The exuberance of President Trump's verbosity is legendary and to not a few Canadians, a little cringeworthy. And yet... and yet... Perhaps we should think again. We've just had nine years of a prime minister who reaches the heights of his rhetoric, in grovelling apology. A man who has seldom lost an opportunity to remind Canadians that they should be ashamed of their history... who as a matter of policy has worked hard for nine years not to encourage the bouyant spirit that animates the country's entrepreneurs — he thinks they're ripping off the system — but to destroy the Alberta energy industry, the largest and most profitable enterprise in Canada. He hints that there might even be something illegitimate about Canada, something we should apologize for. He promised sunny ways.He delivered Canadians into debt and tired pessimism.We shouldn't be surprised. Strip from Justin Trudeau's resume his time as an elected official and what's left? Not much, certainly nothing that suggests that but for an accident in the timing of his birth, he might have made his name on the frontier as a hero of enterprise or industry. To those who were, he ascribed the worst of characters and the unworthiest of motives.Then you listen to Donald Trump. Yes, it was gung-ho Americanism. He even used the word 'exceptionalism,' a red flag to reds everywhere. But there's something deeply appealing about a 'golden age for America'... about a spirit that animates a man to promise peace through strength, prosperity for all, the return of the meritocracy, to talk about making the impossible a goal not a barrier — indeed to send explorers to plant the country's flag on Mars. The Americans have always thought big; after four years of being told how awful was America, they are ready to think big again.So should Canadians also be. Again.For this country was built by people who may not have talked that way but certainly thought and acted that way. And size for size, matched their American neighbours.What can we say about a country of 11 million that between 1939 and 1945 put a million men and women in uniform to fight the great evil of the time? Or a country that until quite recently had a higher standard of living than America?Impossibility? No, Canada's not joining the race to Mars.But before Canada did it, punching a railway thousands of miles from coast to coast, through some of the worst country in the world, looked like a rather large deal. So did great public works projects such as the St. Lawrence Seaway... or even the enormous political feat of cobbling together half a continent into a single country, right under the noses of a hostile America. For that remarkable accomplishment, Sir John A Macdonald deserves a place with contemporaries such as Bismarck — or a string of American presidents of that time — as the builder of a huge, and highly successful nation.It's been a while since Canadians have been encouraged to think how great their country could be. And in parts of the country where people dare to dream big — thinking about Alberta, now — the pressure is on to stop them.It is one thing of course, for Trump to say it. Now he has to do it. And in the omelette he's making, a lot of eggs are going to get broken, starting with Panama's by the sound of it, and those of some people who having entered the US illegally, continued in a life of crime. It has done nothing for their prospects that in Vermont, within hours of Trump's speech, an illegal shot dead a US border agent..UPDATED: One person in custody after US CBP agent shot dead by alleged illegal immigrant near Canadian border.Anyway, it may not go all his way, all the time. He must know it; he looked a little dark, like somebody who knows just how much remains for him to do, for his accomplishments to match his vision.But finally, somebody stood up and cast a vision for America that involved acknowledging what equality really means, that using the departments of government to persecute your political enemies is wrong and will stop, that free speech matters, that government censorship must end, that policy based on hokum must stop — Trump will withdraw from the Paris Accord — and confirmed what we all knew but which we have been bullied into denying, which is that there are two genders, men and women. God bless him.There was much else. It is his vision for a healthy country, strong, free and doing great things.It has been a long time since Canada has heard that kind of a call.There's an election coming some day soon. It's time. Who will challenge Canadians to be all that they can be?
