One day, Brian made a mistake at work, not a big mistake but a mistake. An onlooking colleague turned to another colleague and remarked that Brian was a “typical dumb-ass American.” Another colleague asked him, “Is that the way you do it where you come from?”
This was one of many incidents that made Brian wonder what he had let himself in for by marrying a Canadian and immigrating to Canada. The most personally hurtful incident was his daughter’s report that her high-school history teacher had denounced Americans. “She found it crushing,” Brian says. “She felt out of place.” He wanted to talk to the principal about it but she begged him not to, arguing that he would only make things worse.
It was pretty clear from the beginning that this country wasn’t eager to welcome him. “My first night in Canada, I was asked to back my vehicle into the driveway so the neighbours did not see the American license plate. I’m serious!”
He came here in 2006 and has lived in three small Ontario cities, all west of Toronto. He found them uniformly anti-American. He now takes it for granted that about half the people he meets will, if the opportunity arises, say something that indicates they don’t like Americans.
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