Trump's trade threats spiral out of control as Canada slaps down 100 pages of tariffs

David Edwards
August 25, 2026 

RAW STORY


FILE PHOTO: Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks with the news media after he suspended trade negotiations with the United States, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada August 22, 2026. REUTERS/Chris Tanouye/File Photo

President Donald Trump spent Tuesday morning threatening Canada online while Ottawa put a nearly 100-page tariff schedule on the calendar he cannot stop.

Four Canadian cabinet ministers announced the retaliatory tariffs in Ottawa on Tuesday, according to the New York Times. The duties cover about 700 American products and take effect Sept. 8.

The rates range from 15 to 50 percent, matching the level Washington set for each product, according to CNBC. Prime Minister Mark Carney had promised a "dollar for dollar" response after talks collapsed Friday night, the Times reported.

The schedule runs nearly 100 pages, Global News senior journalist Mackenzie Gray reported on X. It taxes fish, stoves, carpets, men's suits and fishing rods.

"Our preference was to find a deal that benefits both countries," Canadian trade minister Dominic LeBlanc told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Tuesday. "We still believe that's possible. But in the meantime, we're not waiting by the phone."

Trump answered on Truth Social, where he suggested halting business with Ontario and repeatedly floated renaming Lake Ontario to "Lake America," CNBC reported.

"I deal with many countries, and Canada is easily the most difficult and unreasonable," Trump wrote in one post.

Trump warned Monday that he would double tariffs on Canadian cars and auto parts to 50 percent, but not until Jan. 1, 2027, Global News reported. Canada's deadline is two weeks away.

Canada doubled its own tariffs on American steel and aluminum to 50 percent, the Times reported. Ottawa added $7.5 billion for businesses and workers harmed by the trade war, according to CNBC.

Senior Canadian officials said the list was not built to punish particular American businesses or states, but to help Canadian industry, Gray reported.

Trump has also complained that the United States runs a trade deficit with Canada. That gap exists largely because Americans buy Canadian crude oil, CNBC reported.

His tariffs have excluded oil, natural gas, potash and many minerals, according to the Times.

Polls taken before the tariffs took effect Saturday showed broad Canadian support for retaliation, the Times noted. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has pressed for it, while Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has urged restraint.

Canada's economy is about one-twelfth the size of the American economy, according to the Times, and economists say the resulting price increases will hurt Canadian companies, too.

‘Canada Must Respond’: Ottawa Slaps Retaliatory Tariffs on US Goods After Trump Trade War Escalation

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his nation is not “going to accept” an “attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States.”


Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about the trade dispute with the United States at the Davie Shipyard in Levis, Quebec, Canada on August 24, 2026.
(Photo by Andrej Ivanov/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Aug 25, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


Canada announced Tuesday that it will impose roughly $20 billion in retaliatory tariffs on American imports in response to President Donald Trump’s 50% tariff on many of its goods after bilateral negotiations collapsed amid what Ottawa said were last-minute concessions that damaged the Canadian economy and intruded on its sovereignty.

The government of center-left Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said its countermeasures will cover roughly C$27.6 billion ($20 billion) worth of American products, with tariffs ranging from 15% to 50% on hundreds of categories including steel, aluminum, appliances, clothing, seafood, electronics, furniture, and dairy. The measures are scheduled to take effect September 8. Ottawa also unveiled billions of dollars in assistance for workers and businesses expected to be hurt by the conflict.


‘It’s War’: Trump’s 50% Tariffs Take Hold After US-Canada Trade Talks Collapse


“Canada must respond, and today we are, in a proportionate, targeted, and strategic way,” Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said during a press conference in Ottawa. “Today I’m announcing that Canada will match the United States tariffs dollar for dollar, rate for rate.”

“Canada’s counter-tariffs are designed primarily to provide protection for Canadian industry impacted by US tariffs and allow them to compete against US products in the Canadian market,” he added. “It’s all about fairness, it’s all about a level playing field, it’s all about supporting Canadian workers and Canadian businesses.”

It’s also apparently about political calculation ahead of November’s midterm elections, in which the congressional balance of power—and therefore Trump’s ability to pursue his agenda—is at stake.

The administration’s trade war with Canada is hitting industries concentrated in states where Republicans are fighting to defend vulnerable US Senate seats, including Maine’s lobster industry and Michigan’s auto sector, while Ohio and other Midwestern states face exposure via cross-border manufacturing and supply chains.

On Monday, Trump told Canadian leaders to “fall in line” or face “far WORSE” consequences than the new tariffs.

Carney retorted that Canadians are not “going to accept” an “attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States.”

Canadian anger toward Trump has surged as the US president has repeatedly threatened Canada’s sovereignty, including his frequent talk of making Canada the “51st state.” Canadian political leaders and labor organizations have largely rallied behind a tougher response, while a growing grassroots boycott of US products has become a symbol of national resistance.

“Canadians understand that maintaining our sovereignty and independence will entail consequences and sacrifices,” Calgary-based commentator Jen Gerson wrote Tuesday in The Guardian. “We did not bring this trade war on ourselves; we have merely refused to comply in advance to the unreasonable demands of a bad-faith actor. We will be punished for it. We have accepted this.”

“If nothing else, let the [United States’] retaliation be a warning to the rest of the Western alliance,” Gerson added. “Run, run. Protect yourselves. Move faster.”

Trump—the self-proclaimed “peace president” who has attacked more countries than any other US leader in modern history—has menaced a string of allies. He’s threatened to retake the Panama Canal, launch armed attacks on Colombia and Mexico, “bomb the shit” out of Oman, and take over Greenland.

Longtime US allies have taken notice—and action. Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spooked Sweden and Finland into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Trump’s erratic aggression has pushed other countries in directions once thought highly unlikely. European Union membership for Iceland, long a politically moribund proposition, is now politically plausible amid developments including Trump’s Arctic saber-rattling. US tariff pressure on India is even incentivizing India to seek closer economic ties with China, a traditional adversary.

Trump’s increasingly aggressive and condescending rhetoric has left many Canadians feeling like their relationship with their southern neighbor has irreparably changed.

“America has changed, and... we will not return to our old relationship,” Carney said after Trump announced the 50% tariffs over the weekend.

“You’re at war when you get attacked,” the prime minister also said. “We got attacked.”

Such rhetoric was once the realm of comedy, like the 1995 satirical film Canadian Bacon, directed by Michael Moore and starring John Candy and Dan Aykroyd, about a struggling US president who manufactures a shooting war with Canada, invasion and all, in hopes of rallying Americans around a foreign enemy.

The premise was absurd because the notion of Washington deliberately provoking its peaceful northern neighbor into war seemed preposterous. Many critics have noted that under Trump, absurdity has become the new normal.

On Tuesday, Trump said he’s considering changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” because, as one Bluesky account noted, “Trump likes to slap the name of America on everything.”



