The only thing PapaBear forgot to mention in his brilliant expose was that W.L. MacKenzie King got all his strategic direction via seances with his dead mother (well obviously he wouldn’t have had a seance with his mother if she was alive).
Other highlights of Canada-US relations:
1859: San Juan Islands “Pig War”: American Army garrison under Captain Picket (later famous for his charge) face down British Royal Marines on a small island for several years after an American farmer shoots a British pig. Really.
1866: Fenian Raids (irate and bored Irish civil war vets raid Ontario as part of a scheme to seize Canada in order to ‘liberate’ Ireland): small skirmish at Ridgeway, Canadian Militia leave Fenians in posession of the field; threat of British and Canadian regular forces causes Fenians to give it up;
1988: Canada sends secret weapon into US: Vancouver Island’s own Pamela Anderson.
1994 (?): US Marines manage to fly Canadian flag upside down at baseball game.
Those damn beaver chasers have been too smug for too long. I say we invade. It is manifestly our destiny, after all. The maritime provinces would be eager to join us, and the western provinces would be just as happy to see them go. Quebec would be left on it’s own, but we would deny them any sort of access to the oceans; they would crumble into francophonic whimpers soon enough. That just leaves BC and a few caribou herds to be mopped up.
This discussion reminds me of a funny story in the Onion story about two years ago when Britain was losing Hong Kong and the royal family was making headlines with their troubles. The headline said something like, “Let us invade England now while she is weak!”