Welcome to Canadian Tuxedo
A Canadian reporter tackles America and her home country side by side
Bing Crosby wears the original Canadian Tuxedo. Credit: Levi Strauss
I live in Toronto, Canada, and I grew up in Vancouver, Canada. My only passport reads “Canadian.” But nearly all of my professional life takes place in the United States of America, a country I can’t even enter at the moment. This newsletter is my attempt to reckon that divide and bring my work home to Canada, which needs hard-hitting reporting now more than ever.
I have always had an uneasy relationship with America. I will always be a spectator who, bound by geography, cannot walk away. Nearly all the foundational news events I remember were American, and traumatic: the OJ Simpson car chase, Clinton’s impeachment, the Columbine shooting, and of course, the events of September 11, 2001. Yet I only crossed the border once as a child, and I didn’t recross it until I was 26 and already a reporter for an American outlet. My first identifiably Canadian memory is when the toonie was released in 1996, but American news has always overshadowed Canadian news for me.
Now I’m more than a spectator: I mostly report on American issues for American audiences. With this newsletter, I’m hoping to do some of the same for Canada. I want to challenge the myth of Canadian exceptionalism and examine how the same issue is playing out on both sides of the longest land border on Earth.
Once a month, I’ll take a story I’ve written for Americans and rereport it for the Canadian context. You can get a sense of what the subjects might be by looking at my website. You’ll get this new article in your inbox, together with a link to the American reporting I’ve done. The first installment will arrive on August 1.
Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue. And please, tell your friends!