“Gulf of Mexico? Gulf of America. Strait of Hormuz? Strait of America. Lake Ontario? Lake America,” the account quipped, adding one more suggestion: “Epstein Island? America Island.”

Trump roasted as 'greatest idiot' in a lifetime after Lake Ontario threat: 'Out of ideas'

Alexander Willis
August 25, 2026 

RAW STORY

President Donald Trump floated the idea of changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” on Tuesday amid his ongoing trade feud with Canada, a pitch that was met with collective sighs by critics who spoke to their exhaustion with the chaotic Trump administration.

In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump claimed that his administration was “giving serious consideration” to the name change as he did not “expect to [be] doing much business with Ontario any longer.” The idea is similar to his executive order issued in early 2025 to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” a move that received intense scrutiny at the time.

Regarding Trump’s latest name-change idea — one that came amid Trump imposing 50% tariffs on some Canadian goods, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney vowing to match said tariffs “dollar for dollar” — critics were quick to condemn it.

The Bulwark's Sam Stein quipped on X, "He's out of ideas."

Stephen Hayes, editor and CEO at The Dispatch, mocked, "It's still astonishing - ten years into the Trump era - that our president so often behaves like a 10 year-old. And that so much of our national policymaking is based on the juvenile emoting of an adult who functions like a preteen."

“We are living in the stupidest f------ times,” wrote Jason Willan, a prominent fantasy sports analyst, in a social media post on X.

Roland Ley, a former contributor for Euromaidan Press, called Trump the “greatest idiot” he had witnessed in his “lifetime.”

“Just as internationally 'Gulf of America' isn't recognised, this won't be either,” Ley wrote in a social media post on X. “Not even passed by the US Senate anyway.”

In response to Trump’s announcement, Canadian horse-racing photographer Julie Wright quipped, “Lunatic says what,” and prominent online influencer Mario Nawfal argued that Trump’s trade war was “getting silly” in a post on X to his more than 3.8 million followers.

“It would require a lot more than a President’s bad mood to change the name of a gulf or great lake!” Nawfal wrote. “Maybe a vote or something a bit more thought out.”

'Sounds like me': Trump confesses to CNN that he torpedoed trade talks with Canada

Robert Davis
August 25, 2026 

RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 7, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo

President Donald Trump admitted on Tuesday that he caused the intensifying trade war between the U.S. and Canada after he added conditions to the talks at the 11th hour.

Trump spoke briefly with CNN's Jim Sciutto after Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on a bevy of U.S. goods. During the call, Sciutto asked about Canadian officials' assertion that late-stage demands were inserted into the negotiations, and the president's response was eerily surprising.

Sciutto shared a snippet of the conversation on X.

“That sounds like me,” Trump told the reporter.

“So you don't deny it?” Sciutto responded.

The president replied, “No, no, I don't deny anything. So no, they have to pay a fair amount. And if they don't pay a fair amount, we won't make a deal. That's fine.“

The exchange stunned some of the president's critics.

"At least he admitted it. LOL. Clown show operation," Dean Blundell, a Canadian comedian, posted on X.

"How Donald Trump is sending America's manufacturing economy to the brink of the abyss," Grant Stern, executive editor for Occupy Democrats, posted on X.

CNN's Daniel Dale smacks Trump with a stinging fact-check after latest Canada flop

Erik De La Garza
August 25, 2026
RAW STORY



U.S. President Donald Trump points a finger as he speaks during a roundtable on antifa, an anti-fascist movement he designated a domestic "terrorist organization" via executive order on September 22, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

President Donald Trump repeated another series of false claims about Canada as his escalating trade war with the United States’ northern neighbor erupted again this week, according to a brutal CNN fact-check.

CNN’s Daniel Dale examined two social media posts Trump published Monday, beginning with the president’s claim that “Canada’s Unemployment Rate is now at 10%, and rapidly rising.”

“This is wrong on both counts,” Dale wrote Tuesday.

“Canada’s unemployment rate declined to 6.4% in July. That was the third consecutive month it had gone down,” Dale told readers. “It was also a two-year low.”

The rate would be approximately one percentage point lower if Canada calculated unemployment using the same methodology as the United States, Dale noted. The U.S. unemployment rate was 4.1% in July.

Trump’s claim that Canada conducts “95% of their business with the U.S” also came under the microscope.

“There’s no doubt that the Canadian economy is heavily reliant on the US, but there’s no apparent basis for Trump’s '95%' figure,” Dale found. According to his report, approximately 72% of Canadian merchandise exports went to the United States in 2025, down from roughly 76% the previous year and the lowest percentage since the early 1980s.

“And the figure fell below 70% in the first half of 2026,” Dale added.

While Dale acknowledged that the United States is less dependent on Canada than Canada is on the U.S., he stressed that Canada remains a critical trading partner, particularly for northern border states.

Trump just made toilet paper a lot more expensive

President Donald Trump meets with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Tuesday, May 6, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok/Flickr)

Alex Henderson 

August 26, 2026 

ALTERNET

After U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Canada with new 50 percent tariffs, Canada responded with retaliatory tariffs of their own on Tuesday. Tariffs on some Canadian goods imported into the United States, the Associated Press (AP) reports, could be as high as 50 percent. And according to The Guardian, Americans could face higher prices for paper products like toilet paper, facial tissues and paper towels as a result.

"Using the bathroom or having a cry is about to become more expensive for North Americans as the U.S. and Canada enter a full-fledged trade war that threatens to flush away decades of peaceful trading between the two nations," journalist Lauren Aratani reports in The Guardian. "After trade negotiations broke down between the two countries last weekend, Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, vowed to match U.S. tariffs 'dollar for dollar' and unveiled a list of nearly 900 American goods that will face 25 percent to 50 percent tariffs starting on 8 September."

Many economists, both liberal and conservative, have been warning that a trade war with Canada could cost U.S. homeowners a fortune — as many building and construction materials are imported into the U.S. from Canada. And according to a Canadian government website, "Canada's counter tariffs will apply to products covering $27.6 billion in imports from the U.S. and will focus on sectors such as steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics, that are most impacted by U.S. tariffs."

Aratani emphasizes that "paper products are among the hardest-hit sectors, with Canada threatening to put tariffs of between 25 percent and 50 percent on 'toilet paper or face tissue stock' from 8 September in retaliation for a 50 percent hike from Washington DC."

"Though American toilet paper and tissues are often made domestically," Aratani explains, "they heavily rely on lumber-rich Canada for raw materials. Procter & Gamble, the owner of Charmin toilet paper, said last year that it would have to increase prices amid tariffs that were in place at the time. The U.S. imported $328m worth of toilet paper from Canada in 2024, according to the World Bank, making it by far the largest exporter of the product to the U.S. Retailers including Costco source much of their paper products from the country."

The Guardian reporter continues, "The U.S. accounts for more than 20 percent of global tissue consumption despite having only 4 percent of the world's population. The average American uses 141 rolls of toilet paper per year, making them No. 1 for No. 2s globally, just ahead of Germans, each using an average of 134 rolls annually."

