Wolves at the Door

For more than a year now, I have spent an exorbitant amount of time poring over articles and opinion pieces about Canada-U.S. relations, with a particular emphasis on the strategies of a trade war. I have not studied economics since my first year of university, but at this rather late stage of life, the anxiety-inducing word “tariff” looms large in my consciousness. I expect I have a lot of company.

The dominant place of economic terminology in our public discourse about threats to our sovereignty is natural enough, given our history. Classic works, such as Harold Innis’s The Fur Trade in Canada and Donald Creighton’s The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, long ago drew the profound connection between trade and Canada’s coming into being. Yet I also suspect that I am not alone in seeking some meaning in the current existential crisis facing Canada that transcends commerce, some greater clarity about the relationship of our future (or, for that...