The Beaver Has Landed

There’s much talk these days about Canada’s “Cool North” providing a sort of escape valve for Americans overwhelmed by climate change, world events, off-kilter right-wing presidents, and their nation’s divided self. I could sense this “warming up” to the cool northern neighbour happening as early as 1967, when the Vietnam War sent many young men slipping across the forty-ninth parallel, and again in 1998, when I was invited to be the Distinguished Professor of Canadian Culture at Western Washington University in Bellingham, on the West Coast twenty minutes south of the border. I quickly accepted the invitation but assured them that “Extinguished Professor” would have been a more appropriate title.

The university president’s original residence, a modest bungalow, now called Canada House, contained the offices of the program director and a secretary, as well as meeting spaces for faculty devoted to things Canadian. Several of my colleagues turned out to be former...