‘The Red States, We’re Going to Hit Hard’: Canadian Politicians Vow to Make MAGA Pay for Trump’s Trade War

“We can put massive pain on the US,” said Ontario Premier Doug Ford.


Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about the trade dispute with the United States at the Davie Shipyard in Levis, Quebec, Canada on August 24, 2026.
(Photo by Andrej Ivanov/AFP via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Aug 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Politicians from Canada’s two biggest political parties vowed on Monday to hit back hard against US President Donald Trump’s trade war against their country.

Trade negotiations between the two countries collapsed last week after Trump reportedly sought to restrict Canada from striking trade deals with other nations, while also pressuring the country to scrap requirements aimed at preserving the use of the French language.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that Trump’s aggression would come back to hurt US workers.

“It’s not a surprise that the US would take some form of reprisal to our response to their unjustified tariffs,” said Carney, a member of the center-left Liberal Party. “But what message does that send to the workers in Michigan and Ohio and Kentucky and Alabama who rely on Canadian demand? We’re their largest customer for automobiles, more than the European Union, Japan, Korea.”



Carney also said there was an “attitude at the negotiating table” from US officials that “Canada is a subsidiary of the United States,” which is “not something we’re going to accept.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, a member of the rival center-right Progressive Conservative Party, delivered a more strident rebuke to Trump, vowing that Canada’s response would deliver a hit to the president’s voters.

“The red states, we’re going to hit hard,” said Ford.

The Ontario premier then outlined all the ways his country can make life more painful for US consumers so long as Trump keeps trying to undermine Canadian sovereignty.

“If it gets really, really bad, I say everything’s on the table,” Ford said. “We need everyone to be on Team Canada and throw everything and the kitchen sink at them, no matter if it’s electricity, if it’s fuel, again, if it’s potash, if it’s uranium. We need to have everything on the table... we can put massive pain on the US. President Trump underestimates us. And that’s the biggest mistake.”



Trump lashed out at both Carney and Ford in a Monday morning Truth Social post.

“The USA will always be far bigger, richer, and stronger than Canada,” Trump wrote. “Without the United States, Canada couldn’t survive—it’s where they get all of their money and, because of their current bad leadership, primarily Governor Carney, and his Flunky, Ford, they will not be allowed to keep taking advantage of the United States—their key to survival.”

CANADA

Four provinces set different rules for data centres

Jennifer Friesen
August 21, 2026

DIGITAL JOURNAL

Photo by Geoffrey Moffett on Unsplash

Before anyone pours concrete, a Canadian data centre proposal comes with a bevy of local questions.

Can it get enough power? What will that power cost? Who controls the data? And who gets to say yes?

Ontario added its own on Aug. 13 with a draft Data Centre Playbook.

Alberta, Quebec, and B.C. already have their own rules, and they all look pretty different.

Ontario is proposing to charge new data centres a premium for electricity. Any data centre pulling more than one megawatt (MW) would pay more than the province’s largest factories.

Ontario isn’t offering subsidies, just faster permitting and what it calls white glove service.

Energy and Mines Minister Stephen Lecce said the plan makes data centres pay for “every single cent” of the power they use.

Paying up is only part of it. Projects would be judged on the benefit they bring the economy, the investment they make locally, and their plan to keep Canadians’ data in Canada, according to the government.

Ontario calls the playbook an early part of its coming AI strategy, and pitches that strategy as $122 billion in economic growth by 2035 and 17,000 jobs a year.

That last pillar puts the big U.S. cloud providers on watch, and it’s a harder promise than it sounds.

Data sitting on Canadian soil isn’t automatically beyond American reach.

Under the U.S. CLOUD Act, a U.S.-based provider can be compelled to hand over data it controls wherever that data physically sits. Who controls the provider matters more than where the building is.

All of this is still a proposal. Ontarians have until Sept. 12 to tell the province what they think.
Alberta, Quebec, and B.C. drew three different lines on power

A single large AI data centre can draw as much power as a city, and the requests are arriving faster than any province wants to approve them blindly.

Alberta, Quebec, and B.C. are each sorting them in different ways.

Alberta gives priority to data centres that bring their own power. Those projects move to the front of the line, and the developer pays for whatever grid upgrades their power needs.

Normally a data centre deals with the grid operator, the energy regulator, and the local municipality separately. Alberta’s concierge program, as the province calls it, gives them one provincial point of contact instead.

The largest project to break ground is Meta’s $13 billion campus in Sturgeon County, its first in Canada.

Bigger builds have been announced, including a $70 billion project near Grande Prairie, but many are still in the planning stage.

Meta’s first phase is expected to connect up to 970 MW to Alberta’s grid. Its dedicated gas plant, a 932 MW facility being developed by Pembina Pipeline and its partners, doesn’t open until the second half of 2030.

Alberta Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish said the province used no grants, tax credits or incentives to land Meta.

“We did not want to be first and rush in blindly,” he said at the Calgary announcement in July. “We wanted to be smartest.”

Alberta Minister of Technology and Innovation Nate Glubish, speaks at The Princeton in Calgary on July 8, 2026. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal

The Pembina Institute warns that Alberta’s reliance on natural gas could raise consumer electricity costs and make them more volatile. But the province points to a different line in the bill, saying Meta is covering its own transmission costs and could lower the transmission portion of other customers’ bills.

Quebec markets some of the lowest power rates in North America to data centres. Now it wants to charge the large ones more, roughly doubling the rate for any new data centre over 5 MW to about 13 cents a kilowatt-hour, so it can save that cheap power for the users it wants most.

Operators are already lining up to fight the increase at the province’s energy regulator this fall, since low-cost hydro has been one of Quebec’s main draws.

B.C. makes data centres compete for a limited slice of power, and it keeps its big resource industries out of the contest.

AI and data centre proposals are competing for a capped pool of about 400 MW over two years.

The province scores those bids partly on data sovereignty and First Nations participation. It says data centres deliver fewer jobs and less revenue than natural-resource projects, so traditional industries like mining, forestry, and LNG sit outside the competition altogether.

Energy Minister Adrian Dix said B.C. built it that way because the province “learned from other jurisdictions that have had an extremely negative economic effect.”

South of the border, some Americans are already paying more because of them.

Right now, everyone else gets stuck with the bill. The fight is over whether data centres ever do.

All four governments want data centres to cover their own power costs. They’re going about it differently, of course, with Alberta using its own-power priority, Quebec its pricing, B.C. its rationing, and Ontario a separate rate. Whether it holds at this scale is untested.

None of this is a sure thing, either.

Companies love to announce capacity they haven’t built yet. The industry even has a word for it, bragawatts, the megawatts that live in a press release and never get built.

In B.C., Conservative MLA David Williams, the party’s critic for BC Hydro and electricity self-sufficiency, calls the process rationing, one that in his words “avoids the root problem” of a province without enough power to go around.
Skipping consultation is what stops these projects

Even where a province says yes, a local council can still say no, and many residents are asking them to.

