Dear Canada

Dear Canada,

It has been long since we've talked; the trust between us has been growing thinner for some time now, and I confess that I've withdrawn from you. As a child I thought so much of you, was proud to know you. But as I've grown up...well...

You told me when I was a boy that if I went to school and wrote enough of the right things down on pieces of paper, then they would give me a different piece of paper with a lot of letter 'A's on it. So I tried to do it, but this proved more difficult than I imagined; there were quite a lot of pieces of paper that I need to write some promises on before I could go, and even then the schools wanted me to give them several thousands pieces of paper every year, just to let me get to the part where I wrote the write things down on still other paper. All of this you told me I should do, so I could get the piece of paper with all the letter 'A's on it, although in the end I must have written down some of the wrong things, because the paper that I got at the end had a few B's on it, and a C or two as well. But, they told me that with this sheet of paper, the one with the first little bit of the alphabet written prominently upon it, I would be able to find places that would let me give away the vast majority of my waking life in return for many, many more pieces of paper, on which there would be colors and numbers and dead people—the very same ones I was required to deliver thousands of each year while in school. And with those pieces of paper, at long last, I would be allowed to have television and clothes and cars and sunglasses, and in those few remaining hours each day that were still mine, I would be happy.

Yet, Canada, I didn't have anywhere to get those thousands of pieces of paper from. Thank goodness, you came to my rescue. You, Canada, offered to lend me, a Canadian, all those thousands of Canadian dollars that were yours and not mine, saying that I could pay them back, you know, when I graduated. All I had to do was write my name down beside many pages of promises you had written for me, and everything would be fine.

Well it was never fine, Canada. You were always very late with those pieces of paper, and sometimes  you managed to lose the paper with the promises you made me sign on it, making the thousands of papers very late. And while you were doing this, I was living in fear. I was afraid I wasn't going to have rent, or food; I was afraid the school wasn't going to let me write down the right things, and that I wouldn't get my sheet of paper with all the A's on it. I was usually late in buying the big books full of papers with the right things on them, but those were the right things that I was supposed to be writing down so I could get the paper with the A's on it. This was very worrying for me, Canada, and sometimes I think that some B's ended up where the A's were supposed to go. But, you correctly pointed out that, in the tiny print on the promises you made me sign, there were instructions I had followed incorrectly, and so it was really my fault all along. Sometimes, though, it really was your fault; and on those occasions you were happy to pay someone who had no authority whatsoever and was not responsible for  your mistakes to apologize to me on your behalf.

Well I'm all grown-up, now, Canada. I know what all those pieces of paper are called; the degrees, the essays, the contracts and the applications. And oh yes, Canada, I know all about the ones you call dollars. And as I've grown—ironically, because the money you lent me allowed me to listen to experts who were kind enough to tell me what you're all about—I've failed to understand a few things.

Why do we own so many tanks, Canada, and so many guns and helmets and planes and uniforms? I don't seem to recall us having been invaded—ever. And I think those tanks were rather expensive. And I think you bought them, with Canadian dollars, before checking with all of us Canadians to see if we had any other ideas for those dollars. I think, for example, that I, a Canadian, would rather not have borrowed so many dollars from you if I'd known at the time that you had enough dollars lying around to invest in looking for a fight. And I think that there are quite a lot of very large businesses around that have been collecting quite a lot of those Canadian dollars—why is it, again, that you've been giving them tax breaks? They seem well-enough off to me; I don't think the men that run them would have to borrow any Canadian dollars from you if they wanted to go and get degrees.

When I was younger I understood that when you borrow some dollars, you have to give back more than you borrowed; it just seemed to be a matter of course. But after a while I started to wonder why it was that I had to give back more than I borrowed. I mean, I only borrowed the money so I could go and give my life away to a company that would give me back a little bit of the money they made from me; and, we both know it was always the plan that, when I finally did get the money from the job that I got with the degree, you were just going to take a nice big piece of it anyway. Don't you make more money if I make more money? Why do you have to charge to give me permission to make you more money? It isn't very clear to me, Canada, and I should point out that I do have the degree now.

