There’s an unofficial understanding that, as a Canadian, I am not supposed to be travelling in the United States. I have a few friends who have refused to cross the border for many years, probably dating back to Trump’s first term as president. To them, the U.S. seems like a scary place or, at least, a place that is extremely foreign compared to Canada where citizens seem to be considerably more tolerant of differences and much less inclined to discuss political opinions. We express our views at the voting box (or via mail-in ballots), not loudly at a table at a local café. The “unofficial” avoidance of going to the U.S. officially began around the time of Trump’s second term when he started taking pot-shots at Canada, stating it should be the 51st state and rushing to impose tariffs on one of what are traditionally the closest allies of the U.S.
A year and a half later, Trump still occasionally mentions the 51st state thing to rile Canadians, distract Americans and be a commonplace menace. Many Canadians continue to choose other countries to visit.
I don’t have a choice. I go to the U.S. because I lived there for sixteen years from 13 to 30. My family continues to live in Texas and Colorado. I’m the only one who decided to return to Canada. My boyfriend, whom I met in Seattle in 2022 during Biden’s presidency, also lives in the U.S., currently Colorado as well. I’ve viewed visiting American friends as a luxury and have thus avoided trips to Boston, Cedar Rapids, Tulsa and Los Angeles, but I will not end my relationship with Evan just because Americans put Trump back in the White House. A president will not be the end of us. So, yes, hello again, Colorado.
It used to be that my parents would fly to Vancouver to visit me and I would fly to the family cottage in Ontario to fit in a second visit with them. But all that changed a couple of years ago. My parents, now eighty-six and eighty-nine, are done with navigating airports and flying places. They also can’t handle the altitude in Colorado so they’ve stopped visiting my sister and their granddaughter here.
In order to see them, I must do so on American soil. I can no longer avoid entry to Texas. This is an early Father’s Day visit, five days in completely air-conditioned spaces because outside temperatures rest in the thirties (in Celsius, not that Texans or Coloradans or other Americans, for that matter, know anything about that scale). Basically, it’s going to be very, very hot for the entire time I’m there so I’ll find “relief” immersed in very, very cold artificial indoor conditions.
Oh, if only temperatures were the only significant adjustment for this Canadian.
My parents voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. My mother purports to be an “Independent” but, when I ask if she’s ever voted for a Democratic candidate for president in the forty-eight years she’s lived in the U.S., the answer is no. (She did once vote for third-party hopeful Ross Perot.)
Over the years, we’ve had some heated phone calls when anything political comes into conversation. I think the only issues we’ve ever agreed on are gun control and Queen Elizabeth II had ugly purses. There is no other common ground.
This wouldn’t be so problematic but for the fact my parents are news junkies. When I step out of the guest bedroom in the morning, a news program is on. It may well have already been playing for an hour and it will continue for at least another hour. I sit in a chair in the living room, ostensibly to be social, biting my tongue every time either parent adds their own commentary about the news. I have a rebuttal at the ready, but I’ve learned it’s better to search for new Instagram followers instead and “like” the latest photos from Lake Bled in Slovenia and the striking landscapes of the Lofoten Islands in Norway.
All is well as my parents step out onto the balcony for breakfast and I take my rental car to a local café to write, the one with a biblical quote from Luke taking up a whole wall.
Evenings are dicier. My parents tune in for another hour of news, first on Fox News—yep, that network—and then on CBS. My mother always chimes in about fairness of Fox, especially when it comes to her favoured news anchor, Bret Baier. Typically, I sit through one Fox newscast per visit. I’m genuinely curious about what biases it is feeding my parents. (The days of unbiased news coverage officially died when Trump first campaigned for president, the final nail in the coffin coming when Kellyanne Conway repeatedly talked straight-faced of “alternative facts.”)
After my first sit-through of Fox News, I retreat to the bedroom for subsequent broadcasts of the evening news. I read the news as presented by CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and scan the headlines on CNN’s website. I’m as up on the news of the day as much as I want to be.
Given our striking differences in almost everything political, my parents and I have reached an unofficial détente whereby we don’t engage when one of us expresses a political view. This came to be a few years ago during my parents’ last trip to Vancouver. As I popped up to my parents’ room after dinner in the hotel restaurant, my mother stepped into the bathroom and, by the time she stepped out, my father and I were yelling at one another, my father insisting that Hunter Biden was wholly relevant to the assessment of Joe Biden’s presidency. I was incensed that he would see things that way and he was equally incensed that I didn’t.
After decades of no-win political disputes, enough was enough. Under no circumstances would my parents change my opinions and the same applied to my own impassioned arguments. The impasse would always be.
The dynamics can be tricky in a newsy household as it’s two against one during my visits. I tell myself that, when my parents express a political view, they are conversing with one another, not me. I don’t ask them to turn off the news or to even watch a little less. I will always be the guest now on visits. It’s their home. They have their own habits and make their own choices about how to be informed and entertained.
It's only five days. I’ve got this.