Oakville became the first Ontario municipality to pass a one-year moratorium on new data centres, two days before the province released its playbook. Hamilton said no to a similar freeze while Mississauga is preparing its own, and residents in Toronto are fighting two projects over water and noise.

Ontario now holds the final say on grid connections, but municipalities still control zoning and development approval. No project has yet tested what happens when the province says yes to the grid and a municipality says no to the site.

Communities fight these projects when they see the risks landing on them (the water, the power bills, the emissions) while the payoff goes somewhere else.

In Manitoba, Premier Wab Kinew said no to a gas-powered AI data centre near Île-des-Chênes, saying it threatened the environment with little economic upside, as a petition against it passed 13,500 signatures.

The energy sector spent 60 years learning this, and its veterans brought the lesson to the AI industry at Upper Bound in Edmonton earlier this year.

“The person who doesn’t get a cheque has the ability to disrupt the whole project,” said energy economist Peter Tertzakian. “It’s a big learning for AI.”

Peter Tertzakian, energy economist and founder of Studio.Energy, speaks at Upper Bound in Edmonton. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal

The developers who get ahead of it build the community into the deal.

In Alberta, Woodland Cree First Nation holds 51% of a proposed data centre on its traditional territory that is planned to reach 650 MW, with revenue funding housing, education, and elder care. A few hundred kilometres away, Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation is in court challenging a water licence tied to Wonder Valley, arguing Alberta failed to consult it. The Nation also says it was not consulted on the land sale.

Same province, same technology, and a very different answer on who got a say.

The frameworks for doing it already exist. Canada spent a decade building them for pipelines and mines, through Indigenous equity ownership and community benefit agreements, and the First Nations Major Projects Coalition that advises on them now represents 186 First Nations.

The data centre industry can use that playbook or repeat the fights.

Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, who chairs Ontario’s Big City Mayors, wants consistent federal and provincial rules so individual councils aren’t writing data centre policy from scratch.

Ontario’s comment window closes Sept. 12, and the province says the final playbook will support its AI Industrial Strategy this fall.

Four provinces have staked out their terms. What no one can say yet is which of these projects gets poured, powered, and switched on.

Final shotsThe province a company builds in sets its power cost, its approval odds, and who can legally reach its data.

Data on Canadian soil can still fall under U.S. law. Provider ownership and control belong in the vendor contract.

Grid approval can still leave a project facing a municipal vote or a court challenge.

China–Canada Relations At A Strategic Crossroads: Xi Jinping’s Expected Visit, Alberta’s Referendum And Implications For The United States – Analysis

Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney with China's President Xi Jinping. Photo Credit: @MarkJCarney, X

August 25, 2026

By Dr. Shehab Al-Makahleh


Key Takeaways:

Canada is pursuing a managed economic reset with China—marked by Carney’s January 2026 Beijing visit, restored agricultural market access, and a possible Xi visit in September—primarily to reduce its vulnerability to U.S. trade pressure rather than to realign geopolitically away from Washington.

The timing is unusually consequential: Xi’s potential September visit would occur weeks before Alberta’s October 19 referendum on greater provincial autonomy and roughly six weeks before the U.S. midterms, raising the risk that Canada’s China policy becomes entangled in both domestic federal-provincial tensions and American electoral politics.

The strategic challenge for Ottawa is diversification without dependency or confrontation: expand commercial ties with China while preserving national-security safeguards and the core security-economic partnership with the United States, recognizing that excessive American pressure could make Canadian diversification toward China more permanent.

Canada–China relations are entering a potentially transformative phase at precisely the moment when the North American political and economic order is under unusual pressure. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January 2026 visit to Beijing initiated what Ottawa described as a new strategic partnership with China, while Beijing has restored important market access for Canadian agricultural exports and both governments have begun rebuilding economic and diplomatic channels that deteriorated sharply after 2018. On the other hand, Canada’s relationship with the United States has entered a period of significant trade friction, creating an incentive for Ottawa to diversify its economic relationships. Against this background, Chinese President Xi Jinping is paying a visit to Canada in September 2026, potentially linked to his expected trip to the United States. The possibility of such a visit is not yet equivalent to a formally confirmed state visit, but its potential timing is strategically important because it would occur only weeks before Alberta’s October 19th referendum and roughly six weeks before the November 3rd U.S. midterm elections.

The convergence of these events could produce an unusually consequential period for North American geopolitics. Xi’s possible September visit would test the limits of Canada’s economic and diplomatic reset with China; Alberta’s referendum could expose deeper tensions between Ottawa and the provinces over federalism, resources and national sovereignty; and the U.S. midterms could turn Canada’s China policy into an issue in American domestic politics. The result could be a three-sided strategic problem for Ottawa: how to deepen economic relations with China without provoking an unacceptable American response, how to maintain national unity while pursuing a more diversified foreign economic policy, and how to preserve the United States as Canada’s principal security and economic partner without allowing Canada to remain excessively dependent on a single market.

The emerging Canadian approach should therefore not be interpreted simply as a geopolitical shift from Washington toward Beijing. It is better understood as an attempt to create strategic room for manoeuvre. Canada is seeking alternatives because its overwhelming economic dependence on the United States has increasingly become a source of vulnerability. China, meanwhile, sees an opportunity to strengthen its position in a G7 country that has traditionally been closely aligned with Washington. For the United States, the central danger is not that Canada will suddenly become a Chinese ally. It is that continued American economic pressure could gradually make Canadian diversification toward China and other Asian markets politically and economically irreversible.

The Canada–China Reset

The foundations of the current reset were laid during Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January 2026 visit to China, the first visit by a Canadian prime minister since 2017. Carney met Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials and announced a series of agreements designed to rebuild economic relations. The Canadian government characterized the outcome as a new strategic partnership and emphasized cooperation in trade, energy, agriculture, culture, tourism and other areas.

The economic component is particularly significant. Canada and China agreed to reduce several trade barriers, including measures affecting Canadian agricultural exports. Ottawa announced that China would reduce the combined tariff rate on Canadian canola seed from approximately 85 percent to about 15 percent and that Canadian canola meal, lobsters, crabs and peas would no longer face certain anti-discrimination tariffs beginning March 1, 2026. The Canadian government described China as a roughly C$4 billion market for Canadian canola seed, making the agreement particularly important for Western Canadian agriculture.

The significance of the reset goes beyond individual commodities. Canada is attempting to reduce its vulnerability to American trade policy by expanding alternative markets. The logic is straightforward: the more Canadian exporters can sell into China, Europe, India and other markets, the less exposed Canada becomes to unilateral changes in U.S. trade policy.

This is especially important given the deterioration in U.S.–Canada trade relations during 2026. Recent tariff disputes have demonstrated that even Canada’s closest economic relationship can become politically unstable. Chinese state-linked commentary has openly celebrated the dispute, portraying Canadian retaliation against Washington as evidence that American economic pressure is encouraging traditional U.S. allies to seek greater autonomy. China therefore has a strong strategic incentive to make its market more attractive to Canadian exporters at the precise moment when Ottawa is searching for alternatives.

