This Marriage is Over
This article first appeared in the Minden Times and Haliburton Echo in August 2026.
The conceit of this column is that I comment on something I’ve read or seen that I think has local relevance. The newspapers and mags and media generally are overwhelmed with anxiety about the economic disaster that awaits us when the economy to the south goes south. Trump digging in the bottom drawer and brushing dust off the legislation that brought on the Great Depression puts a time frame on when it’s apt to happen.
Part of me feels relief at seeing an end to the uncertainty of the drip drip drip of Trump’s hallucinations. You can’t torture something that’s dead. When our historic economic and historical alliance is dealt a death blow, you bury the body and get on with life.
We are terrified of what that might look like – as most of us are when we envision the loss of the loved ones with whom our lives are entwined. My friend is desperately prolonging the life of her dog, her beloved companion, because she cannot imagine life without him. His care constrains her freedom and taps a hole in her bank account, and every sacrifice is evidence of how crucial he is to her life. And fuels her anxiety about how she will manage without him.
At the risk of sounding terribly tough and unfeeling, I say bring it on. The final breach with our neighbours to the south, I mean. I expect it will be something like walking out of a marriage that has gone toxic – massive uncertainty, a sea of practical challenges, a significant change in every aspect of daily life.
But under it all, the feeling of identity and agency coming home to roost, Free, free at last. With all that means, both positive and negative.
I think we’d do all right. What comes to mind is the human goodness that emerges when disaster strikes –up here fires, ice storms, floods. During the great Brown Out of August 2003, even urban people rediscovered neighbouring. When disaster strikes, habits considered essential are reconsidered. Alternate ways to scratch basic itches are recollected.
In those circumstances, we remember how we managed a social life when we couldn’t afford to go out to restaurants. Potlucks of creative combinations of whatever food in the fridge needed eating, enriched and shared with friends and neighbours who were also bridging to the next tranche of income. Pushing back furniture in tiny living rooms to dance the night away, to raucous singing if the electricity was out. Or arguing compellingly, without refereeing by Mr. Google’s inarguable conclusions, our position on this or that geopolitical event. Sleeping on friend’s couches or in sleeping bags on the floor, before AirB&Bs were a thing and cabs and hotels were rich people’s domain.
There was goodness in those times, before we thought that it was every person’s duty to be self-sufficient. When social capital was more universally available than money. When the address book was at least as important as the bank book.
If we walk out on the increasingly toxic relationship with the States, I think we’ll discover that we’ll do fine. We’ll rediscover, or maybe rebuilt or renovate, our identity and our agency. We’ll reconsider who we are and how we act in the world to make it be the place we want it to be – just as individuals do when they leave a bad marriage.
Yes, it will be painful as we pull in our belts a notch or two, even three, and learn to live, not just without American produce and alcohol, but with less money in our pockets. Because jobs will be left behind. So will frills and furbelows, like the convenience of the internet as we know it. There will be less stuff in stores, and it will be more expensive
Maybe decent telephone service and media that means something will return from exile. Maybe we’ll travel less and explore our own near-by worlds more thoroughly and thoughtfully (like we did during Covid). Maybe we’ll consult ourselves and our intimates rather than Google when we feel off-centre. Take a walk rather than pop a pill. Give ourselves permission to do what we can if the ultimate expertise is not available. Make do when the perfect product is unattainable; (re?)learn to love our recycle sites.
I think it would be kinda good. Better than cowering in the shadow of a punitive lunatic. Better than trying to fight back, punch for punch, when we know we’re the David in this uninvited confrontation and don’t have a slingshot that will go the distance.
But maybe even more than that: good in itself. Not just doing the best we can in an unfair fight, but walking away. Turning the page and writing the next chapter of our story.
