Forgotten Partnership Redux: Canada-U.S. Relations in the 21st C ...

Roosevelt’s class and views could easily adopt the idea of commercial (and political) union with Canada, as well as why they abandoned it just as easily when it became obvious that the notion was not yet politically saleable in Canada (Hannigan, 2002; Pennington, 2011). This same attitude helped Americans accept the later repudiation of reciprocity in the Canadian general election of 1911—the notion always being that the Canadians were not really serious and would later come to their senses. As for Roosevelt, he accepted that Canadians, despite their colonial-imperial status, could and likely would be relied on to evolve like Americans—for example, on the issue of conservation. His last act as president was to convene a North American conference for the protection of the wilderness and wildlife; the Canadians naturally attended (Brinkley, 2009, p. 790).⁵

The British government between 1895 and 1914 resorted first to conciliation and then to appeasement in dealing with the United States, dragging Canada with it when necessary (as in the Alaska boundary arbitration of 1903). In the longer term, the British were extraordinarily successful—for instance, the Americans entered the First and Second World Wars at Britain’s side—but they were successful primarily at avoiding or minimizing political friction. As even the Germans recognized, similarities between the British Empire and the United States made rapprochement and even alliance almost inevitable (Kohn, 2004).⁶

The British did not hesitate to exploit their cultural advantage. History and persisting ties of kinship were important in societies like that of the United States, where many of the prominent were given over to forms of ancestor worship. Canadians could understand and even participate in the rituals. British propagandists in the United States included the Canadian prime minister during the First World War, Sir Robert Borden, orating to his fellow Anglo-Saxons through the medium of the Pilgrims’ Society in New York, reminding elite East Coast Americans of their common roots with the British and, incidentally, with the Canadians.

Borden had been elected in 1911 by exploiting anti-American sentiment, some of it probably dating back to 1776, some of more recent derivation, as from the Alaska boundary dispute. Yet Borden proved