Xi Jinping’s Possible September Visit

Reports that Xi Jinping may visit Canada during a September North American trip introduce another dimension to the relationship. Xi is considering adding Canada to a trip that would include the United States. If confirmed, it would represent the first visit by a Chinese head of state to Canada in approximately 16 years. The timing would be highly significant.

A Xi visit would give Beijing an opportunity to demonstrate that China is capable of maintaining productive relations with a major U.S. ally despite the broader strategic rivalry between Beijing and Washington. For Ottawa, it would provide an opportunity to demonstrate that Canadian foreign policy is becoming more diversified without formally abandoning the transatlantic and North American security architecture. The optics would therefore matter almost as much as the agreements.

Beijing would probably emphasize economic cooperation, agriculture, energy, clean technology, education, tourism and multilateralism. Ottawa would likely stress Canada’s independent foreign policy and the economic advantages of diversification. Neither side would have an interest in portraying the meeting as an anti-American alignment. Nevertheless, Washington would examine the visit closely.

If Xi were to arrive in Canada shortly before the U.S. midterm elections, American political actors could interpret the event through an electoral lens. Critics of the Canadian government could argue that Ottawa is exploiting tensions with Washington to move closer to Beijing. Conversely, Canadian officials could argue that the visit demonstrates precisely why Canada needs a diversified foreign policy: economic security requires more than dependence on a single partner. This could make the visit one of the most politically sensitive Canada–China diplomatic events in decades.

Why Washington Should Be Concerned

The United States has enormous structural advantages in its relationship with Canada. Geography, energy infrastructure, integrated manufacturing, defence cooperation and supply chains make a fundamental Canadian economic pivot away from the United States extremely difficult. Yet, those structural advantages do not guarantee political loyalty. On the other hand, Canada’s current diversification strategy is partly a response to the realization that economic interdependence can also create vulnerability. Carney’s January China visit highlighted the connection between Canada’s deteriorating relationship with Washington and Ottawa’s effort to rebuild economic ties with Beijing. This is conducive to an important strategic paradox. Washington may believe that economic pressure will force Canada to make concessions. Ottawa may instead conclude that American pressure makes diversification necessary. The difference between these two interpretations could shape North American politics for years.

The United States is also likely to pay particular attention to areas where Canadian and Chinese economic interests intersect with American national security. These include artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, batteries, telecommunications, data infrastructure, critical minerals, ports and advanced manufacturing. China’s role in global supply chains means that commercial agreements can have strategic implications even when they are not explicitly military. Canada’s challenge will be to distinguish legitimate commercial engagement from strategic dependency.

Ottawa itself recognizes this problem. Canadian government assessments continue to identify concerns involving Chinese economic coercion, cyber activity, foreign interference, intellectual-property issues and non-market practices. The reset with Beijing therefore does not mean that Canada has abandoned its security concerns. Instead, Ottawa appears to be pursuing what could be described as “managed engagement”: expand economic cooperation while maintaining national-security safeguards. As a result, this approach will be closely watched in Washington.

The Alberta Referendum: A Domestic Constraint on Canadian Foreign Policy

The Alberta referendum introduces an internal Canadian variable that could complicate Ottawa’s China strategy. Importantly, the referendum is scheduled for October 19, 2026, rather than November. Elections Alberta confirms the referendum process, while the Alberta government has published the questions and supporting information surrounding the vote. The referendum should not be understood simply as an immediate vote on independence. The separation question is structured around whether the Alberta government should begin the constitutional process required for a future referendum on separation. The October vote therefore does not itself make Alberta an independent country. Nevertheless, the political consequences could be substantial.

Alberta is central to Canada’s energy economy and has particularly strong economic ties with the United States. Its oil, gas, agriculture and petrochemical sectors depend heavily on North American markets. At the same time, Alberta has an increasingly strong political interest in expanding access to Asian markets and increasing the province’s control over economic decisions. This produces a potential contradiction.

Ottawa’s China strategy could create new markets for Alberta’s agricultural and resource sectors, but Alberta’s political leadership may resist federal control over the international economic policies affecting those industries. A stronger autonomy movement could therefore complicate Canada’s ability to formulate a unified China strategy.

The referendum’s broader questions also concern provincial powers and the relationship between Alberta and the federal government. Elections Alberta confirms that the referendum process involves questions relating to provincial–federal relations and constitutional issues. If the referendum produces a strong mandate for greater provincial autonomy, Ottawa could face greater pressure to negotiate with Alberta over energy infrastructure, immigration, taxation, natural resources and federal programs. This matters internationally because foreign economic policy increasingly intersects with provincial jurisdiction.

China does not need Alberta to become independent to benefit from stronger provincial autonomy. A Canada in which provinces exercise greater influence over resources and economic policy could potentially provide Beijing with multiple channels for commercial engagement. Washington would likely see the same development differently. For the United States, Alberta’s political autonomy could strengthen an energy-rich region that is deeply integrated with the American economy. But it could also complicate Canada’s ability to coordinate North American energy and trade policy.

The Critical Minerals and Energy Dimension

Critical minerals could eventually become the most sensitive area of Canada–China relations. Canada has significant mineral resources, while China possesses enormous processing and manufacturing capacity. The combination is economically attractive but strategically complicated. Canadian policymakers want foreign capital and industrial development, while Washington increasingly wants North American supply chains that reduce Chinese dependence. This creates a triangular competition.

Canada wants to become a critical-minerals and clean-energy power. China wants secure access to resources and new markets. The United States wants Canada to develop those resources primarily within trusted North American supply chains. The same tension applies to electric vehicles and batteries. Canada has already moved toward greater access for Chinese electric vehicles as part of the broader Canada–China economic reset. The January agreement included arrangements concerning Chinese EV imports into Canada, while Ottawa simultaneously seeks to develop its own clean-technology manufacturing base.

From Beijing’s perspective, the Canadian market represents an opportunity to expand commercial influence in North America. From Washington’s perspective, Chinese vehicles and components entering Canada could create concerns about supply chains, data, industrial competitiveness and the possibility of Chinese firms establishing a larger North American manufacturing footprint. Thus, the EV issue could become much more politically important than the size of the Canadian market alone would suggest.

The U.S. Midterm Elections and Canada

The November 3, 2026 U.S. midterm elections provide the final piece of the political calendar. All 435 voting seats in the House of Representatives and 35 Senate seats are scheduled to be contested. Canada is unlikely to be a central issue in the American elections, but Canada–China relations could become politically relevant through broader debates over China, tariffs, manufacturing, energy and trade. A Xi visit to Canada in September would occur less than two months before Election Day.

