My Two Countries

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …

I am an immigrant. This is not to say I have much in common with the multitudes who embarked for the shores of the United States in centuries eighteen through twenty. I was not part of a tired, poor, or huddled mass, as described in the famous sonnet on the Statue of Liberty. I was not fleeing persecution, seeking fortune, or looking to start a new life. I wasn’t even following a girl. You often hear people describe the beginning of a love affair like this: I wasn’t really looking for anyone. In fact, I had decided to swear off relationships for a while. But then, out of the blue, I met this person. I thought he/she was a little odd at first, but something made me stop and have a conversation. Thirty-two years ago I had no real interest in moving to the United States. But, the United States had an interest in me.

It began this way. In September 1989 I started a career as a geophysicist in the oil and gas business. By May of the next year, I was working in the Calgary office of Unocal Corporation. Unocal, formerly Union Oil of California, was formed on October 17th, 1890, with the merger of three Southern California oil companies, none of which had any affiliation with Standard Oil. For the next two years I worked on exploration projects in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. Life was good. Several of my best friends from college had also moved to Calgary, I had expanded my circle of friends through work, soccer, and skiing, and there were some cousins around as well. On winter evenings I moonlighted as a ski instructor and race coach, and winter weekends were spent skiing in the nearby mountains.

On a warm, summer Friday in August 1992, I joined some friends from work for lunch. We strolled down to the Stephen Avenue mall, ate a sandwich, and watched the lunch crowd walk back and forth. We returned to the office a little early, and gathered in a small, sparse conference room to visit before returning to our offices. There was a newspaper on the table, and I leaned back in a chair and paged through it while the others talked. I leaned back further, crossed my feet on the edge of the table. The vice-president of exploration walked in the room. The lunch hour was not over, but the VP was a strait-laced fellow and we all stiffened a little. I felt more uncomfortable than the others as my comportment was decidedly more relaxed. He looked at me and said, “Trevor, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure,” I answered, and he stood there while I lifted my feet off the table and set them on the floor. The others in the room cast sideways glances and stayed silent. He waited for me to walk into the hall and as he followed, he suggested we go to my office. He shut my office door as I sat in my chair, then sat down in the guest chair on the other side of my desk. My face felt hot. I wasn’t aware of any imminent staff reductions, but Unocal had recently hired McKinsey Corporation to help them improve their business. Perhaps I was the first.

The veep got straight to the point. “One of the recommendations that McKinsey has made to us is to make sure that we place talented employees in the locations where they can do the most good. You’ve indicated on your performance appraisals that you would consider an international transfer. Is that correct?”

I nodded, not sure where the conversation was going, but at least beginning to feel that it wasn’t going to end with a pink slip.

“We’ve been going over staffing requirements around the world and would like you to move to our Gulf Coast office in Lafayette, Louisiana.”

“Okay,” I answered. “What would I be doing there?”

“The assignment is for a development geophysicist with one of the Gulf of Mexico asset groups. It could be eastern Gulf, western Gulf, coastal waters—that part I don’t know.”

I played it cool on the outside but could already feel an inner turmoil. One part of me was keenly interested in the opportunity. I knew the Lafayette office was large and well-funded, and the idea of working on projects with real impact was appealing. On the other hand, I would be leaving behind a strong and growing social network liberally sprinkled with great friends and family, and sports and recreation activities that were an important part of my life. “When do you need an answer,” I asked.

“It’s not set in stone, but we’d like you to let us know something by the end of next week.”

In the first paragraph of this essay, I wrote that at the time of these events, moving to the United States was not something I wanted to do. This is not to say I had a strong aversion to the idea. It was only that I was happy with my life in Calgary and wasn’t thinking about altering it. But the fact remains that on those aforementioned performance appraisals, there was a follow-up question to the one that recorded your thoughts about transfers. This question was conditional on your first answer, and it asked: if you want, or would consider a transfer to a different office, where do you want to go? On each of the three appraisals I filled out in the Calgary office, I indicated two locations—Lafayette, Louisiana and Anchorage, Alaska. Anchorage was easy to explain. It had a ski area. Lafayette was not so easy to explain. I knew the office was busy—that was one reason. The Acadian connection back to Canada was another, along with the exotic, subtropical strangeness of the geography and climate. And perhaps it was just God whispering to me, which one never really hears when it’s happening.

A week of deliberation with family, friends, and myself produced no serious objections beyond losing easy access to skiing and my family. I didn’t have a girlfriend. I told them yes.

