Our hopes are high. Our faith in the people is great. Our courage is strong. And our dreams for this beautiful country will never die.
Americans should never underestimate the constant pressure on Canada which the mere presence of the United States has produced. We’re different people from you and we’re different people because of you. Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is effected by every twitch and grunt. It should not therefore be expected that this kind of nation, this Canada, should project itself as a mirror image of the United States.
Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.
We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege.
Gordon Sinclair’s death ends one of the longest and most remarkable careers in Canadian Journalism. His wit, irreverence, bluntness and off-beat views have been part of the media landscape for so long that many Canadians had come to believe he would always be there.
Photo Credit: Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Time, 1968.
© TimePix
Source: Time, July 5, 1968
National Archives of Canada, C-027281