That timing would create opportunities for political messaging in the United States. Candidates could argue that Canada is moving closer to China at the same time that Washington is trying to protect American industries and supply chains. Canadian economic agreements with China could therefore be incorporated into a larger narrative about Chinese competition. The danger for Ottawa is that a policy designed primarily for Canadian economic diversification could become an American electoral issue.

The danger for Washington is the opposite: excessive pressure on Canada could accelerate exactly the diversification that American policymakers are trying to prevent. This is the central strategic paradox. If Washington makes Canadian access to the American market more uncertain, Canadian policymakers have greater incentives to seek Chinese, European, Indian and Asian alternatives. If Washington instead offers predictable access and deeper North American investment opportunities, Ottawa will have less reason to move aggressively toward Beijing. The American midterm elections could therefore influence not only U.S. domestic politics but also the future direction of Canada–China relations.

Three Possible Scenarios

The first scenario is a managed Canada–China rapprochement. Xi visits Canada in September, Ottawa and Beijing announce additional economic agreements, and the relationship develops primarily around agriculture, energy, tourism, education and trade. Canada maintains strict national-security screening while avoiding major Chinese involvement in strategically sensitive infrastructure. Washington expresses concern but ultimately accepts that Canada has legitimate diversification objectives.

The second scenario is strategic confrontation between Washington and Ottawa. Xi’s visit produces major agreements involving EVs, critical minerals or Chinese investment. American policymakers interpret these agreements as evidence that Canada is moving toward Beijing. The issue becomes politically salient during the U.S. midterm campaign, and Washington responds with additional trade or investment restrictions. Canada then accelerates its diversification strategy.


The third scenario is Canadian internal fragmentation. The Alberta referendum produces a strong mandate for greater provincial autonomy, while other provinces demand additional powers or challenge Ottawa’s approach to foreign investment and resources. Ottawa’s ability to implement a unified China policy becomes more difficult. China could benefit from new commercial opportunities, but Canadian political fragmentation would make major strategic initiatives harder to execute.

The most likely outcome is a combination of the first two scenarios: deeper economic relations between Canada and China accompanied by persistent and increasingly strategic American concern. Ottawa is unlikely to abandon its long-standing economic, defence and security relationship with Washington, but neither is it likely to reverse the diversification strategy that has emerged in response to growing uncertainty in U.S.–Canada trade relations. Canada will probably continue expanding access to Chinese markets for agricultural products, energy, critical minerals, clean technology and other exports while simultaneously maintaining national-security safeguards around Chinese investment in sensitive sectors.

This approach would allow Ottawa to argue that its engagement with Beijing is driven primarily by economic necessity and the pursuit of greater resilience rather than by a geopolitical decision to align with China. Nevertheless, Washington is likely to remain increasingly attentive to the scale and nature of Canadian–Chinese cooperation, particularly if Chinese companies gain a larger presence in electric vehicles, batteries, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, critical-mineral processing or strategic infrastructure. The issue could become especially sensitive if Xi Jinping’s expected September visit produces new investment or trade agreements immediately before the U.S. midterm elections, when China-related economic and national-security issues are likely to receive heightened political attention in Washington.

At the same time, the emerging relationship is unlikely to develop without limits. Canada has significant economic incentives to engage China, but Ottawa is also aware that excessive dependence on Beijing could simply replace one form of vulnerability with another. The Canadian government therefore has an interest in maintaining multiple economic options, including the United States, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea and other Indo-Pacific markets. This would allow Canada to pursue what might be described as strategic diversification without strategic alignment. In this model, China becomes an important economic partner but not Canada’s principal security partner or political patron. Such a strategy would give Ottawa greater bargaining power with Washington while also providing Beijing with incentives to maintain constructive relations with Canada. The resulting equilibrium, however, would be inherently fragile. Any major Chinese investment in a strategically sensitive Canadian sector, any significant deterioration in U.S.–China relations, or any new dispute between Ottawa and Washington could rapidly transform economic cooperation into a national-security controversy.

The Alberta referendum could further complicate this trajectory. If the October 19 vote produces a strong mandate for greater provincial autonomy, the federal government could face additional pressure from Alberta over energy policy, natural resources, taxation, infrastructure and international economic relations. Alberta’s enormous energy and agricultural potential make it particularly relevant to Canada’s diversification strategy, but its economy is also deeply integrated with the United States.

A stronger Alberta autonomy movement could therefore create competing pressures: Ottawa may seek greater access to Asian and Chinese markets, while Alberta may simultaneously demand greater control over the resources that would make such diversification possible. China could see opportunities in this environment, particularly through energy, agriculture and critical-mineral cooperation, while Washington could seek to reinforce its economic relationship with Alberta and the broader Canadian energy sector. Consequently, the Canada–China relationship cannot be viewed solely through the lens of federal diplomacy. It is increasingly connected to Canada’s internal constitutional politics and the competing economic interests of Ottawa, Alberta and other provinces.

For Washington, the strategic challenge will be to determine whether Canadian diversification represents a manageable economic adjustment or the beginning of a broader geopolitical shift. The United States possesses enormous structural advantages in its relationship with Canada, including geographic proximity, integrated supply chains, defence cooperation, energy infrastructure and financial interdependence. These advantages make a wholesale Canadian pivot toward China extremely unlikely. However, Washington should not assume that these structural relationships automatically guarantee Canadian political alignment on every economic issue.

If American trade pressure becomes sufficiently unpredictable or punitive, Canadian policymakers may increasingly view diversification as a matter of national economic security rather than simply a commercial preference. In that circumstance, Chinese engagement could acquire a strategic dimension even if neither Ottawa nor Beijing initially intended it to do so. The paradox is that the more Washington attempts to prevent Canada from diversifying through economic pressure, the stronger the political argument inside Canada for diversification may become. The central question for the United States, therefore, will be whether it can preserve Canada’s deep integration with North America through incentives, investment and predictable economic relations rather than through pressure alone.

What Canada Should Avoid

Ottawa’s greatest strategic challenge will be avoiding the false choice between Washington and Beijing. Canada does not need to choose China over the United States. Nor can Canada realistically replace the United States as its principal economic and security partner. Instead, Ottawa should pursue a policy of strategic diversification without strategic alignment.

That means expanding Canadian exports to China while maintaining strict screening of Chinese investments in critical infrastructure and sensitive technologies. It means selling more agricultural products to China while preventing excessive dependence on Chinese markets. It means attracting investment from multiple countries rather than replacing American dependence with Chinese dependence. The objective should be resilience rather than realignment. This approach would also give Canada greater credibility in Washington. If Ottawa can demonstrate that its China policy is primarily about market diversification rather than geopolitical alignment, American concerns become easier to manage.

What Washington Should Do

The United States should recognize that Canada’s diversification strategy is partly a consequence of American policy. Washington retains extraordinary leverage because of geography and economic integration. But leverage is most effective when it is used to create incentives rather than resentment. The United States should therefore consider a more positive North American economic strategy based on predictable market access, joint critical-mineral development, coordinated energy infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and research partnerships. The strategic objective should be to make North American integration more attractive than Chinese alternatives. Washington should also avoid forcing Canada into an explicit choice between the United States and China. Such an approach could unintentionally strengthen the argument inside Canada that Ottawa requires greater strategic independence. China would welcome that outcome.


