On a Friday in September, greater than 100 Individuals boarded boats within the San Juans and set sail for British Columbia’s Salt Spring Island. The flotilla had a easy purpose: to attach with their island neighbors that occur to be separated by a global border. A 3-day pageant spurred dialog and sparked new friendships.
In a time when President Donald Trump’s commerce conflict has pushed the US and Canada aside, the flotilla introduced Canadians and Individuals collectively. It confirmed that grassroots efforts can improve the deeply cross-stitched cultural ties between the U.S. and Canada.
The Canadians of Salt Spring, for his or her half, had been completely satisfied to oblige a request from the all-volunteer Orcas Island Yacht Membership to come back for a go to. An “overwhelming sure,” was the Salt Spring Chamber of Commerce’s reply, stated its president, Jason Roy-Allen.
The ensuing “Hands Across the Water” was just like the inverse of a global incident. Panel discussions highlighted shared challenges like housing affordability, the well being of the Salish Sea and the plight of Indigenous peoples who existed right here lengthy earlier than a U.S.-Canada border. Yoga lessons, soccer video games and bike rides fueled the camaraderie.
“This can be a second the place exhibiting friendship is definitely a fairly radical act,” Ross Newport, an Orcas Island resident and conceiver of the flotilla idea, stated in the course of the pageant’s closing ceremony Sept. 21.
Newport famous chambers of commerce, yacht golf equipment and different native organizations may not be what folks “usually consider as main the battle for decency.”
However right here we’re.
This sort of citizen diplomacy is what’s wanted if there’s any hope in sustaining the bonds that created the world’s longest undefended border within the first place.
The political backdrop is stalled commerce talks between U.S. and Canadian officers. Trump terminated them a couple of month in the past over an anti-tariff commercial funded by Ontario’s authorities.
However Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, a politician on the opposite finish of the 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border, stated just lately he was much less frightened concerning the commerce spat.
“The deeper downside is the cultural break,” King stated on the Halifax Worldwide Safety Discussion board, as quoted by CBC. “The concept that Canadians don’t consider Individuals as their mates and neighbors, however as adversaries.”
It’s the U.S. president who’s working level on “the dumbest trade war in history,” declared The Wall Road Journal’s editorial board. Trump has hiked tariffs on many Canadian items by 25% whereas at occasions threatening to annex the nation. These aren’t simply existential threats: many in Canada have responded by boycotting American items. Residents are afraid they could possibly be detained on the border.
The result’s plummeting border crossings — down 25% total this 12 months, a very damaging development for communities located alongside the economically interdependent borderlands.
President Ronald Reagan as soon as said that “peace isn’t the absence of battle, however the means to deal with battle by peaceable means.” The U.S.-Canadian relationship, which constructed the longest peaceable border in human historical past, can endure. The query is who amongst us will rise to the event and type new bonds that may final past at this time’s political whims.
The onus is on Individuals — and people of us in Washington state — to succeed in out to our northern neighbors. It could be so simple as planning a B.C. go to or as grand as connecting to a brand new sister metropolis. Both means, the cultural bonds between the U.S. and Canada mustn’t be severed. It is going to take work — and extra palms throughout the border.
