The federal election is just days old, but suddenly our attention has shifted slightly from the impact of Trump’s tariffs to the Canadian electorate deciding which federal political party is the most able to deal with the U.S. president’s territorial aspirations to make Canada the 51st state.
She hasn’t repeated this since the election writ was issued on Sunday, but Elizabeth May delivered a creative countermeasure to Trump’s insult a few months ago.
“You think we want to be the 51st state? Nah,” she said in December, offering California, Oregon and Washington the chance to become Canada’s 11th province. “Have we got a deal for you,” she suggested to Americans. “Universal free health care … safer streets, strict gun laws and free abortions … and a chance to get rid of all these states that always vote Democrat.”
Meantime, I’ve done a little research into the history of annexation, such as the kind President Trump has threatened against Panama, Greenland and Canada.
The oldest form of land acquisition were the ancient empires in what are now Europe and Asia. In 3100 BC, the Egyptians conquered most of the Middle East by force. Similarly, a thousand years later, the Chinese dynasties gobbled up the Far East.
In 800 BC, Alexander the Greek occupied two million square miles of eastern Europe; and then Julius Caesar led armies east to the Egypt and west to the British Isles with his declaration in 47 BC: “Veni. Vidi. Vici,” (I came. I saw. I conquered.)
In modern times, nations invented defensive strategies against territorial land grabs, called alliances. Fear of expansion by Russia forced Austria and Hungary into an alliance in the early 20th century. While fear of German expansion prompted the Triple Entente among Britain, France and Russia.
But when the Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated in 1914, alliances forced all of Europe into the Great War. And then the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 reshaped Europe, leading to the Second World War. The post-war North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has prevented annexation from triggering a Third World War … so far.
Meanwhile, as I wrote last week, the United States has exercised its own brand of annexation. In 1845, U.S. journalist John O’Sullivan wrote in the New York Democratic Review, “Manifest Destiny (is) America’s belief in the God-given mission to lead the world in the transition to democracy.”
That meant owning and occupying North America from sea to sea – including attempts to take over the British Northwest Territories (Canada) in the 1860s; the quick purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million (that’s less than two cents per acre); and the annexation of Hawaii as a land settlement with Spain at the end of the Spanish-American war in 1898.
That brings us to Donald Trump’s latest initiative to use trade tariffs as a pretext to his amalgamation of Canada by economic force.
Which prompted Jean Chretien to respond, “What could make you think that Canadians would ever give up the best country in the world – and make no mistake, this is what we are – to join the United States?”
It was the 91-year-old former prime minister’s way of saying, “Piss off, Donald!”
Now, if ever we needed a trump card – pun intended – to defend Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, we might just have one to catch the annexation-focused U.S. president off guard.
It appears the Trump family has some pretty deep real estate connections in the Canadian North. In 1897, a young German immigrant to America, then living in Seattle, heard claims of gold discovered in Yukon Territory. Friedrich Trump sold all his belongings, raced to the Klondike and in the booming border town of Bennett, B.C., opened a canteen called the Arctic Restaurant & Hotel.
About 1900, he relocated his thriving business to Whitehorse.
“He made quick money on booze, and he was a good cook,” wrote Pat Ellis in her book Financial Sourdough Starter Stories.
However, it turned out the Arctic sold more than booze and food. A reporter at the then Yukon Sun noted, “For single men, the Arctic has the best restaurant, but I would not advise respectable women to go there.”
In other words, the Trump empire owes some of its fortune to a saloon and brothel, a portion of which still stands in the Chilkoot Trail National Historic Site.
And if the annexation-crazed president cares at all about maintaining his mighty real estate legacy, Parks Canada may have just handed Canadian sovereignty its most valuable bargaining chip.
We’ll preserve your historic brothel. You keep your hands off our Northwest Passage.