The coming months could mark a critical turning point in Canada’s relationship with both China and the United States. Xi Jinping’s possible September visit would symbolize the rehabilitation of Canada–China relations after years of diplomatic tension. Carney’s January visit to Beijing has already established the foundations of a new strategic partnership, including renewed agricultural market access and broader economic cooperation. The Alberta referendum on October 19 could then reveal how much domestic support exists for greater provincial autonomy and potentially complicate Ottawa’s ability to pursue a unified national economic strategy.

Finally, the U.S. midterm elections on November 3 will provide the political backdrop against which Washington evaluates Canada’s evolving relationship with Beijing. The significance of these events lies in their convergence. China sees an opportunity to deepen its economic presence in Canada. Canada sees an opportunity to reduce its vulnerability to U.S. trade pressure. Alberta is challenging aspects of the federal-provincial balance. Washington is approaching an election in which China, trade and economic security will remain politically important. The most consequential question is therefore not whether Canada will choose China over the United States. It is whether Canada can successfully diversify without creating a new strategic dependency.

For Beijing, the ideal outcome is a Canada that remains formally aligned with Washington but becomes increasingly economically independent of it. For Ottawa, the ideal outcome is a Canada capable of trading with China while maintaining its core security relationship with the United States. For Washington, the ideal outcome is a Canada that remains deeply integrated with North America without feeling compelled to seek alternatives. The coming months will determine which of these visions comes closest to reality. The strategic lesson is clear: Canada is not necessarily moving from Washington to Beijing; it is attempting to move from dependence toward diversification. The United States should recognize that distinction before economic pressure turns diversification into strategic realignment.

ReferencesAju Press. (2026, July 23). Xi Jinping may visit Canada during September trip to the U.S.https://www.ajupress.com/view/20260723104870677

Ballotpedia. (2026). United States Congress elections, 2026. https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Congress_elections,_2026

Chatham House. (2026). U.S. midterm elections 2026: What happens next?https://www.chathamhouse.org/events/all/standard-event/us-midterm-elections-2026-what-happens-next

Elections Alberta. (2026). Referendum. https://www.elections.ab.ca/elections/referendum/

Prime Minister of Canada. (2026a, January 16). Prime Minister Carney forges new strategic partnership with the People’s Republic of China. Government of Canada.

https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/01/16/prime-minister-carney-forges-new-strategic-partnership-peoples

Prime Minister of Canada. (2026b, January 16). Prime Minister Carney meets with President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping. Government of Canada. https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/readouts/2026/01/16/prime-minister-carney-meets-president-peoples-republic-china-xi-jinping

The Guardian. (2026, January 12). Carney heads to Beijing as Trump’s America First agenda forces Canada into trade rethink. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/12/carney-heads-to-beijing-as-trump-america-first-agenda-forces-canada-into-trade-rethink
The Straits Times. (2026). China media hails Canada’s “Chinese-style” tariff retaliation. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-media-hails-canadas-chinese-style-tariff-retaliation



About Dr. Shehab Al-Makahleh

Dr. Shehab Al-Makahleh is a senior political advisor for a number of countries and president of Canada-based Geostrategic Media Center and director of the Jordan-based Middle East Institute. Al-Makahleh is a non-resident fellow at a number of British, American and Middle Eastern think-tanks. He has contributed many policy papers and op-eds to many international think-tanks in different languages. He has been a keynote speaker at world political, security and military conferences. Al-Makahleh has published 10 books on political and economic developments and world leadership. He is the author of Into the Terrorist Mind and His Majesty King Abdullah II’s Trait: Teacher and Leader. He has published many policy papers in the US, Russia and the UK. He has published scores of articles, Op-Eds in American, Chinese, British, Russian, French, South Korean and Middle Eastern outlets. He has been lecturing at well-known universities in the Middle East and abroad. You may follow him [ @Geostrat_ME] and [@ShehabMakahleh].
View all posts by Dr. Shehab Al-Makahleh →

Monsters, Coyotes and Other Native Tales of Resistance

Jan Haaken

August 21, 2026

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Part II, read Part I here.

In Necessity: Climate Resistance and the Thin Green Line, Chief Don Sampson tells a story written by beloved Umatilla storyteller Edith Motanic, “The Monster Who Comes Up the River.” He explains how the monster in this folk tale symbolizes the insatiable appetites of colonial powers that devour Native lands and how the wily coyote, spirit of Indian resistance, tricks the monster and ultimately outwits him. Chief Sampson adds that there is a moral to this contest between the monster and coyote and it concerns competing forces within the human spirit. We all carry the capacity for good and for evil. Indigenous people can become selfish betrayers of their own people.

The Windigo legend circulates similarly among First Nations Peoples. According to Shawn Smallman, author of Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth and History, the image of the windigo beast “was a means of defining moral social behavior, which could serve as a warning against greed and selfishness.” This cannibalistic forest beast takes over the spirits of victims and turns them into other windigos. Driven by insatiable hunger, the beast appears as a towering, emaciated figure emanating the odor of decaying flesh and arousing feelings of intimate horror.

For many Indigenous scholars and cultural critics, the Native cannon of windigo folklore unfolds historically alongside settler colonialism and reflects as much the anxieties of the colonizers as it does the fears of the colonized. From the late 19th through the mid twentieth centuries, Christian missionaries, white trappers, traders and anthropologists reported what came to be termed windigo psychosis, a mental disorder where the sufferer holds the delusional belief that he is possessed with the evil spirit of the windigo monster and is driven to acts of cannibalism. While a few cases of cannibalism have been documented historically, they generally occur in famine or other extreme conditions of scarcity.

Windigoism and the Psychiatric Gaza

Fascination with windigo psychosis among Western psychiatrists and anthropologists led to a hotly debated controversy in the 1980s over the historical validity of the phenomenon. The challenge for these white experts, including American psychiatrists, was to identify and diagnose cases where the person is driven by madness to acts of actual cannibalism. Scholars in the 1960s began to look more carefully at the case material on which this diagnostic picture was formed. In 1981, anthropologist Lou Marano looked back on reports that circulated in psychiatry of psychosis-induced cannibalism among First Nations peoples. “In the vast majority of cases in which the Indians employ the term there is no psychosis by either Algonkian or European criteria, much less a psychosis involving murder and cannibalism,” Marano concludes. “Unfortunately, anthropologists zeroed in on the bizarre, the grotesque, and the macabre in Landes’s reports rather than on their inconsistencies and their second-hand nature.”

