Gird your loins – something cringe and littered with Warhammer references this way comes. If you’re new, welcome, and if you’ve been following me a while, bless your soul for sticking around for the ride.
This will be a diversion from my usual painting and posting, for those of you who have followed my work on my WordPress site, but in light of circumstances – in the same vein as the invaluable Heather Cox’s Letters From An American – there’s something comforting but also invigorating about the thought of leaving behind some kind of tangible record that a graduate student or researcher might stumble on someday to gain a greater understanding of the world in this particular moment from this particular vantage point.
These reflections are brought on by something I think is worth leaving memory and written record of: a certain False Emperor, I’ll call him, over the course of the last couple of months has expressed a keen interest to see the place that I call home become the “51st state” of his far-reaching Imperium. Canada, the country that I was born in and call home, is on the eve right now of a frenzied trade war that threatens lower- and middle-class working Canadians and Americans on both sides of the international divide.
In the spirit of Edward Said’s works, including Culture & Imperialism and Orientalism, I think it is important before proceeding further to take stock of myself, my biases, and my cultura/historical baggage. I am the son of a Mountie father and a Francophone mother with Metis ancestry that I have only recently started to reconnect with. I am three things:
1.) A Warhammer 40K nerd and miniature painter, who believes that anybody can paint and that all it takes is love and practice.
2.) A former (mostly) researcher with a focus on Canadian history, the history of Newfoundland and Labrador, the aforementioned province’s Indigenous peoples, and the specific colonial and imperial processes of all of the above as well as the 19th century’s British empire.
3.) A Canadian in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador with open ears and eyes, with irons in a bunch of different fires, who sometimes hears things and (on rare occasion) knows things.
These things sometimes intersect in haphazard, bizarre ways, and I can think of fewer bizarre than the events of the last several days. Already gripped with the shock and existential dread of watching protections stripped away for a vast number of American residents, my country and Mexico found themselves in the crosshairs of extortive tariff measures and the promise of an escalation thereof if we do not “bend the knee.” Where does Warhammer come into this? Mostly because it’s my vice, part of the lens of stories and legends through which I see the world around me, and because as soon as I thought of the phrase “Canadia Stands,” well, I thought it was too good not to use.
Word broke earlier today that Mexico had succeeded in staying their tariff crisis by a month, with the False Emperor making the claim that there was still nothing (apparently) that Canada or its leadership could do to stay similar tariffs coming into effect tomorrow. There is an added layer of uncertainty to all of this in that Mexico has stayed the impacts of this economic conflict and that Canada is now seemingly alone in the crosshairs, but if anything the last several days have left me feeling encouraged and I think that’s worth sharing.
Canadian supermarkets across the country have started to double down on clearly marking Canada-made products or identifying origin countries so that consumes can cut the Imperium out of our spending as much as possible. A Canada that a month ago was a divided, many-headed hydra of political posturing and infighting seems to have come together across the political spectrum with a united “Team Canada” approach.
Update: While writing this, news broke here that our Prime Minister and the False Emperor have reached an agreement to stay the tariffs for a month conditional on reorganization of our border services and response to the spread of fentanyl across borders into the United States. I strongly doubt however that this was really ever about fentanyl. If anything I have the strong, gut feeling that this is a protection racket wherein the hammer-fall is always just going to be “one more month” away to force political leaders to acquiesce to demands.
What I hope for right now is the kind of solidarity that we saw over the last week continue in weeks to come – where Canadians of all stripes of class, gender, race, religion, orientation, and all walks of life started to pull together in preparation for a coming storm. If you had asked me at the start of this year whether the infamous Doug Ford boldly and brazenly standing up to Donald Trump was on my 2025 bingo card, I would have looked at you as if you’d lost your mind. And yet, here we are.
The tariffs are stayed for a month but I cannot shake the feeling now that the hornet’s nest has been kicked, whether the False Emperor is entirely aware of it or not. This is no longer a conflict or a hazard that’s across an international border, or that’s someone else’s problem. The battle is now in our supermarkets, our workplaces, our homes and our neighbours’ homes, and we’re mobilizing to meet it.
The False Emperor’s sabre-rattling is not being met idly or lightly – something palpable has been sparked in this country. “I think we’ll win,” claimed the False Emperor earlier today. Canadians of all stripes – including racial, ethnic and religious minorities targeted by his regime, and queer people of all colors of the 2SLGBTQI+ rainbow, are coming together to say otherwise. We recognize that we have a real, immediate stake in this fight, and I don’t think we’re taking that lightly.
I’d like to conclude by calling upon the statement the premier of the province I call home made with response to the looming economic conflict:
“I ask people here and around the world to buy responsibly, and support us in standing up to the American bully next door.” Hon. Dr. Andrew Furey is far from a perfect premier, but I think he strongly encapsulates here the sentiment in Newfoundland and Labrador, and in Canada more broadly with respect to this continuing situation: we’re locked in.
Canadia stands – we stand on guard for thee. May the planet break before the guard.
Further reading:
Said, Edward. Culture & Imperialism. New York : Vintage Books, 2004.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
https://charlieangus.substack.com/p/stand-up-to-trump
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
Thumbnail graphic courtesy of Government of Canada under free license, retrieved from https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/flag-canada-description.html
Twitchy Bristles Painting 
Canada has been a civilised country for many years, not feeling the need to posture abroad, or buy guns for home defence.
The last time that unreasonable tariffs were placed on Canadian lumber, Canadian industry became more efficient in response and found alternative export markets. Tariffs benefit no-one, particularly not the home consumers or producers, as the ‘False Emperor’ and his supporters are probably about to discover, if they can understand the argument at all. I hope things turn out well for Canada.
Kind regards, Chris.
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Thanks! And here’s hoping things turn out alright, yeah. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how things play out in the next month now.
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