By Ged Martin
President Donald Trump has called Canada ‘a nasty country’, although – confusingly – he aims to turn it into America’s 51st State. The annexation of its northern neighbour is an old theme in US history, although it has been quiet for over a century. Donald Trump is simply making America grate again.
When Britain recognised American independence in 1783, United States’ negotiators demanded British North America too. During the War of 1812, American armies invaded Canada but failed to rouse its people. Washington omitted to prevent unofficial incursions, by bands of ‘Patriots’ during the rebellions of 1837–8 and by over 1,000 Fenians in 1866.
In 1869, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner alleged that British sympathy for the South had prolonged the American Civil War. He named Canada – by now a self-governing Dominion – as appropriate compensation. In 1911, when president William Howard Taft wanted a trade treaty with Canada (this was a rare event), the speaker of the house of representatives boasted of the day when the Stars and Stripes would fly over all the territory to the North Pole. Canadian voters rejected the deal.
The closest Americans had to a national religion was belief in their (capital letters here) Manifest Destiny. It was an article of faith that the Great Republic would expand to cover the entire continent. Paradoxically, this bombastic confidence proved self-defeating. If it was inevitable that Canada would eventually be absorbed, it was unnecessary to devise machinery, let alone discuss compromises, necessary to hasten the fusion. In 1866, a Bill was introduced into Congress to organise the northern half of the continent into States and Territories. It was abandoned without debate, and the initiative was never repeated.
In the 1790s, the first Governor of Upper Canada (now Ontario) had dreamed a geopolitical fantasy. Colonel John Graves Simcoe believed that settling Loyalist refugees along the northern shores of the Great Lakes would give Britain a lever in the heart of the continent that could be used to manipulate and divide the weak American republic.
In fact, for the next 70 years, there was a fragile balance of power. British garrisons were never large (14,000 was the peak in the crisis year of 1862, spread out across the colonies), but disciplined Redcoats were enough to keep amateur bandits at bay. Since the slave-owning Southerners did not want the abolitionist North to gain extra voting strength in Congress, Manifest Destiny was put on hold. All of that was dramatically changed by the Civil War. The United States emerged, grimly united and with the frightening potential to become a giant modern military power. Britain withdrew its troops in 1871.
The blunt truth is that, ever since the achievement of Confederation in 1867, Canada has existed on the sufferance of its southern neighbour. Take population as a simple indicator: the United States has always been home to ten times as many people. In almost every census decade, the increase in US numbers has been larger than the entire population of Canada. But, it may be objected, surely Canada has vast natural resources which it can use as bargaining counters? In reality, no such weapon exists. In March 2025, Ontario premier Doug Ford threatened to impose a 25 percent surcharge on electricity exported to the United States. The Trump administration gave him a face-saving promise of talks, but essentially it was made clear that he was not allowed to bite back.
Canadians are proud of their (more capital letters here) Undefended Border, but they also quietly recognise that there would be no point in resistance. ‘We don’t need anything from Canada’, Trump insists but, if Americans should decide that Canadian oil and gas and hydro power were crucial to their prosperity, in the last resort the United States will go in and get them. Hence the rueful Canadian joke: ‘the Americans are our best friends, whether we like it or not’. In the decades ahead, that compulsory comradeship may become strained anyway. Parts of the United States are running short of water, and Canada’s tranquil lakes and torrential rivers are not just an item in the nation’s geography, but form an almost spiritual element in its collective psyche too.
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President Trump is big on aims but shows little interest in details. For instance, there is the inconvenient problem that Canada has its own Constitution. Is that simply to be set aside on orders from the White House? The philosophy behind Canada’s parliamentary democracy is one of top-down authority, wholly opposite to the ‘We, the people’ basis of the USA. The concept of the Canadian Crown is deeply embedded in the system of government.
Hence the assent of every province is required to amend any provision relating to its symbol, the monarchy. ‘When was the last time all ten provinces agreed on anything?’, asks the Canadian historian Donald A. Wright. No fewer than 634 First Nations have Treaty rights negotiated with Canada. Would they be consulted about annexation? Maybe we should ask the Greenlanders.
And then there is Quebec and its commitment to the French language. An increasingly Hispanic USA could not possibly accommodate Canadian bilingualism. True, Washington might permit the continued use of Arrêt stop-signs on highways inside Quebec, but the fate of French in Louisiana is not encouraging. In 1848, the Governor-General, Lord Elgin, predicted that the last hand to wave the Union Jack in North America might be that of a French Canadian. The anglicising force of the United States has massively multiplied since then, and the people of Quebec are likely to conclude that the best way to protect their Fleur de Lys is to wrap it in Canada’s Maple Leaf flag.
Let me humbly offer the President some traditional advice: be careful what you wish for!
- Ged Martin is is Emeritus Professor of Canadian Studies, University of Edinburgh.
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