The term windigoism is used very broadly among First Nations and Native peoples, Marano points out, for states associated with “going mad.” Among the Ojibwe, “almost driven to windigo” refers to madness that arises from life-threateningly harsh conditions. The term is invoked with considerable sympathy as it expresses despair and distress of people who are separated from the group or lost. To white anthropologists and psychiatrists, the search for evidence of actual cannibalism in the reports they collected blinded them to the social symbolic meaning of the story. Scholars documenting the phenomenon agree, however, that tales of windigoism circulate among the Cree, one of the largest groups of First Nations and Indigenous peoples in North America, living mostly in Canada from Quebec to Alberta. Missionary settlers among the Cree were a common source of these stories, imposing their own cure of Christian conversion on sufferers.

Decolonizing Family Memory

My mother grew up in Norway Valley, Alberta–an area of Norwegian settlers straddling a Cree Reserve. Working with Tara Houska and other Native activists fighting pipelines transporting oil from the Tar Sands fields in Alberta, led me to revisit my own family history. What do we owe to Indigenous people as descendants of white settlers? In Canada, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), operating from 2008-2015, was one form of recognition and place for reparations. Based on legal settlement between Residential Schools Survivors, the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit representatives and the parties responsible for creation and operation of the schools, the federal government and the church bodies, the TRC opened space for uncovering repressed memories of Native suffering–repressed in white colonial narratives but also among Indigenous people themselves.

For those of us who are conscious of the debts we share as descendents of white settlers, disturbing conflicts arise over how we pass on our own family stories of hardship. As a clinical psychologist, I hold a longstanding interest in family stories passed from one generation to the next and in working through family mythologies. One debt we owe to Indigenous peoples, including the Palestinians, is that they have helped us to understand the historical inter-dependencies of the oppressors and the oppressed. And we have learned how oppressed people can become the oppressor, as we see in the brutal subjugation of Palestinians by Jewish Israelis.

My mother worked as a maid for a wealthy family in Bellingham as a young woman in the 1930s before she married my father. She had many stories about growing up dirt poor in Northern Alberta. Her parents, like many rural poor people, were drawn to Spirit-filled Pentecostalism. Their faith was forged by the hell-fire preachers at revival meetings, those seasonal gatherings of believers and backsliders in tents on the prairies.

One beloved family story passed on from my mother unfolded around her own brave and adventurous mother, Ma, following her older brother Ole who had gone before her, leaving Norway in 1906 to arrive in New York City. She then traveled to northern Minnesota where she secured a job as a cook in a hotel. Eight years after marrying my grandfather, Pa, a Norwegian farmer and carpenter, the couple migrated with their four young children to an area at the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan, not far from what are now the tar sands oil fields. My grandpa had seen a post in their town, a railway hub in Minnesota, that announced land grants for white settlers by the Canadian Pacific Railroad. White settlers served as paramilitary sites protecting the rails going through Indian country. My grandparents had seven more children in a cabin that was built by Pa at Frog Lake–an area of Scandinavian settlers that became Norway Valley. The settlement straddled the Reserve of Frog Lake Nation–a band of Cree. My mother liked to tell us stories about her brothers running away from the lashings of Pa and how the brothers found sanctuary from his abuse among the Cree.

Of the many pioneer stories about family hardships that were passed on in my family, the story that put Frog Lake in Canadian history books was not among them. In 1885, twenty-three years before my grandparents arrived at Frog Lake, the largest violent resistance to white settlers in Canadian history took place. The Frog Lake Massacre, or what the Cree call the Frog Lake Rebellion, was organized by a band of Cree that had settled in the area but had not yet accepted the government’s reserve site. In resisting treaty demands and the decimation of buffalo that had left the Cree people in a state of near starvation, Chief Big Bear and Wandering Spirit, the war chief of the band, organized a campaign to seize weapons and food supplies, targeting the Hudson Bay Company post. Cree men attacked and killed nine whites in the small settlement of Frog Lake. Eight Natives, including Wandering Spirit, were hanged on Nov. 27, 1885 in the largest mass hanging in Canada’s history.

My mother and her siblings are now dead and I have no way of knowing what they knew of this history, although a commemorative grave in their town honors the white settlers who were killed. Local records from the region suggest that the massacre was a formative cultural memory for whites as well as for Indigenous people: “After the Indian uprising of 1885 twenty-five years passed before the influx of white settlers began to move into the area…Because of the wide-spread publicity that stemmed from the rebellion, Frog Lake was the place to which the pioneers came.” My grandparents were among those pioneers, encouraged by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to settle in Frog Lake alongside the Reserve as part of a larger program of Indian pacification.

Solomon (Sa-we-pah-u) Delver, a Cree member whose family story is recorded along with that of my grandparents in Frog Lake, recalls another legacy of the era.

When I was a very small boy, I don’t know how old I was, I was sent to the Roman Catholic Residential School at Onion Lake. I was there for twelve years. My dad had sent me there to learn to understand the language of the white people. It was hard for me to be brought up as an orphan. I stayed with the nuns; they told me I am really a Roman Catholic which is how I was brought up. I used to ask a blessing before every meal I had. I used to go to Church in the evenings and in the mornings to the service in the Chapel before breakfast. I remember all these things when I was in the Residential School. It was hard far away from home, but it was the only way in which I could understand the White men.

Delver explains how his father sent him to the residential school to learn the language of white people. Yet laws passed in Canada made removal of Native children from their families and severing ties with their cultures mandatory. There were 25 residential schools in the province of Alberta and many were open until the last of the schools closed in the 1990s. The network of boarding schools was established by the Canadian government’s Department of Indian Affairs after the Indian Act of 1876 and administered by Christian churches, primarily the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. Smaller denominations ran Residential Schools as well although their religious oppression may have taken more subtle forms. The Doctrine of Discovery, the papal edict of the late 15th century subsequently incorporated into international law that provided religious authority for European conquest of the continent, was a guiding worldview, supported by a series of Supreme Court decisions in the US and Canada, that justified claims on Native lands.

Solidarity and Survival

In my deeper understanding of my mother’s stories and my own familial work of “decolonizing history,” I still find a place for one of my mother’s favorite memories of the Cree. She liked to tell the story of being sent to fetch fish from an ice trap at the age of 10 and getting lost in thick fog in trying to find her way home. She remembered releasing the reins of her horse, knowing that the animal would know the way. In the fog surrounding her, she realized that she was passing through the Cree Reserve and closer than she had ever been to the Indians. The story ended with Mom’s girlhood astonishment: “After I passed through, I realized that they were not going to hurt me. The Cree Indians were actually good people.”

The monstrous violence inflicted on the Cree by white settlers never found a place in her family stories. Nor was there a place for recognizing Indigenous peoples’ own right to resist their colonizers. It is up to us, as descendants of those settlers, to join in the ongoing work of Indigenous resistance. As ravenous industries devour more of life, land and the planet itself, our collective survival lies in that shared struggle.

This is the second piece of a four-part series. These can be read along with other weekly commentary on her Substack page.

Jan Haaken is professor emeritus of psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist and documentary filmmaker.