Tourists line up to board a tourist bus in downtown Mexico City on August 2, 2023.DANIEL SLIM/Getty Images
“We’re not themmmmm!”
That’s what they hollered as the elevator doors slid shut.
We’re in Mexico. They’re Americans. We’re Canadians. That much had been established within the short ride from the main floor to the third floor. We step out of the elevator in the moment that our nationalities are identified. We will likely never see each other again. But they want us to know something. Something important.
Canadians are leading the charge on a tanking U.S. travel industry
They’re sorry.
The threadbare cliché is that we Canadians have to apologize at least 10 times a day or we lose our citizenship. But the shoe is on the other foot now. Judging from highly non-academic, hugely anecdotal, entirely personal polling, it’s the Americans who are apologizing now.
It’s heartfelt. It’s earnest. It’s shamefaced. And it’s instant.
It’s like this every time. Everywhere.
Author Jane Macdougall on a recent trip to Mexico City.Supplied
The polls might say otherwise, but the Americans I’ve encountered over the past months were not in favour of Trump’s administration. Who knows? Maybe they were faking it. But why bother? There are limitless diversions to default to. Just choose from a smattering of the things Americans know about Canada: the hockey, the igloos, the Ryans. Americans may not be clear on softwood tariffs or automotive supply chain issues, but those icons are front and centre when it comes to pop quizzes about Canada.
The nature of the apologies is interesting. They’re not some social reflex. They are freighted with sincerity and laced with empathy. It’s like both parties were swept up in a historic event that went sideways. Like everywhere you go, someone is apologizing for backing up over your bicycle.
At the Ballet Folklorico performance at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City I sat next to a young woman and her family. We floated a few Spanish phrases and then, upon hearing our mangled Spanish, I asked her, “So, where are you from?”
“Oregon,” she answered. “Where are you from?”
“Canada,” was my reply.
With that she turned her whole body to face me, one hand raised to her mouth – the universal signal of grief – like I had said “cancer,” not Canada.
“Oh, I am just so sorry. I really just don’t know what to say.”
I make the now standard social noises that involve words like NAFTA and blindsided.
She launches into, “The 51st state?! It’s just so rude!” I nod in agreement. She tells me that she’s an elementary school teacher in Oregon. It’s a big agricultural state, she says. I learn that they grow lots of berries and almost all of the hazelnuts produced in the U.S., as well as most of the Christmas trees. She teaches many immigrant kids whose parents work producing those crops. But now, she says, if the kids attend school at all, they come late and leave early. They worry about raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They worry that their parents won’t be there to collect them at the end of the school day. There are a lot of tears, she tells me. They worry.
It’s early days of the new administration. The tariffs have been threatened but not implemented. I’ve placed an order through Wayfair. Yes, an American website. There’s a problem so I’m going to have to speak with an agent. A woman with a Southern accent comes on the line. During a lull in the process, I ask her: “So, where are you located?”
“Texas. And where ya’ll calling from?”
I tell her.
There’s a pause. “Oh, I see that now – the .ca.”
Without skipping a beat she says, “Honey, I am just so very sorry.”
We both know what she’s talking about.
I say thank you. I tell her that Canada feels betrayed by the recent turn of events and she concurs, “Yes, it’s a may-ass. Just a may-ass.”
For those of you who don’t speak Texan, that means “mess.”
Howard Bromfield is a professor at Harvard Medical School. We’re e-mailing about his recent book, which examines the issues around indulged children. When he learns that I’m writing from Canada, he thanks me for “not hating me as an American.” He goes on to say, “South Park’s American-Canadian war was funny. What’s happening now is not. We are sorry, Canada.”
Back in Mexico, a man asks me the, “Where are you from?” question. I think he figures I’m American and he’s pleased when he discovers I’m not.
“Ohhhh … Canada!,” he says. “We’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other, aren’t we? Salsa and syrup!” he announces with a twinkle in his eye. As the twinkle recedes, he adds:
“They will live to regret this.”
I’m pretty sure the “they” is the “them” the people in the elevator were referring to. According to numerous polls in the U.S., the majority of Americans say they oppose what Donald Trump is doing. And according to just about every American comedian or talk-show host, the majority of Americans are red-faced about the Trump administration. Kind of like that time back in high school when your friend’s dad stormed into the rec room and hollered that it was time for everyone to go home but it wasn’t even 9 p.m. You thought the dad was kinda out there, but you didn’t blame your friend.
Jane Macdougall is a writer based in Vancouver.
