Once upon a time, I was Canada’s biggest fanboy. The first time I visited Canada was a brief trip to Windsor, Ontario, when I was 8 years old. On the promenade that faces downtown Detroit, I picked up a cigarette wrapper and attempted to read the French warning label out aloud, and all I could make out was “pour le bébé”. My grandparents thought this was so funny, that for years, they would just say “pour le bébé” as a non-sequitur. Windsor was not that special, but even the little details felt different enough to be exotic.

In 1996, I visited Vancouver, BC for the first time, and permanently demoted Seattle to a city that could only wish to be so clean, mountainous, elegant, and fresh. We visited family in far off, distant places such as Abbotsford and Port Coquitlam. I thought British Columbia was the best of both worlds – European colonialism and American newness together in a perfect blend. And they had all-dressed potato chips! And a place called Swiss Chalet. I insisted we order pizza from Pizza Pizza and make unnecessary trips to London Drugs.

In summer 1997, my grandparents and I sailed from Port Townsend, WA to Victoria, BC, which was a cloudy affair the entire time until about 500 meters from the coastline, when the clouds lifted in dramatic fashion, and on the Can-con radio station, the song “Rio” by Duran Duran played – even though I was with my fifty-something grandparents, and had no friends to “chill” with, I felt like a Simon Le Bon of the Strait of Georgia. We went to Eaton’s department store, and my grandpa snapped this photo of me in front of the British Columbia parliament building – directly to the right of the famous Empress Hotel. This has to be the most Canadian photo ever.

As I became an adult, I got the chance to visit Montreal, Toronto, and even places like Kelowna, Penticton, Calgary, Campbell River, and Nanaimo. I’m probably the only American that knows which riding Kim Campbell represented (Vancouver Centre). Or who Kim Campbell even is (the shortest-lived Prime Minister in any Commonwealth country except for Liz Truss.)

Given my knowledge and love of Frenchness, plus my fondness for the Commonwealth, I would be a perfect Anglo-Quebecker politician who somehow bridges the gap between separatism and assimilation. And I still lament the loss of Eaton’s to this very day, with its blandness almost a cultural keystone of Canadiana.