Recently, Canada’s quiet existence has been disturbed by a new noisy neighbour. We have always been friendly and cooperative with the people next door, but now there are new people on the block and things have become a little testy. There have been loud protestations about where the property lines are and who owns what, and Canadians are shaking their heads.

The new American president’s repeated suggestions that the United States might claim Canada as its 51st state have not been well-received here. At first we could brush it off as a bad joke or tease, but as the days progressed the suggestion felt more threatening. Our leaders are preparing for counter-measures against proposed tariffs and asking us not to buy goods made in the USA. Some of my neighbours are changing vacation plans so as not to spend time and money there, and we are all keeping a cautious eye on the news.

This has caused me to analyze my loyalties because I love Canada but I also have family that I love in the United States. My family comes first, of course, but I also want to support whatever Canada does to maintain national unity.

As I was mulling this over, my attention was drawn to a section of a novel I was listening to and it all suddenly took on a new light. This is my transcription from the audiobook of The Grey Wolf, by Louise Penny:

“As the float plane banked and headed south to Montreal, Armand forced himself to look down at the vast, seemingly endless stretches of forests and water, and once again thanked God that his children and grandchildren lived in Quebec where the resources, while increasingly vulnerable, were still plentiful.

Canada might not be the most powerful nation on earth, but power was shifting from weapons to resources. And Canada was resource rich, which was shifting the balance of power. Where once the population had been dismissed as hewers of wood and drawers of water, servile and menial, now in this climate of change that description turned out to be a very good thing.

Canada had plenty of wood to hew and fresh water to draw, to drink. They just had to do a much better job of protecting it. What was that quote the abbot had said as he had hidden Langeloise’ map? “In a dry and parched land where there is no water …” There were more and more of those lands, those nations suffering terrible droughts, and while climate change had hit Canada, especially in the form of terrible wildfires, it had been felt less forcefully than in most other areas. Even in the nation to the south, once green and fertile land had become dry and parched. Rolling rivers had withered to a trickle. Times were becoming desperate; people were becoming desperate.”

Of course! These lightly-veiled threats from the south are not about land ownership so much as they are about access to resources. Trees and water are obviously abundant here, but less obvious are the rare minerals that the world now needs to keep our computers, cars, and spaceships working.

Power is shifting from weapons, which the United States has in abundance, to resources, which Canada has. Now that I see the president’s very public taunts in this light, it all makes a lot more sense. I still don’t like it, but I think I get it.