In an interesting coincidence, the day I flew from Calgary to Lafayette was October 17th, 1992, which was also the 102nd birthday of the company I worked for. Upon arrival I found an easy transition. The office had a large contingent of people my age from all over the United States—Louisiana, Iowa, Ohio, Texas, California, Tennessee, New York, and Wisconsin. There were a few foreigners as well, from places like the U.K. and Norway. Within a couple of weeks, I had a circle of friends that rivaled the one I left behind. One of the fellows ran a soccer team—I joined. Some others played league volleyball—I joined. On Fridays we met at Downtown Alive, a weekly free concert series, and then went to DeanO’s or Bisbano’s for pizza. We traveled together for ski trips, beach vacations, and volleyball tournaments. In time, I met the woman I would marry, and my original conception of a three to five year posting turned into something open-ended, with no plans or thoughts of moving “home.” On July 4th, 2010, in the grand entrance hall of the World War Two museum in New Orleans, I swore an oath and became a proud citizen of the United States. My small and original set of “cons”—losing easy access to skiing and to family—have proved to be the only things that can spark a tinge of regret. It would be nice to drive to the mountains for the weekend like I used to, and it would be very nice if I could go to my mom’s house for a cup of coffee a few times a week.

As of this writing, three to five years is approaching thirty-two years. My wife and I have two grown sons, and I’m now about as close to the end of my career as I was to its beginning when I moved here. I often wonder: would I think and reason differently if I had spent my whole life in Canada?

The differences between the two countries themselves are both superficial and profound, and I think I can capture a bit of that dichotomy with a memory of a conversation that took place between a few members of my family. One of my first cousins on my father’s side of the family is a physician, now retired, and she married a man from Michigan. They have lived in the Detroit area for decades. Way back in the 1980s, on the occasion of a family reunion in Outlook, Saskatchewan, my father and one of my uncles had a discussion with Dave, the American husband of my cousin. They discussed whether it was appropriate for a police officer to have the lawful ability to stop a driver in a vehicle without probable cause. Dad and my uncle were of the opinion that law officers should have that authority, and Dave was adamant that they shouldn’t. “What’s the problem if you’re not doing anything wrong?” asked Dad and Uncle. “That’s exactly the problem,” answered Dave. “You’re not doing anything wrong! If they have the legal authority to stop you when you’re not breaking the law, what comes next? These boundaries must be defined.”

I didn’t participate in that conversation. I happened to be sitting nearby, and I listened as they debated. I don’t know why something so inconsequential stuck in my memory, and remains, forty years after it happened. Perhaps, once again, it was God whispering to me, and me not hearing.

Canada’s journey to independence happened in three stages. On July 1st, 1867, the British parliament united three of its colonies—Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick—into a self-governing entity called the Dominion of Canada. The legislation that created the Dominion was the British North America Act. In the years following the act, expansionists in the government pushed to expand the country and secured a confederation that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, just like the United States. In 1931, Great Britain gave all its dominions—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and others—full legal autonomy and equal standing with Great Britain and each other. And finally, in 1982, the Constitution Act of the Canadian parliament provided the country with a governing document fully its own, no longer dependent on the British parliament for amendments. Queen Elizabeth delivered the document to Ottawa on April 17th, 1982. Some high school friends and I were part of the throng that cheered the Queen’s motorcade as she made her way to Parliament Hill for the ceremony. The province of Quebec was the lone holdout that refused to support the constitutional proposal that was sent to Great Britain, and as guns fired in a military salute, we joked that they were shelling the city of Hull, Quebec, which is just across the Ottawa River from the Parliament buildings.

The boys and I, and Koda the Magnificent on Canada Day, 2017. (Just out for a rip are ya bud … just rockin’ plaid jackets — IYKYK)

The Constitution of Canada contains a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, similar in character to the Bill of Rights that accompanies the U.S. Constitution. There are a few differences. Section one of the Charter reads as follows.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

There is also a “notwithstanding” clause that allows Parliament and provincial legislatures to pass laws that are insulated from constitutional challenge. Such laws sunset after five years but can be renewed. The principal user of the “notwithstanding” clause has been the province of Quebec, which has used it to declare the supremacy of the Quebec Charter of Rights since it did not consent to the 1982 agreement. Quebec has also used the clause to promote the French language, with laws that prohibit the use of English on signs, despite the fact that the country recognizes two official languages.

In these two sections one can recognize the malleability of the Canadian Charter—subject only to such reasonable limits, notwithstanding—as opposed to the Bill of Rights, whose prescriptions come with boundaries more rigidly defined—the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Prime Minister at the time of the repatriation of the Canadian constitution, and father of the current feckless Prime Minister, congratulated the framers of the new document for “its absence of principles, ideas, or other frills …” A 1992 analysis of the differences between the federalisms of Canada and the United States by Martha Field, a Harvard Law professor, concluded that constitutional law in the United States is characterised by “legalisms”, and “a carefully worked-out hierarchy of rights,” while the same in Canada is characterized by “political flexibility, … negotiation and adjustment, and sharing of power.”

There was a time—a younger me—when I valued flexibility and negotiation over legalisms and boundaries. But that was before I understood that one person’s reasonable limit is another’s radical extreme, and before I perceived the wisdom in William F. Buckley’s famous quote:

I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

If you take Buckley’s comment and apply it to Canadian society in particular, I recommend adding an additional proviso to the sentence. It would go something like this: “I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University, especially if the society’s governing document contains the phrase, subject only to such reasonable limits.” As a worldly intellectual, I suspect Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a fan of the reasonable limits language for reasons he would not disclose in public. Left unsaid was the belief held by Monsieur Trudeau that he, and others like him, were the best arbiters of “reasonable.”

