To start off my livejournal “in theme”, here is a letter I wrote to The Globe And Mail web site (and it was published there!) concerning Canada’s arctic sovereignty.
The article itself:
“U.S. envoy says Northwest Passage is international territory”
Canadian Press / The Globe and Mail, 31 October 2006.
Sorry I can’t link to it: the newspaper has locked it, now that it is “old news”. But the point is that the US Ambassador to Canada told an audience at the University of Western Ontario that the US official foreign policy on the North West Passage is that it is international territory, not Canadian territory.
Here’s what I wrote in response.
There’s someting here I don’t understand. We Canadians claim to be one of America’s best friends, and they say we are one of their best friends. We are trading partners, military allies, and so on. Yet our ‘friends’ continue to beligerently claim that the Northwest Passage is not our territory, but international territory. This is not the way people treat their friends. Picture this: your next door neighbour, with whom you have been friends for many years, one day declares that a portion of your back yard is actually a public walkway. Then he and his friends use it to park their cars and walk their dogs. You wouldn’t accept this. You would be angry–and your anger would be justified. Similarly, we should be angry with the way the USA is trying to turn our northern ‘back yard’ into an international waterway. We should stand up for what’s ours, and not be afraid to complain in the strongest possible terms. Indeed, I suggest that Canada should stop upholding this paper-thin illusion of being America’s best friend altogether. They cheated us with the softwood lumber deal; they will cheat us again with the Northwest Passage. If America continues to treat us with such mean-spiritedness, we should distance ourselves from them, and find better friends in Europe and Asia.