Canada

During one of his stand-up routines, comedian and late-night host Jon Stewart told a joke that encapsulated the often misunderstood relationship between the United States and Canada. Said Mr. Stewart, "A Canadian came up to me and asked, 'What do Americans really think about Canada?' And I was like, 'We don't.'" Bingo. Joke, truth, and a growing problem, all spelled out in two words. In many ways, there is no country on Earth more important to the current and future welfare of the United States than Canada - and yet, many Americans and U.S. politicians barely give our neighbor to the north any thought at all. They should.

Having emerged as the top playmaker for No. 8 Johns Hopkins, Zach Palmer's most lasting play was the one-handed, wraparound goal he scored in the team's 11-10 overtime win against then-No. 1 Virginia on March 24. That play symbolized the independence with which Palmer, a natural lefty who curled around the left post and tossed the ball into the net with his right hand, has been granted by the Blue Jays coaching staff. “I think I'm more apt to be creative,” Palmer said, adding that he had never attempted that shot in practice or in a game.

As increased globalization forces countries to pretend that they like playing with all the other kids in the playground despite fearing they'll have their toys stolen, never has there been more blatant self-interest cloaked in the phony pretext of outreach or do-goodery. Nowadays, a country is expected to appear both broke and overtly generous -- otherwise, you're just a jerk. Take Canada, for example. Canada used to be run by nanny-state leftists more concerned with looking like Boy Scouts to the rest of the world than with any kind of self-preserving action.

In a victory for common sense, America's top trading partner has become the first country to bail on the Kyoto Protocol before the nearly $7 billion in noncompliance costs comes due next year. Thus ends a pointless and pricey exercise in martyrdom. Having committed to reducing 1990-level carbon emissions by 6 percent, Canada somehow managed to go in the other direction by about a third. Not that anyone in Canada would have noticed by any tangible common-sense measure, except perhaps for all the Canadian plants and trees quietly cheering the abundance of carbon dioxide and overproducing fresh oxygen as a result.

While we continue to spin wheels down here, our Canadian neighbors are taking a proactive, common sense path to solve their own similar problems, and they are achieving major success. Unemployment is down, and prosperity is up. That could be us! While we continue to cave to the radical left environmentalists here, everyday people are becoming the endangered species that we hear them talking about. The Canadian model is to pursue drilling for all types of energy related products.

It's a crisp, cold morning. Inside our recreational vehicles, we don fleece jackets and sweatshirts as the temperature hovers just below freezing. Ice has formed on one of the kettle ponds we are parked alongside in the vast Arctic tundra. As we step outside, the red and yellow colors of fall are all around us. It is August in Canada's famed Yukon Territory. Few vistas in this world are as spectacular as the land above the Arctic Circle. The tundra is truly a magical place, stretching as far as the eye can see, a place that few people ever experience.

It's been a rough month for Canada. America's biggest trading partner and overall non-jerk country just wants to sell some oil to its friends. Canada is sitting on a black-gold mine, but its oil sales are unable to keep pace with production -- a problem that will only increase as the nation further taps the Alberta oil sands and Arctic territory. Canada's conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, understands that energy means influence and independence. It would be tough to argue that Canada is on some kind of power trip, and it's not difficult to understand why the country is interested in establishing oil trade deals that would help its closest ideological allies retain their energy independence.

Regarding Leon Reinstein's letter castigating Sen. Barbara Mikulski for leading the effort to defeat a Senate amendment making it easier to obtain drugs from Canada ("Mikulski wrong to oppose Canadian drug imports," Oct. 25), I would like to share a concrete experience I had. From the United States, I bought an order of 90 Nexium pills that cost me $561. But from Canada I was able to buy 84 of the same pills for just $93. That's less than one-fifth the cost of the drugs in the U.S., or a more than 80 percent discount.

On an afternoon in early October, I sat in a pew in an old church and took in Mass. A woman dressed all in white sang a soothing hymn, and then a priest in an intricate, green robe read from a prepared sermon; behind him, an imposing pipe organ dominated the sparsely-crowded room. I didn't understand a word. The service, the song, the Bible - everything was in French. This was the Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal, a nearly 200-year-old gem that's been the site of state funerals and, perhaps as notable, Celine Dion's wedding.

Civil disobedience on behalf of causes we believe in is a time-honored American tradition ("Going to jail for the environment," August 22). Another time-honored American tradition is keeping an open mind about the issues, listening to different views and then forming an opinion. It is too bad that Mike Tidwell and Cindy Parker and the others who chose to get arrested in front of the White House to protest the Keystone XL pipeline have turned their back on that tradition. Wind energy will one day play a significant role in America's energy future, as will other renewables.