Canadian authors Suzette Mayr and Kai Thomas join co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss the repercussions of President Trump’s recent threats to annex and tax Canada. They talk about the possible empowerment of the Canadian right as a result of Trump’s extreme remarks, as well as measures their communities are taking to unify in the current political environment. Mayr and Thomas read from their recent novels, The Sleeping Car Porter and In the Upper Country. 

Check out video excerpts from our interviews at Lit Hub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website.

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From the episode:

Whitney Terrell: Okay, so let’s do a little level-setting here. Canadians. Canadians are always, in some basic way, pissed off at Americans. It’s like, resting, I was gonna say resting bitch face, so that seems negative. We have that for you. I feel like we’re loud, obnoxious, we think we’re cool, we mostly ignore Canada or make fun of it. So I understand there’s a level of that, at a certain point that’s like normal status for us, but how much has President Trump changed Canadians’ feelings toward your southern neighbors? Is it a question of degree, or is there something new happening here? Kai, let’s start with you.

Kai Thomas: Yeah, my sense with that is it is a question of degree, in my observation. Although, if anything is new, it’s that heightened reactionary state of affairs, I guess. If anything is new, it’s this newfound sense of either anxiety, trepidation, or excitement among some factions of Canadians, for sure. And, yeah, an upping of the stakes of what I feel has probably, for centuries, been a somewhat tense relationship, and, if not tense, one, in which, at least on the Canadian side of the things, we’re constantly defining ourselves against the US in many ways, when it comes to our national identity.

Suzette Mayr: Yeah, and I’d say that where I am, the booing of the American anthem at the different sports events, kind of says it all at this point. I think Canadians have banded together, at least among the people I hang out with, they’ve banded together in a way that hasn’t happened in a long time, because there are some pretty major regional differences in Canada, and those differences are being smoothed over as we face that larger national threat of the tariffs from the US.

WT: So do you have the same thing where the middle of the country is conservative and the coasts are more liberal? Is that what you’re talking about?

SM: Kind of, kind of. There’s also the issue of Quebec, as well. So Quebec’s a whole other entity into itself, and I’m in the West, and it is more conservative here in Vancouver, or BC rather. The west tends to be more liberal or left, I guess. And then Kai, I would say, the Maritimes, they kind of go all over the place, right? But they’re mostly more liberal.

KT: Yeah, I think in broad strokes it’s a fair assessment to demarcate the center of Canada, and then the coast, but really, there’s interesting pockets everywhere. The Quebec factor is Israel and then when you go north, it’s a whole other can of fish with the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, etc. So, yeah, there’s a lot. There’s a lot going on, and it’s a big, expansive land.

SM: Yeah, but we’re all coming together because the tariffs are freaking us out.

KT: The team Canada approach, right?

SM: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Team Canada.

V.V. Ganeshananthan: Yes. So, now that you all are newly unified against your terrible enemy… I’ve been seeing stuff like grocery store shelves labeled with, ‘here are the American things, know what you’re buying.’ How are Canadians talking about this to each other? What are the newspapers saying? The CBC? Is it the kind of thing where you go to the store, and this is the small talk? What are you all hearing when you talk within your communities?

SM: I think within my community, it’s mostly us sitting in our corners and puddles of our own puke, rocking back and forth from fear because we’re seriously scared. There’s an expression that when the U.S. sneezes, Canada gets a cold, and so whatever happens in the U.S., it’s going to happen triply worse over here. So we’ve been banding together, doing what we can just to buy Canadian. There are little Canadian Maple Leafs on different products. We’ve been sharing viral videos from— there’s a satirical new show called “This Hour has 22 Minutes,” and it’s gone viral because it’s all about buying Canadian, and how to buy Canadian, and what is Canadian, and what’s not Canadian. So it’s, seriously, I think a lot of people are really, really scared, and I’ve been trying to just keep away from anything but  proper news outlets, because it’s just so terrifying. And the news is coming 24/7, about DOGE. Is that how you say it? I’ve only ever read it so, DOGE.

WT: Yeah, well, we’re doing that. You’re only gonna have to worry about that if you want to become the 51st state.

VVG: I was going with us becoming the 11th Province, which I’ve seen a couple of posts about.

WT: Well, so, that’s the thing. It’s funny. I didn’t, I guess, realize the level of fear, because it seems to me that Trump’s tariff threats seem transparently bullshit, like no he’s not going to do it, and he ended up retracting them after fairly minor concessions from Trudeau. I mean, Trudeau is like, ‘Okay, well, there’s no fentanyl crossing the border, it’s not a problem.’ But it is legitimately frightening? Are people sure that there would be a terrible economic impact if there were tariffs? Do people really think that he’s going to do something as stupid as that?

KT: I think people don’t know what he’s going to do, and I think that’s part of where the fear comes from. I think there’s also a fear, and there’s a sense of disruption, at the very least, in the ways that he speaks, and the impacts of that speech, even before he became president. On my end, I don’t live in Canada currently, I live in upstate New York, but in conversation with family members, for example, I have a cousin who works for the RCMP, Canada’s national police force, and she studies data, and she was telling me about how before he became president, when he tweeted about tariffs, there was an immediate response in terms of Canadian allocation to border security before he even stepped into office, right? And so I think there’s a fear too, in the sense of, it’s a reminder of the power that he has, and this general sense of Canada being in this position of being under the influence of this imperial power directly to the south, and that having repercussions that, whether the tariffs go ahead or not, being at the whim of an empire and collapse.

SM: I think part of the problem, too, is that, because I live in a part of the country that slants more conservative, although quite a few people are not conservative, there’s the problem of precedent that Trump is presenting. So, our premier in Alberta seems to be of the mind that— sometimes she comes across as very not Team Canada— and as if what Trump is suggesting and what DOGE is suggesting is a good idea. They’ve been coming for the DEI programs. They’ve put in all kinds of restrictions for trans rights in our province. And so I think that there’s a terrible example being set that, unfortunately, is going to feed the populist influences in Canada. And Pierre Poilievre is the leader of the Conservative Party, and he quite possibly might be the next prime minister of Canada, and he’s very, very, I mean, he’s slanting so Republican, it’s really scary. And I think it’s terrible to see what Trump is able to get away with, because I think that people here, who maybe don’t have our best interests, might think that those are good ideas and want to replicate them here.

Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Vianna O’Hara. Photograph of Suzette Mayr by Heather Saitz. Photograph of Kai Thomas by Tom Sandler.