In Ottawa, they’ve had a long, dry, hot summer, so needless to say it rained cats and dogs for the 19 hours that Taoiseach Micheál Martin visited Canada. Nobody minded.
It made for many (many!) quips about the Irish bringing the weather. And after the steam and noise of New York City, where Donald Trump turned the pressure cooker up on the entire world with a bombastic lecture at the United Nations, Canada felt like a different world. Cooler. Calmer. Kinder. Quieter. Extraordinarily friendly – but in a low-key way.
Canada has always been sufficiently secure in its sense of self to bat away the endless brickbats and jokes about its staid, dependable persona. “Like a loft apartment above a really great party,” Robin Williams said once, and with affection. The thing about parties; they have to end.
Because he embarked on a long, uncharacteristically low-key tour of through the Canadian provinces, Oscar Wilde is often attributed as the wit behind one of the most notorious cheap shots slung at the country: “I went to Canada once, but it was closed.”
For Canadians, relaxation comes naturally, even when the Taoiseach brings the rain
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In Ottawa, it was rainy but the bars and restaurants were still open. It would have seemed foolish and even unpatriotic to trek to Canada for less than 24 hours and not at least have a drink.
In Deacons, a low-key shrine to Scottish whisky- and Scotland in general- the barman wore a kilt. The array of whiskies imported from the Scottish distilleries was impressive so he seemed a bit puzzled when asked if he could do a White Russian.
“Gotta check for milk,” he said. He rummaged in the fridge, found some, whipped up the cocktail. “Good?” he asked and offered a brief, pleased nod at the confirmation that it was delish. No wasted words.
In the bar, the music was low and the voices lower. Just an hour in the country and the glaring difference between the United States and Canada was already obvious. The Americans pursue relaxation with the same vigour as they do happiness. For Canadians, it’s a natural state of being.
Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney has, residing deep in his soul, a Mayo man’s loquaciousness and fondness for conversation and that’s where he keeps it buried.
Outside Rideau Cottage, the historic redbrick residence for Canada’s premiers, we stood in the early Thursday morning rain under umbrellas supplied by the hosts. The sound of the rain falling on trees was peaceful. It’s a nice cottage but the opposite of flash or ostentatious. In the circular drive, two faded basketball keys and free throw lines had been painted on to the tar, one full size, the other for a junior player. We speculated that the lines were a remnant of the Trudeau residency in the cottage.
Eventually, PM Carney appeared at the doorstep and looked to the heavens. He smiled and waved but, true to form, he did not speak. He greeted Martin and the pair disappeared inside for a breakfast of trout and porridge, and it’s tempting to believe that Carney stirred the Flahavan’s progress oatlets himself.
On the television, the broadcasters were discussing a national crisis: the decline of Canada Post, which last made a profit in 2017 and has since accumulated some $5 billion in losses.
It’s an epic, even romantic concept: delivering post through territories as remote and immense as Canada’s. It takes 71 hours to drive from the easternmost point, Cape Spear in St John’s, to Boundary Peak on the western border.
Twenty years ago, Canadian postmen delivered 5.5 billion letters a year. Now, it’s down to two billion. Worse, over the past five years, the official postal service has been ruined by couriers.
During the Irish visit, Martin paid tribute to the generosity the Canadians exhibited to the Irish who arrived during the Famine. How many letters and parcels originating from Ireland have been carried through the Canadian wilderness since then?
Canadian internal flights are expensive because the old habit of lighting out and driving formidable distances and terrain dies hard. It’s about five hours from Ottawa to Quebec but locals speak of it though it’s a short jaunt – that they’d pop up for a coffee. So you don’t have to be long in Canada to get a sense of the sheer depth and immensity of the land mass and, therefore, of the cosmic gall behind Trump’s “51st state” insult.
One of the best things you could ever hope to read about the place is Guy Lawson’s Hockey Nights, an obscure, wonderful essay from 1999 about a season the author spent following the antics and misfortunes of the minor hockey league team in Flin Flon, Manitoba.
Early on, he gives the reader an idea of where this hard-drinking, hockey-obsessed hamlet resides on the national map. As a paragraph it provides glittering proof that Canada, like The Dude, will abide, and survive the extreme mood swings of its noisier neighbour.
“Described by Canada: The Rough Guide as an ‘ugly blotch on a barren rocky landscape’, Flin Flon, population 7,500, straddles the border between Manitoba and Saskatchewan, 90 miles north of its nearest neighbour, The Pas, 500 miles up from Winnipeg, and a 13-hour drive due north of Minot, North Dakota. In this part of the world, Flin Flon is literally the end of the line: the two-lane highway that connects it to the rest of North America circles the perimeter of the town and then, as if shocked to its senses, rejoins itself and hightails it back south.”
Yes, Canada will be fine.