Yep, that's right—I did get my degree, Canada. I got it, and I got a pretty good one, as far as they go. There is a man called the Dean, and he put me on his list because I had written down enough of the right things to get enough A's to impress him. And because, at the end, I wrote a very large amount of the right things down on a quite a lot of pieces of paper, my degree is one with honours on it, although I confess that I'm not quite clear on why it is more honourable now. But I think I must have misunderstood the procedure, a little. When I was at school, I found it all terribly exciting and interesting and I fell rather in love with the things I saw there, but I guess that was a mistake. Because the things I came to love—all about people, and culture, and how we live together on Earth and have for thousands and thousands of years, and about all the exciting things we've been doing while we're here—don't seem to be worth very much to the places that will trade me my life for a little of the money they can make from me. So even though I put the right things down on paper, and in return I got one of the very best pieces of paper I could get, the piece of paper I'm supposed to make, which is a list of all the reasons of why people should trade my life for money (a resume, you call it) doesn't qualify me for very much that I wasn't already qualified for. But that's ok—you gave me a whole six months to get all that sorted out before it became time for me, a Canadian, to give you, Canada, back your Canadian dollars, which are yours and not mine.

And now it's time for me to confess; I confess that I made a mistake, although I didn't know that I was making it at the time. Somewhere, in one of the paragraphs of promises that I had to put my name on was a line that said something very important, and it was my job to read it. I put my name beside the promises, afterall, so it's really my fault that I didn't read it. Not that it would have mattered much—if I didn't sign your promises, you wouldn't give me the money, so I couldn't give it to the school, so they couldn't give me the degree, so I couldn't write that I had it on the resume, so the companies wouldn't trade my life for the money I needed to get happy on the evenings and weekends. But still, to be fair, I should have read that line. You see, I read the lines that told me all of the wonderful ways you'd help me if, when my six months was up, I didn't have the money to give you. I read all about complicated things like 'eligibility requirements' and 'marital status' and I even taught myself to use your 'income calculators'. I read the line that said you would only help me if I signed another page of promises; I just missed the one that said I had to be standing on top of you to sign them.

So now, Canada, I am far, far away from you. I've come here with my partner, a wonderful woman that I met in the school you lent me the money to visit. And while I was in that school, I learned quite a lot about what is happening to your brothers and sisters, those other countries in the world who are not Canada. So now I am in one—one that is called India, and it has been my dream for quite a long time to come here and learn from it. But you see while I'm here I need very badly not to give you the money you let me borrow for just a few more months; you know, just like your page of promises said I could if I was ever in trouble. After that, I'll go to still another country that thinks my piece of paper is pretty impressive and would like me to teach its citizens how to speak my language so they, too, can get money and degrees and resumes. But the problem is, Canada, you are not here where I am, and you will only help me if I come and stand on top of you to put my name on another page of promises, even though I can leave again afterwards and all will be fine. And if I don't come stand on you, and if I, a Canadian, don't give you, Canada, all those Canadian dollars which I owe you because they are yours and not mine, you will write some very bad things on some other pieces of paper. You will write that no one who controls paper should trust me, and because my beautiful partner has agreed to be at my side forever (a promise she did not need paper for, but which you made us write down anyway because our promise to each other wasn't good enough for you), if you write those bad things down on that piece of paper you call a 'credit history', she will have to bare the consequences of my reading error too.

So understand this Canada: for her, and for the babies we want to make some day, if I have to, I will come and stand on you and put my name beside the promises on the page. But if I do, Canada, I will be giving up a dream I have had for a very long time, because even though you have no problem with me leaving again, I will have exhausted my supply of the right papers and will have to start again. Sadly, if this happens, I will be probably have to forfeit my beautiful partner's dreams too. So understand this, Canada: if I do have to come and stand on you in order for you to help me with my myriad paper problems, it will only be for her. For my part, Canada, I would happily let you waste your ink on your credit reports; I would happily let you wish and hope and plead for the return of your Canadian dollars for the rest of my life. If it weren't for her, Canada, I would, in a moment, forget you and all the ways I thought about you when I was a boy. But I made a promise to her, Canada—and I wrote it down on my soul, not on your silly papers with your silly judge confirming that I had—and it's a promise I'm going to keep. I don't know, yet, what's going to happen because this is a brand new maze of papers for me, but two things are clear: the first is that, because I have chosen to commit my love to another, I will not be allowed to go and forget you; and the second, dear Canada, is that if you make me come and stand on you to protect my family at the cost of my dream, I will nonetheless never, ever forgive you.