In the book “Intellectuals and Society,” author Thomas Sowell conducts a “study of the influence of intellectuals,” and in particular “a study of their influence where they have been freest to exert that influence, namely in modern democratic nations.” He writes:

At the heart of the social vision prevalent among contemporary intellectuals is the belief that there are “problems” created by existing institutions and that “solutions” to these problems can be excogitated by intellectuals … In short, intellectuals have seen themselves not simply as an elite—in the passive sense in which large landowners, rentiers, or holders of various sinecures might qualify as elites—but as an anointed elite, people with a mission to lead others in one way or another to better lives.

Those whose specific ideas or general vision are different—the benighted—are often treated as unworthy obstacles to progress, nuisances to be disregarded, circumvented, or discredited, rather than as people on the same moral and intellectual plane, whose arguments are to be engaged factually and logically.

Trusting words like “reasonable limits” and “notwithstanding” is like dying wealthy without a last will and testament and trusting that your heirs will still be speaking to each other after they negotiate the settlement of your estate. The following is also from Intellectuals and Society.

If the law depends on the knowledge, wisdom and virtue of surrogate decision-makers, then it is easy to imagine that it is up to those decision-makers to shape laws that are “fair,” “compassionate,” or guided by a sense of “social justice.” But, since these are all undefined words, malleable in the hands of those with verbal virtuosity, such a concept of law is wholly incompatible with the kind of law desired by those who wish the law to provide a dependable framework of rules, within which independent decisions can be made by millions of people working out their mutual accommodations among themselves.

Which is not to say that the United States Bill of Rights, even with its more definite boundaries, is immune from efforts to interpret its language in ways that seek to impose “reasonable limits” on certain behaviors. The administrative state, egged on and supported by the intellectual community, constantly seeks to expand, sending its tentacles ever deeper into our everyday lives. What to eat, what to drive, who to hire, how to address others, what medicine to inject into our bodies, what machines we’re allowed to purchase to heat, cool, and power our homes. All this in the name of a better world of course. And don’t think about speaking out against these prescriptions. Witness the shabby treatment of world-class doctors and scientists who dare to question scientific orthodoxy around climate change or the covid response.

Many who emigrate to new countries, especially when they move from countries that are less free to countries more generous in that aspect, become passionate participants and advocates in their new culture. A colleague, now retired, moved with her family from communist Poland to New Orleans in the 1970s. Once established in their new home, and outfitted with a station wagon, her father took their family on long road trips every summer. It was important to him that his children know not just their new city, but the diverse threads of geography and culture that wove the kaleidoscope fabric of their new country. When I moved from Canada to the United States I was not, like my colleague from Poland, celebrating a level of freedom and opportunity that was vastly different from what I already knew. My support and passion for the United States stems more from the wisdom I have come to value in its founding documents, and their greater likelihood of preserving the freedom to live life on terms of your own choosing. The Canadian constitution tends to deal with people in the abstract—a reasonable person—where the U.S. constitution is more cognizant of real, individual differences, seeks to protect them, and trusts that the common good will come from that protection.

Having two countries in your life is like having two, long love affairs. You’re in the midst of one, content, no thoughts of leaving, and then an earthquake occurs, and the old, familiar face is replaced by another. The sudden rupture leaves you feeling disconnected for a while, reluctant to pledge fully to a marriage not entirely of your own choosing. But it can happen that people forced together, near strangers at first, find that their betrothed, despite what they might have heard, is imbued with qualities—compassion, strength, vigor, beauty, intellect—that delight and awaken a new, perhaps truer version of their soul. This is what the United States has done to me.

Canada and the United States celebrate their national birthdays just a few days apart. Canada Day is July 1st, and Independence Day is July 4th. I am grateful for both my countries. Both our sons have attended the College of Engineering at Louisiana State University (LSU). Go Tigers! We’re proud of them. Our eldest went on and recently graduated with a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. On our first visit to Pittsburgh, when we moved the fils to his sketchy, shared house near the Carnegie Mellon campus, I learned that the city of Pittsburgh produced as much steel during World War II as all the Axis powers combined. Is it any wonder we won that war? I think of my evolution from Canadian citizen to United States citizen in terms of the two-stage process required to make steel. The inital combination of iron ore and coke in a blast furnace produces pig iron. Subsequent refinement with heat and oxidation produces steel, and the introduction of other elements creates alloys with specific characteristics—superior strength, corrosion resistance, weldability. Canada is the forge that took raw ingredients and melded them into a brittle iron, a material of limited use, but vast potential. I entered the United States as this chrysalis version of myself and found myself refined and made closer to whole by the energy and principles of the great American experiment.

Happy Canada Day. Happy Independence Day.

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