch of land from Mexico to the United States, including what are now Arizona, California, New Mexico, and parts of Nevada, Colorado, and Utah. While some lobbied for annexing all of Mexico, Congress restrained itself, opting for a ‘measured’ seizure that masked ambition with diplomacy.
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The story of America’s expanse is not one of mere happenstance but of relentless will, a pursuit both audacious and calculated, where borders are mutable, treaties elastic, and ambition boundless. Beneath its revolutionary rhetoric lies a truth shaped by conquest: a nation not just forged in liberty and relentlessly carved from others’ lands. This relentless pursuit of land, dressed in revolutionary rhetoric, casts a long shadow over America’s northern neighbour. Even in times of peace, the spectre of American expansionism has shaped Canadian policy and identity. Yet, Canada’s identity, defined by its resilience, stands firm in the face of such pressures.
“Pax Americana is behind us,” declared François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, in the waning days of 2020, his voice tinged with the weariness of a man bearing witness to tectonic shifts in the global order. What followed was less a morphing than a disintegration: the lofty ideal of America as a global steward contorted into “America First” and, later, hardened into the battle cry of “Make America Great Again.” The end of an era came not with thunderous collapse but with the grinding attrition of a once-vaunted vision, Atlanticism faltering under the weight of its brittle hypocrisies.
Justin Trudeau, once the gilded emblem of progressivism in an age of encroaching populism, now cuts the figure of a man out of time, a relic of a dream that crumbled beneath the widening chasm between rhetoric and reality. By 2021, the writing was clear enough for anyone willing to read it – except, it seemed, Trudeau himself. The descent was swift and unforgiving as his government faced unprecedented challenges and a changing political landscape.
Canada’s service economy limped forward as the pandemic’s grip loosened and the world began its uneven lurch toward normalcy. Trudeau’s government, faced with a labour shortfall, responded not with caution but with expansion – dramatically increasing low-skill immigration and resurrecting the Harper-era temporary worker programs with vigour. The international student pipeline swelled to bursting, nearly 67% larger, and with it came the predictable cascade of crises: a housing market strained to its breaking point, a healthcare system buckling under the influx. Communities groaned under the weight of this demographic deluge, while Trudeau’s government seemed unable – or unwilling – to stem the tide.
Headlines chronicled the unravelling with merciless regularity. Pierre Poilievre, Trudeau’s sharp-tongued Conservative nemesis, sensed blood in the water. His attacks were devastatingly precise, delivered with the crispness of a scalpel. Against Trudeau’s airy promises and increasingly hollow rhetoric, Poilievre’s barbs resonated with an electorate besieged by soaring costs and shrinking patience. Across Canada, disillusionment took root, fertile ground for the populist forces sweeping the globe. What was once an aberration in the Trumpian South now felt inevitable, a rising tide that brooked no border.
And so it was that the mockery began. “Governor Trudeau,” they called him, as though Canada had been reduced to a satellite state of its southern neighbour. At first, the jabs seemed nothing more than idle banter, a predictable riff in the theatre of politics. But the derision took on a darker edge when Trudeau rushed to Mar-a-Lago – Donald Trump’s gaudy Floridian fortress of power. Trudeau dismissed it all as a jest, but Trump was in no mood for levity. The former president escalated with characteristic bombast, threatening “economic coercion” and even floating the spectre of “Canada as America’s 51st state”. It was theatre, surely – but theatre with teeth.
As if to underscore the brazenness of his ambitions, Donald Trump Jr. made a theatrical visit to Greenland, the icy jewel in a kingdom that Trump had once infamously sought to buy. The provocation was apparent, and Denmark responded with its flourish. King Frederik, Denmark’s newly ascended monarch, took an unprecedented step, redesigning the royal coat of arms for the first time in half a millennium. Gone were the Nordic crowns, replaced with symbols of Greenland and the Faroe Islands – a defiant nod to unity in the face of encroachment and, perhaps, a subtle rejoinder to the ambitions of Mar-a-Lago’s resident.
In Canada, a beleaguered Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and his gasping Liberal Party brace for a shifting political landscape. With polls favouring the opposition led by Pierre Poilievre, the Liberals hastily prepare for a leadership contest, eager to counter a surging Conservative wave.
Meanwhile, the drumbeat of defiance grows louder – “Canada is not for sale” –as media outlets prepare Canadians for the fallout of Trump’s January 20 inauguration.
Yet, in the big picture, Canada is the quiet note that lingers beneath the thunderous crescendos of revolution. While America bled its way into existence, a tempestuous birth in fire and rebellion, Canada lingered in the shadows of history, a frostbitten chrysalis forming not through war but through whispers of parchment and seal. Its independence came not from musket balls fired in rage, but through the slow shuffle of constitutional papers, a colonial tango danced to the tune of empire. They called the Dominion – an empire’s child, not immensely grown but no longer tethered, a political spectre of the British monarchy that still drifts across the North.
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History, however, doesn’t blush at absurdities; it thrives on their utility. As Northrop Frye once argued, Canada’s literary and cultural imagination has always been shaped by the vastness of its landscape, an expanse that seems to flatten human ambition and demand quiet reflection. But this same vastness has made Canada, in the eyes of its southern neighbour, not a sovereign nation but a blank slate, a map awaiting correction. From the failed invasions of the War of 1812 to the fleeting Reciprocity Treaty and even War Plan Red – a 1930s U.S. military contingency for invading Canada – American policy has long flirted with the notion of its northern neighbour not as an equal but as an eventual acquisition.
During the American Civil War, John A. Macdonald feared the vulnerability of Canada’s borders. His worries weren’t misplaced; Montréal became a haven for Confederate spies and raiders, a covert theatre for Southern intrigue. These moments of tension reveal how deeply the latent threat of American expansionism has shaped Canada.
Trump’s rhetoric, unserious on the surface, rekindles this buried ambition – not as Manifest Destiny, but as imperial nostalgia dressed for the modern age.
Even today, Canada’s identity is a compromise. It remains a Dominion presided over by a Governor General, the distant shadow of a monarch lingering over its constitutional framework. As Margaret Atwood once quipped, Canada is a country haunted by its hesitance – always almost something, but never fully what it imagines itself to be.
While the United States sings its anthems of revolution, Canada endures as a quiet listener. Its independence unfolded not with the snapping of chains but with the gradual loosening of bonds – a nation born not in rebellion but in resilience. Northrop Frye’s insight still resonates: Canada’s story, like its land, is less about conquest and more about mapping the infinite. Its struggle is not against tyranny but against forgetting itself in the vastness. This enduring resilience is a testament to Canada’s ability to maintain its sovereignty in the face of American expansionism.
Canada’s survival is not defined by resistance but by its quiet refusal to vanish. It is a nation carved from compromise and endurance, proving that sovereignty can be a slow, steady fire. The threat has prompted a flurry of political activity and theatre of solidarity among Canadians. Beneath the surface of this consternation lies the enduring nature of Canada’s sovereignty, which instils a sense of security and confidence; however, it awaits its consecration by the political.
Narendra Pachkhédé is a critic, essayist and writer who splits his time between Toronto, London and Geneva.
