Canada Is a Beaver. Polite Until You Mess With Its Dam.

Trump thought he was picking a fight with a polite little country. He forgot our national animal has enormous teeth, a lousy attitude, and a memory for trouble.

I’ve been thinking about beavers.

Yes, beavers.

Those bucktoothed little construction workers we put on our nickel.

Turns out, we Canadians may have picked the perfect national animal.

A beaver looks harmless enough. Minds its own business. Builds a nice little home. Keeps the water where it belongs.

But mess with its dam, and you’ve got a problem.

And that got me thinking about Donald Trump.

I suspect the man has never met a Canadian beaver.

Which might explain a few things.

Never Underestimate a Beaver

Here’s a true story.

In the Czech Republic, government officials spent seven years planning a project to restore wetlands.

Seven years.

Plans, paperwork, permits, meetings. All the usual government machinery.

Then a colony of beavers moved in and built dams that accomplished the job themselves.

The estimated savings were roughly 1.2 million euros.

No committee meetings. No consultants. No press conferences.

Just a bunch of rodents with big teeth who apparently got tired of waiting for somebody to do something.

I like those beavers.

They remind me of Canadians.

We don’t always make a lot of noise.

But when we decide something needs doing, we can be remarkably stubborn about getting it done.

Remember the Great Canadian Ketchup Rebellion?

Back in 2013, Heinz announced it was closing its century-old plant in Leamington, Ontario.

About 740 permanent jobs were on the chopping block.

Generations of Canadian families had worked there.

Heinz decided it made better business sense to produce its ketchup elsewhere.

Fair enough. Companies make business decisions.

But here’s the thing.

So do customers.

When French’s started promoting ketchup made with tomatoes grown around Leamington, Canadians noticed.

And started buying it.

Lots of it.

French’s was an American brand, too.

Didn’t matter.

Canadians weren’t suddenly refusing everything American.

They were supporting the company that was supporting Canadian farmers.

That’s a distinction worth remembering.

We weren’t angry at ketchup.

We were angry about what happened to our neighbours.

And Canadians have surprisingly long memories when it comes to that sort of thing.

Then Along Came Donald Trump

Trump looked north and apparently saw 40-some million people who would politely accept whatever Washington decided to throw at them.

Tariffs?

Surely we’d complain for a few days and get over it.

Talk about making Canada the 51st state?

Just a little joke between friends, right?

Threaten our industries, insult our country, and treat our sovereignty like something negotiable?

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, Donald, here’s something you might want to know.

Canadians can say sorry when somebody else steps on our foot.

But that doesn’t mean we’ll keep standing there waiting for the other shoe.

We’ve started changing where we shop.

Where we vacation.

Which products we buy.

Which businesses we support.

And, perhaps most importantly, which countries we can trust.

That’s not a temper tantrum.

That’s a change in behaviour.

And changes in behaviour can outlast the politicians who caused them.

We Don’t Have to Hate Americans

This is the part I wish more Americans understood.

Most Canadians don’t hate Americans.

We have family there. Friends there. Decades of shared history.

We grew up watching the same television programs, listening to the same music, and cheering for some of the same hockey teams.

Well, maybe not the Leafs.

Even Canadian loyalty has its limits.

But something has changed.

When your neighbour spends years telling you how valuable your friendship is, then suddenly starts threatening your livelihood and questioning your right to exist as an independent country, you tend to reconsider the relationship.

You don’t necessarily stop liking the neighbour.

You just stop leaving your spare house key under his doormat.

And you start building a better fence.

The Beaver Doesn’t Need Permission

Here’s what I find most interesting.

A beaver doesn’t spend its life arguing with the river.

It works with what it has.

Trees. Mud. Water. Determination.

And it builds something.

That’s the lesson I think Canada needs to remember.

We can spend the next decade complaining about Donald Trump.

Or we can spend it building a country that doesn’t have to worry quite so much about what the next American president decides to do.

More Canadian manufacturing.

More trade with countries that respect us.

Better transportation and energy connections between our provinces.

More Canadian ownership of the things we depend on.

Less waiting for Washington to tell us what kind of future we’re allowed to have.

And no, we can’t accomplish all that in two days like those Czech beavers.

We’re Canadians.

We’ll probably need at least three government studies and a federal-provincial conference before somebody picks up a shovel.

But we can get moving.

The Recap

The beaver isn’t our national animal because it’s the biggest, strongest, or loudest creature in the forest.

It’s a builder.

And when its surroundings change, it gets to work changing them again.

Canadians have spent a long time being comfortable living next door to the United States.

That comfort has taken a beating.

But perhaps there’s an opportunity hiding inside all this trouble.

We can become more self-reliant, more united, and less dependent on a neighbour whose politics can change our lives overnight.

Not because we hate America.

Because we love Canada.

The Gut-Punch

Donald Trump might think he’s teaching Canadians a lesson about power.

Maybe he is.

Just not the lesson he intended.

He’s reminding us that a country of builders should never become dependent on somebody else’s permission to build.

And as for that humble little beaver on our nickel?

He’s been showing us what to do all along.

Keep your head down. Keep building. And when somebody messes with your dam, remind them you’ve got teeth.

That’s not being petty.

That’s being Canadian.

— Fred Ferguson
GeezerWise Says

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Source Credit:

• Czech Nature Conservation Agency… Beaver dams and wetland restoration

• The Canadian Press… Heinz’s Leamington closure

• The Canadian Press… French’s Canadian ketchup production

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