Canadians are fortunate to live in Canada, yet some immigrants here consider Canada to be their “second choice”. In other words, they were not able to emigrate directly to the United States. Some immigrants in Canada look longingly at the southern border and covet an “American” passport rather than a Canadian one. Having lived for years in both nations, the founder of Expat in Montreal finds such thinking misguided, and is not shy in explaining why.
Around the globe you’ll find people with bizarre notions of what it’s like to live in the States. There is no denying that for many of these people, life would in some ways be better if they emigrated to the States from afar. But if they come expecting the “American Dream”, they are instead likely to find what Americans are increasingly finding: a mythology that does not live up to the hype. While that nation is surely experiencing progress in some respects, it is simultaneously in decline.
“America, love it or leave it ” was a pro-war rallying cry during the Vietnam War. Apparently quite a few U.S. citizens chose the latter option, although not because of this hostile and intellectually devoid binary slogan. At least 30,000–40,000 (some estimates go up to 125k) sought sanctuary in Canada to avoid being shipped off to a wrongheaded war. In 2017, the founder of Expat in Montreal also came up to Canada from the States after considering the today largely unspoken but seemingly undying dichotomous ultimatum.
For at least the past decade, the “United” States has been at war with itself. The nation has actualized as a toxic cesspool of depraved propaganda since 2015, shaking the foundations of democracy. The well was poisoned, probably irreversibly. We now witness a retrograde, dystopic land where a very significant segment of the population rejects uncomfortable truths; a land where intellectuals are maligned, where a free press is “the enemy of the people”, and where science is routinely devalued for political purposes. The disciples of demagogues wear ignorance as a badge of honor, preferring to live in an alternate reality.
Canadians are fortunate to live in Canada, and most express relief at living on the northern side of the northern U.S. border in these troubled times. Yet because Canada is vulnerable to making the same mistakes as its southern neighbor, this website in part serves as a cautionary tale. Disinformation, white nativism, scapegoating, and Orwellian lowest common denominator populism are a few of the red flags signaling a malevolent ideology that — similar to a virus — national borders can’t contain. The hope is that more Canadians realize the stakes as we watch cognitive failure seep upwards from the States.
More on that later, certainly, but for now: Hello. The founder of Expat in Montreal spent a considerable amount of time in various North American cities and chose Montreal above them all. All posts are written by him or other immigrants. This site is for anyone who loves Montreal, or anyone who wants to know why people do. And most of all, it’s for every immigrant who feels lucky to live in Canada.
Enjoy the read!
victor@expatinmontreal dot com
La Petite liseuse, a bronze by Lewis Pagé (Québec City library)